Veritas Backup Exec alternatives and competitors

We are a managed service provider (MSP). We have also started to sell it recently. We have been using this solution at our company, and after testing the product for close to six months, we realized this is a good option moving forward.

We are a managed service provider. For us, this solution is even more beneficial because we can control the licenses, renewals, and other things for customers from a managed service provider's panel, and we get an option to upsell and cross-sell to clients.

Its ease of use and price are most valuable. It is simple and straightforward. Someone who has never used any backup software will easily understand it from the first installation. It is that simple. Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts. 

It also has very less overhead on IT in terms of the product, service, and outcomes. Another good feature is that you don't really have to install any agent on the server side, especially when you are taking Hyper-V backup. We are using Microsoft Hyper-V, and we are taking backup. No agent and other things need to be installed on your machines.

I have done a couple of restores on a trial basis to check the integrity, and I did not find any issue in terms of the reliability of the restores. It was smooth.

It would be a great improvement if they can give a console to control the systems. All other vendors let you simply log in to the cloud console and control everything from there, but for Vembu, whether you choose Vembu Cloud Backup or Vembu Disaster Recovery, you still need to install the Vembu software on your on-premise system and configure it from there. It would be great if I can get a cloud console to manage the systems. 

They can also give an option where if you don't want to install an agent, you can use your own server and manage it, but if you want to manage it from the cloud console, you install the agent. It should be my choice. I should have control when I am sitting at home. I should also have control over the cloud so that I can monitor everything and do whatever I like. If my organization policy does not allow me to do that, then obviously I don't do it, but Vembu should provide such an option.

I have been using this solution for close to six months.

It looks good to me. So far, I haven't found any glitches. It is always there, so it is stable. You run it through the browser, which makes it simple.

It is scalable. We started with a 30-days trial, and after that, we started using its free version. Today, we upgraded from the free version to the enterprise version. We are also working on putting 10 TB backup on Vembu cloud as well as going ahead with almost eight servers for the disaster recovery offsite. 

To upgrade from the free version to the enterprise version, I simply had to synchronize the license, and everything was set. You can scale it very easily. You just need to activate the license under your account, and then you can log in to the Vembu console and just synchronize the license, and you're done. If you want to go from an on-premise backup to the cloud, you should have a cloud license. You can then synchronize and configure it. That's it. 

In terms of the size of the environment, one of the implementations is done for a government organization, and there are around 20 or 25 users with close to 5 terabytes of data and two virtual machines. We don't have plans to increase its usage in the same organization because this is a small subsidiary of a big government office. With the same client, there is nothing more we can do. They have a limited number of users, but we are working on implementing it for other clients.

I have used their support, and I had a very good experience. We were basically installing a demo for another client, and they were using 2008. We were getting a particular error while doing the installation, and for that, they needed to reboot the server, but you just cannot reboot the server in a live environment. You need to fix up a time for that. For example, if we have to reboot your servers, we need to schedule it with you, and you will schedule a time for it with your management.

Vembu's support is available 24/7. They said that whenever we are ready, we should just send them an email, and they will do a remote session with us, which is what precisely happened. When we were ready, I sent them the intimation that we will be ready in about 15 or 20 minutes, and their support guy connected with it and helped us.

Its ease of use and less price set it apart from other solutions. I have used many solutions, such as Acronis, Veeam, Symantec, Veritas, etc, and all of them are a bit complicated. I found Vembu to be the simplest one. In terms of features, it is similar to others. It has encryption and retention features and multiple backup options that every backup software provides.

Currently, we are also using Acronis, and slowly, we will be migrating from Acronis to Vembu. It is cheaper in price than Acronis. Of course, Acronis gives other benefits such as patch updates, cybersecurity, ransomware protection, and so on, but people have their firewall, endpoint protection, and antivirus. They don't really need to invest again in something that they don't need. The only thing that they particularly need is a backup solution that is encrypted, so there is no point in protecting them from all these things because they are already protected. If you go for Acronis Cyber Cloud, a client is not going to stop using the firewalls or endpoint protection. There is no point in loading double onto that. It is a good addition for those people who are very specific and know what they want. If you just don't know what to do, then you can go on a shopping spree.

With Acronis, all you have to do is to install the agent, and then you can control everything from the cloud. Wherever you are, you simply log in to the console, and you have your servers over there, and you can do whatever you feel like. With Vembu, you have to install the Vembu BDR software onto the server, and from there, you can basically dump the DR or a backup onto the cloud.

It was very straightforward. You simply install the software, plug in the storage or wherever you want to dump that, and create a profile. That's it. These were the three steps, and of course, the fourth one was to activate the free software. You can start with the full-fledged version after 30 days. You can convert the trial version into the free version, which is available online. It is easy. 

Its initial installation took less than an hour. This includes downloading and setting it up.

Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts. I like its pricing, and its price is okay. The lesser they take, the more profit we can make, but we are happy with its price.

It is very affordable. We were working with a client, and they were looking for backup software and had a very tight budget. When I told them that Vembu is only going to cost around $400 to $500, they were shocked. They didn't believe me, so I showed them the website so that they can check the price themselves. Of course, if they agree to that price, we get a 15% rebate as a managed service provider.

You choose the type of license you want. There are two types of licenses. One is a subscription license, and the other one is a perpetual license. If you go for a perpetual license, next year, if you want, you can renew the support. It is up to our clients whether they want to renew the support or not. They have an option. They also have an option to go for a subscription.

Every IT scenario differs from others. It is a good product, and just give it a shot. If it fits your organization, you will save a lot.

I have been in IT for over 25 years, and I had never heard about this software. I came across this through a consultant who was also working for a government organization. They asked us to install the free Vembu backup software, and I wondered which is this solution. I checked their website, downloaded the software, and installed it for the first time. I was amazed why there is no marketing for this. I get so many marketing emails and other things, but I never got any email related to Vembu. I also didn't come across it while doing research on the internet.

We have been using this solution for only six months. There are many features that we haven't used, but whatever has been phased out and tested was okay. We haven't yet used Vembu to back up Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or AWS, and we also haven't used Vembu's Download VM to help in migrating physical machines to a VM environment. Similarly, we haven't used its Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to VMs or physical machines after a crash. 

It provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files, but I haven't tested this option. Having such a feature is a good addition because if some resources are not there, you can restore your data to different ones. We will definitely be using Vembu's data integrity check feature after the enterprise installation.

I would rate Vembu BDR Suite an eight out of 10.

The solution is an agent. It can be used to back up almost from Windows Servers 2008 up to Service Pack 1, up until 2019. It integrates with Veeam Backup & Replication, which can enable you to restore to the cloud or back up a cloud workload as well.

It clearly used to do image-based backups. The main reason Veeam came up with the Agent was that they were mainly focusing on virtual environments before and that was a major challenge for their existing customers. Not everyone is going with a fully virtual environment. Virtualization has many advantages, however, the virtual architecture design will remain physical if an organization's architecture is probably architected.

We had the challenge that Veeam has many VMware customers who have a Microsoft kind of infrastructure set up on VMware. They were basically using shared virtual disks and part of the limitation was that VMware was conducting snapshot full backups.

They created the Agent for these two use cases, to back up VMs that VMware cannot conduct a snapshot for, Windows VMs, and to back up physical servers that any customer would like to do so. At the end of the day, the main is that Veeam is paired with VMware.

We get more customers that want to back up and change it themselves. Veeam created this agent as a VMware-based backup of Windows operating systems.

The solution is very stable.

They have already invested a lot of R&D and mainly they're supported on most of the Windows scenarios, even the custom-tailored parts. 

The solution allows for full integration. I can deploy the Agent from the backup server and manage the backups all from the backup server. Or I can use the Agent as a stand-alone and discard the backup server. In terms of restoration, I can restore the entire machine, specific file systems, application actors, et cetera.

Restoring to the cloud is pretty flexible.

Technical support is quite good.

The initial setup has improved quite a bit from version 4 to 5. You don't need to worry about downtime.

If you have windows machine at home and you'd like a backup, you can always download their free edition and plug in an external hard disk, and do a full backup of your laptop.

They just released Version 5 for Version 11 and they released some amazing features with it, such as the backup and restore snapshots features. Before the agent was only able to back up through the network. Now it's even able to back up through the SAN fabric, depending on the customer environment.

I can't think of an area where the solution is lacking in features. Overall, it's quite good, and more money is going into R&D already.

That said, there are many things they can develop for the Linux agent. The Windows agent is quite complete.

Some customers have Oracle databases and Veeam does support back up of Oracle databases. There is a specific setup in Oracle when you have the Oracle databases configured with the ASM - something related to Oracle storage back up. Veeam cannot back up or restore ASM disks as of right now. It could be something they could offer in the future.

Some customers that are in the industrial sector are using legacy systems, systems that are very old and running on Windows 2000 or Windows NT, Windows 2003, and they're physical, they're not even virtual. Veeam here is pretty weak, as Veeam supports 2008 or Service Pack 1 and above. Anything before that, the Veeam Agent for Windows will not be able to back up anything.

I don't expect Veeam to be releasing agents for older editions of operating systems. Veeam itself is a new company. On the other hand, if you go to the competition, like Veritas, you'll see that Veritas is a well-established company in the market since way back and therefore they have these agents that can back up the older versions of Windows.

I've used the solution ever since its first release, since Version 1. That has been since around 2015 or 2016 or so. It's been a few years at this point. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

I'm not sure about the scalability. With the agent, it should be pretty simple. You install it on each and every single server and then you back up. You can deploy it also with servers, however, the Agent will be in use on each and every single operating system which you want to back up. It can be also used for the PC environment, laptops, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

It's hard to count the number of users our clients have. There are many.

Technical support is amazing. They're quick to respond and accurate in terms of the support that's provided. You really don't worry about getting stuck in limbo. Regarding the Veeam Agent for Windows team, they're amazing. They are responsive. You don't have to wait a long time for a reply. They are very good.

The difficulty of each deployment depends on which version. They have improved the latest version, however, before, on Version 4, while the installation was straightforward, the problem was that it had a prerequisite requirement, which is the development framework on 4.7.2. This framework is not usually installed on all Windows operating systems. The problem is that it is free, and you can download it at any time and install it, however, it will require the service to be restarted and that means planned downtime.

Fortunately, they fixed that with Version 5. They changed the framework dependency to 4.5.2. so that there is no more forced downtime. 

The time it takes to deploy relies on various factors, however, assuming the prerequisites are all ready, it takes about 15 minutes.

I can handle the installation myself with support from a field-certified architect so there is no downtime.

Veeam did a major revamp in their licensing schema over the past three years. A lot of changes have happened within a very short timeframe. They almost then seemed irrational at first. However, now, somehow they figured how to have a great licensing model. It's called the Veeam Universal License.

This Veeam Universal License is meant to be a portable license. Before what used to be the problem is some customers would buy Veeam for VMware in five minutes, but now they've moved to a Nutanix and their license will no longer be valid. Veeam created this license so that you can use this license for the Agent for Windows, or, if you would like for the Agent to be for Linux, or if you would like it for VMware, or the Hyper-V or Nutanix, you can use it there.

Whatever Veeam features in Veeam Availability Suite, which encompasses Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Agents for Windows, Linux, and even Unix and Solaris, if you need to buy plug-ins or you're going to need an environment for SAP HANA, they have the support for SAP on Oracle and their backups. All of that's under the Veeam Universal License. They have unified it on a licensing model which works everywhere. So that makes it a lot simpler.

The only problem is that the license comes in bundles. It's not sold individually; it comes in bundles of 10 instances. Each instance is enough for a physical server.

The pricing is moderate. The solution falls in the middle of a few different options. It's not the cheapest, however, it's not the most expensive either. Comparing it with Veritas or Commvault or Rubik or Cohesity, for example, Veeam will definitely be a lot cheaper, as it's a software that has a very straightforward licensing model. However, solutions like Acronis will always be cheaper.

I've compared the solution with various products in terms of pricing. From my experience, to compare Veeam for example, to a Commvault or Veritas, Veeam is much cheaper. However, if you compare Veeam with Acronis or these small-time vendors, Veeam is very expensive.

We are a distributor, not a reseller.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's a great product. The only drawback is the support for the ASM disks and the support for legacy Windows operating systems.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies. It's a straightforward solution. I am mostly a Linux guy, therefore, we're not as focused on Windows. In general, it's worked like a charm. It's helped me do backups and restores and it has never failed me in that perspective, except for the ASM disk issues.

It is used as an enterprise backup solution.

We have a very good disaster recovery solution with Commvault. We have a standby CommServe where logs are being deployed every five minutes. If something goes wrong, we are immediately able to recover and enable services on the standby server. We are achieving 99.9 percent SLA with respect to the backups.

It also helps to ensure broad coverage through the discovery of unprotected workloads. We can easily identify them in the Web Console where we can see which of our servers is not protected. And if there is no backup for more than one day, we can get a report, and we have also enabled alerts. Those features are really helpful to us in identifying and addressing issues.

Commvault minimizes the time we spend on backup tasks. I only have to check the health of the CommCells, and the rest of the time I can work on the other tasks.

It's a very good enterprise backup solution with multiple features. We are able to take a backup of multiple databases. We don't need to use scripts to schedule any kind of local backups. We have a direct plugin for Commvault so that we are able to take backups of any of our databases or application systems, like SharePoint. Commvault is also enabling backup for PaaS services that are deployed on the cloud.

Commvault provides encryption mechanisms with the latest standards that our customers are looking for.

The CommCell console is very good and user-friendly. I have experience with NetBackup, HPE DP, and Backup Exec, but I'm really comfortable with Commvault. The console makes it easy to identify exactly what we need to see. For example, there are multiple categories. If a backup needs to be performed on multiple systems, we just configure one client or one group and we can push the agent straightaway. That's a very good feature that helps us to complete tasks on time.

We can integrate our multiple CommCells in the single Web Console as well and that helps us easily identify how many servers are getting backed up and how many servers are not being backed up. We can see the SLA and the success rate. And even though our customer is huge, we can give them access and they can easily see the SLA and the success rate of the backups. Commvault also recently launched the Command Center. It is very good, enabling us to deploy server plans. It is very good and user-friendly.

For disaster recovery, there is a feature called Live Sync, and we are also able to export disaster recovery backups to the cloud. If something goes wrong, we are immediately able to recover and continue with business.

In addition, if something goes wrong and a backup fails, we can trace the issue using the log. Each service has a different log that clearly gives us information about the exact reason for the issue and what needs to be done.

We have multiple workloads, including SQL, Oracle, SAP HANA, especially Sybase, as well as file systems, VMs, and Exchange mailboxes. Commvault provides very good support for them. We perform 70 to 80 restores on a monthly basis. Over the past year, I have faced challenges with one or two restores. All the rest were completed successfully. And if we get stuck, we can easily use the logs to identify the issue and to make some changes to the configuration. So we are approaching a 100 percent success rate with respect to restoration.

Commvault has very good procedures for performing backups and restores of SAP HANA databases. As far as I know, no other technology provides an option to perform a restore directly from the backup tool itself. We log in to HANA Studio when we have to perform a restore and Commvault enables this by default. We are able to do the restoration from the Commvault GUI itself.

Commvault also provides workflows. If you want to decommission a client's systems, there is a workflow where we just have to add the client to it and we can easily complete the task. This is useful when we are informed that a customer is moving out. It would be a huge task for the backup team to retain the backups for such-and-such a period of time and to release the license. Running this workflow makes our work very simple and reduces our efforts as well. The multiple workflows really help us in completing tasks quickly.

Overall it has great features that fulfill our customers' expectations.

I have been using Commvault for the past seven years.

The stability is very good. If you don't follow the metrics and best practices recommended by Commvault, or if you mess up the setup, you may face challenges. If you follow the best practices, it's a very good, stable solution.

We can easily expand our licenses and deploy Commvault for our customers, which keeps our business going. From a scalability point of view, I haven't seen many challenges.

We get very good support from Commvault if we run into any kind of production issue. They maintain a very good SLA for critical and high-priority tickets. We are really satisfied with their support.

For example, let's say that something in production is down or multiple customers are impacted. SAP won't join a call and help us in resolving the issue. But if we have a critical CommServe-level issue, and multiple backups may fail, Commvault can easily jump on a call and can help us in addressing this issue. In reality, if something is wrong with a SAP system or if an OS is not functioning, a customer may not be able to do their work. Whereas, without a backup, they can continue their business, but they cannot recover things if something goes wrong. Still, if we raise a high-severity ticket, based on the criticality, Commvault support will definitely jump in. They can help us in one hour, at the most.

Positive

In one of my older projects, deployment of Commvault was simple, but the current one is complex. It's a very big environment. It depends on the environment of the client and the requirements. If you have a shared mechanism and the customer has multiple firewalls at their end, it will be very difficult to integrate multiple customers into one CommCell. But if you have a single project and a dedicated customer in a single domain, it will be very easy.

Compared with other backup technologies, Commvault is a bit more costly, but we are satisfied with the support, the services, and the features that we get with Commvault.

We are using the capacity-based license and have a total of 10 CommCells. In the license file, we can clearly see what kinds of workloads can be backed up.

Veeam is very useful for Windows-related platforms but we chose Commvault because it does not have any kind of platform dependency when it comes to backups. It has multiple features enabling us to backup Oracle RAC, or Exchange DAG, and IBM Lotus Notes, and any type of PaaS services.

Commvault has a clear-cut, three-tier architecture, whereas others follow a two-tier architecture, other than NetBackup, I believe. With Commvault, every backup load will be taken care of by the MediaAgent, and administrative tasks will be taken care of by the CS. Evn the CommServe size also not be huge when compared with other solutions.

With respect to security, in particular regarding ransomware, Commvault has built-in features that we enabled to protect our environment. As for storage targets, every storage array has its own built-in mechanism for encrypting or securing the data. It is very difficult for a third party to enter and to make any kind of use of the storage arrays.

Storage cost completely depends on the retention the customer is looking for. If they have, say, a 1 TB system and they're looking for more than two months' retention, there will be a lot of storage utilization. But we do get a very good duplication ratio, close to 90 percent for file system backups, which helps us to minimize the cost.

Overall, if your infra is very good, once you configure Commvault there are no challenges. It will function well. If something is wrong with the network, obviously, any backup technology will end up with issues. But Commvault is very good.

We primarily use Zerto for backing up our databases.

We are heavily invested in database technology. We use SQL databases such as PostgreSQL and MS SQL, and we are also functional with NoSQL databases. Our use cases are majorly relying on databases for financial vendors and most of the time, we have to perform day-to-day operations with respect to finance and accounting.

We have been using the data retention functionality for a long time and whenever there is a failure and the system goes down, we recover the data from that particular snapshot in time.

We also require security, as it is one of the major concerns. Ultimately, we align these two things together.

We are deployed in AWS, although we are also deploying in GCP and plan to do so with Azure as well.

Zerto provides us with continuous data protection that is reliable. It is convenient to use because the API allows for seamless integration when performing our day-to-day operations.

Currently, we do not have any long-term data retention activities, and it is not one of our core operations. However, in the past, we did have several such use cases.

Using this solution saves us time because we have been capturing the volumes and snapshots, are we able to perform operations on the Delta. This is an important benefit to us because we are able to deploy everything into production, then continue to get the backups and snapshots from there. 

Another time-effective benefit is that once we are fully backed up, we are able to perform Lambda functions on our use cases. This saves us a lot of time.

In some instances, Zerto has saved us time and on the number of people involved during failback. The number of people that are involved depends upon how critical the failure is. Any time there is a failure, we have to work from the most recent backups. For example, if the incident happens at 9:00 PM and there is a snapshot that was taken at 8:00 PM, there is one hour of work to make up for. This is much easier and quicker than having to look back at the logs for the entire day.

On a day-to-day basis, using Zerto saves us approximately 20% to 30% in terms of time. Overall, considering both our test and production environments, using Zerto benefits us with an approximate time savings of 60%.

We are using Zerto for DR in the cloud, and it has saved us money over using a physical data center. In a cloud-based deployment, the cost is quite a bit less compared to a physical environment. Also, because the cloud is a pay-as-you-go model, and you don't need the service all of the time, the paid resources are not wasted. I estimate that we save thousands of dollars per year in operations costs.

With our backups fully in place, in the cloud, Zerto has helped us reduce downtime. 

The most valuable features for me are the fast performance and seamless integration. The performance is one of the main features and the integration has helped me a lot.

When we have a system that is being fully replicated, we also get snapshots. Then, we perform our activities on the snapshots only, which reside on the cloud-based volumes. This means that our production environment is not affected.

We have low latency in production because most of the things we do are on the cloud.  When we have the backup, we just start to perform the data operations and with the help of Zerto, we can do this quite efficiently.

Zerto is quite easy to use. With the click of a button, I have been able to use it to do what I need. Furthermore, any end-user that I have worked with has easily been able to make use of its functionality.

Some of the integrations with our internal tools, in particular, company-specific ones, do not work. In cases like this, we have to ask for additional support. This is an area that has room for improvement.

If the API integration worked more efficiently then that would be an improvement.

We have been using Zerto for between two and three years.

Zerto is a stable and reliable product. We have not experienced any anomalies in the tool. For all our use cases and workloads, we rely on it and have found that everything can be done easily.

We have not had problems when we want to redeploy a number of things, so scalability has not been an issue.

We have between 30 and 40 users, including engineers, architects, and management. We are a growing and expanding company, and our workload increased from day to day. I expect that our usage of Zerto and other solutions will increase.

We often reach out to contact technical support and it is good. We have a lot of use cases that we need support for because we don't always have a sufficient solution.

The initial setup was straightforward, although we did have some problems. For example, there were instances where we could not integrate with our internal tools and we were not able to solve the problem. We looked at the FAQ and reached out to customer support to ask what the ideal solution would be.

Overall, it took between six and nine months to deploy.

We deployed Zerto using our in-house team.

We have seen ROI in terms of time savings, as well as other points.

We subscribe to their annual license package and we have tier one support with them. There are no costs in addition to this.

We have evaluated other tools including Veeam and Veritas. There were several factors, including cost, that led us to proceed with Zerto.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to have things properly architected in advance. Otherwise, the implementation will be a hassle. Once the design is complete, if they need to change it then it will be time-consuming.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for backup.

The most valuable feature is that you can do a bare-metal restore even with dissimilar hardware. I can restore my image on a Dell server that I got from an HP server, as long as the specs are in tandem if they are sufficiently processed. 

I cannot do physical to physical, it must not be like hypervisor disk without virtualization.

The built-in encryption makes this product suitable for the financial industry. Data in the manufacturing sector is different from that of financial services.

They do a lot of maintenance. In the span of six months, maintenance is done at least twice and you are told that it is coming up, with apologies for the inconvenience. It's a distraction, and it interferes with the backup schedule. Also, it can happen at a time where some critical systems are required to recover.

I would like documentation or a video demonstration on how to restore active databases. At this point, it can restore pictures and common files, but we want to be able to support all kinds of customers so backing up and restoring active databases are important.

I have been working with Acronis Backup for three years.

This solution is stable, we haven't experienced any issues.

It's a scalable solution.

You can reach support easily, either through chat or by phone.

I have used Veritas in the past, but I had a very bad experience and it has traumatized me so I don't speak about that product.

I have used Commvault and that solution is quite similar to Veeam, although I would say that it is more mature than Veeam.

Actifio is better than these other solutions, but because of the price, I rate it behind Acronis. Nobody who is not a well-established enterprise will be comfortable paying for Actifio.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was actually easy.

The first client was in a different city and it was just one visit to review the environment to size it accordingly.

Our technical team installed a few agents on the PCs. 

The maintenance is done remotely, with remote support and no onsite requirement. This is for a cloud-based setup.

Because the provisionings are for a Cloud product, the product is given an item and you give them credentials.

It was an easy installation because of the training and the person that was on standby when we completed the deployment.

We didn't find ourselves calling for assistance because the training was thorough. They take a lot of time to train before deployment.

The icing on the cake is the price, as it is quite affordable. The pricing is comparable to the newest solution available on the market, Altaro. They are in the same price range.

We don't have hybrid because with that kind of licensing required you will incur twice the expenses.

They are very supportive of the price, even when your subscription is due and you have not paid they give you a grace period, they are quite understanding and give you that personal touch.

I evaluated Mozy at the time I was evaluating Acronis Backup. Acronis could do what Mozy could not. I realized that they had a local distributor for us, who offered us a lot of help.

It's best to go full cloud or even purchase the storage from Acronis rather than having an on-premises install where you have to purchase advanced licenses, only to go to the cloud. That is the challenge that I had with Actifio.

They provide you with regular training for partners. 

The very first person that I interacted with was the local distributor. They were knowledgeable it was obvious that they had continuous training.

You are free to install this software on any hardware that you have, the challenge is the hardware itself, such as the media server with Commonvault. There is one called Quorum, which uses the OnQ operating system. They dictate the type of hardware you install in your backup, just like the DPS in Dell EMC. That way you don't run into issues with support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.