Likelihood to Recommend Acronis Backup Cloud is suited for backing up Windows Servers. Downtime is greatly decreased by using their virtualization options. You will need a Hyper-V enabled computer to virtualize, though, but this can be one of your general-use workstations. A Windows 10 Pro machine with 16 GB of RAM would do it for you. Or, if you have Macs that need to be backed up, you can do that as well. You can grab either full volume images, or files/folders. I can't really think of a scenario that you would not want Acronis Backup Cloud, except pre-Server 2012 OS's, since virtualization isn't supported on those older systems.
Dan Gospe Chief Operating Officer, and HIPAA Privacy Officer
Read full review Backup Exec works well generally in most environments or situations. The licensing can potentially be a nightmare, but manageable if you have a decent reseller. Backing up and restoring from physical tapes which is not all that common is not as reliable as when backing up and restoring from datastores that reside on hard drives or digital media. It does a good job with large or small backup jobs. Backing up and managing SQL backups requires additional licenses and be a bit clunky. If you are very careful (which you should be anyway) and document as you build these backups you will get better at managing them. Regarding a virtual environment, I have limited experience in that arena, but have done it. Backup Exec can backup VMware environments, but honestly we moved to Unitrends to backup our VM's and are much happier with the backup process. However, restoring a VM in Unitrends can be tedious compared to Backup Exec.
Read full review Pros Single pane of glass for managing customer tenants Quick and reliable backup recovery Both onsite and offsite backup destinations are supported Read full review Manage agent based backups - It is easy to schedule and monitor backups. Verifying backups is done for all jobs. Backup performance is excellent. Provide a wide ranging contingent of backup options - Despite providing a dizzying array of backup options, it is easy to schedule individual or recurring jobs. Integrates well with our Active Directory - Restoring even individual Active Directory objects is possible. Read full review Cons No option for on premises hardware BDR. This means recovery restorations rely on self-supplied hardware performance. License per machine can get costly if large number of computers or servers. Read full review Could provide better license management from an inventory perspective. How many licenses do I have?.. etc. When Backup Exec backs up itself it should not select iSCSI backup targets by default. The result is recursive data backup ending in the loss of storage capacity. I'm struggling to come up with another con. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The cost savings we realized from moving to this software has us hooked - it does everything we need it to do on a very high level (virtualization, for example) and is very low cost for us.
Dan Gospe Chief Operating Officer, and HIPAA Privacy Officer
Read full review This software is a mess in my brutally honest opinion. I've spent more time babysitting this software while backing up 20 servers than I did with Veeam backing up 600+. I've had multiple jobs run fine for weeks at a time that just randomly fail out of the blue for seemingly no reason whatsoever. There's no intuitive way to chain jobs, so automation becomes somewhat more problematic if certain jobs depend on other jobs. The forever incremental feature feels tacked on since the merge operation merges all your incremental jobs into the most recent backup and doesn't have the option set a limit on how long to keep your point in time restores.
Read full review Usability It can do a lot of things on paper and sounds terrific, but in practice it doesn't do any of them well. It can easily be sold to non-technical minds and C-levels, but of all the backup solutions I've used in the last 15 years of my career, Backup Exec is easily the least fault tolerant. Unless this software is a sunk cost and you're on a shoestring budget, I recommend almost anything else. Jobs fail often with obscure error codes and the KB articles in the Veritas support portal are a mess. Within 30 days of a fresh deployment I've logged more tickets with their support than I did in 3 years with Veeam.
Read full review Reliability and Availability The weekly error on save needs a manual reload from me. The SDR can't restore the virtual machine of hyperV during a test.
Read full review Performance No problem for this point it is in the average.
Read full review Support Rating We seldom make use of Acronis support, but when we have they have been brilliant. All our engineers are Acronis certified, if they not able to resolve an issue, we touch base with our local Acronis supplier, Synapsys, who resolve issues 90% of the time.
Read full review In the few instances of having to contact support, our overall outcome was always good. They would have received a better score if the wait time was less, but I attribute this to the timing of support calls - it was during the previous owner's time. We have not had to open a support ticket since Veritas Backup Exec took the product back over.
Read full review Implementation Rating It was pretty straightforward.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We went with Acronis Backup Cloud because we're able to backup all platforms, not just PCs. And the price was good when it comes to all those options. It's a hard sell to clients, but when explained properly, the understand the cost of a good solution. It's like having good car insurance.
Read full review If your company is looking at changing solutions or currently does not have any, Veritas Backup Exec is the way to go. Do yourself a favor and try the 60 day trial, you won't be disappointed! Very simple to use and has a great GUI, much better than what the competition has to offer.
Read full review Scalability We only use it on the on-premise version on a single site.
Read full review Return on Investment It's been a great investment especially knowing our data is protected. We no longer worry about upgrade storage hardware or devices. Read full review Backups by their very nature are difficult to quantify when it comes to ROI. Any monies spent should be seen more as insurance . If you never have to claim on it then that is the best outcome. Backup Exec gives you comfort that you can meet any downtime recovery targets set by your business and this is how to benchmark your solution. Conduct regular DR tests and your this will be your ROI. Read full review ScreenShots