Synology Active Backup Suite vs. Hornetsecurity VM Backup

Synology
Active backup is a great low-cost solution to backup your entire
infrastructure, no license cost whatsoever currently, only the only requirement
is using Synology hardware which is great, and we’ve not had any issues with.

Compared to
more mature solutions like Veeam, it’s lacking some tools for restoring data /
elements quickly.

Veeam has
tools to restore databases/data or active directory elements like users, groups
or Ous.

So, if you
need the extra tools for certain applications this isn’t the right tool for
you.

Do you have VMWare? Yes I can back it up. Do you have Hyper-V? Yes I can back it up. That in itself should speak for itself. Altaro has really given a great deal into their software, not only making it easy to use, BUT also a really good and reliable product where you can support your workloads hassle-free, and super lightweight

Incentivized

• The interface to browse and restore files from the cloud backups is super-easy. As in drop-down boxes to select which account and then files and be exported for restore - no training needed to use it.
• The Synology device is fast on the network - 4 x 1Gbps NICs
• Updating itself
• Being Reliable as a permanently on 24/7 device

Incentivized

• Fast and simple setup. I didn't need to read through ANY documentation to set up and have a backup running.
• Easy and cost-effective licensing. I didn't need to count CPU's or VM's or other random facts to work out my licensing. Just how many hosts, and then one of 3 feature levels of which two have unlimited VM licensing. Hosts x Feature Set = Cost.
• Easy Restores. Backing up is one thing, but restoring and having confidence in the restore is another. It just works, simple and effective.
• Help is easy to find if you need it. From within the app, it gives you options of email, phone, and live chat, which is usually available even with odd time zones in play.

Incentivized

• Agent Download more easily
• More detail information's on dates, and what was backup

Incentivized

• More cloud-based storage options. Currently, only Azure is supported, which is excellent, but it would be good to have AWS and Google storage options too.
• It would be AWESOME if they could do a restore from Azure cloud direct to an Azure VM instance. Currently, you need to set up an Azure VM machine with nested Hyper-V, install Altaro on that, and then restore into a nested VM, this gets crazy expensive.
• Better notification of errors, or more around having a threshold, so if it misses one backup of a constant backup that happens every 5 minutes but recovers at the 10 minutes back, it is ok. Just think it needs to identify significant or long-running issues better than the occasional little issues.

Incentivized

It simply works and it is making our lives easier. The renewal process is also really good

Incentivized

The usability
of the suite is excellent, all tools are web based so no client or server to
remote into. It has a separate portal to restore data, you can give access to
users if you want them to be able to restore their own data.

Restoring
files or a whole server/vm is very easy to do, it just lacks the functionality
of some of the more established backup solutions.

With being
a Veeam user for many years, the comfort of the extra tools to restore a single
database or a single active directory user, I’ve grown used to Veeam’s tools.

A lot of people in the technical industry deliver what I would call snack crackle pop topics, where the software gets over complicated, and they drown people in all the "fancy" features. Altaro, from my point of view" has designed the software to be super usable, easy to implement, as well as support. It is really one of the best designs

Incentivized

One of the most important benefits of the Altaro HyperV backup solution is the support. From the free edition, you're able to chat with the support that can assist you in a remote session an find a quick solution that solves the issue. It is always available. The email support is also.

Incentivized

Altaro has really designed their product so well that you can honestly implement this within a couple of minutes

Incentivized

Centralized system for multiples systems

Incentivized

The only other competitor I am personally familiar with is Carbonite. I use that for file-level backups throughout my network and it works well but while it does offer backups for virtual machines, I have never found it to be a reliable option. Jobs failed for me regularly for no apparent reason. In the handful of times I have needed support, they were helpful and straight-forward.

• Positive is obviously being a main part of the backup strategy along with quick data restoration.

Incentivized

• Restoring our primary ERP VM has already saved many hours of rebuilding from data backups, so that in itself already gave us an excellent ROI for having Altaro running.
• The quick and easy setup also makes sense for a fast ROI as we didn't need to spend much time or effort in its set up.
• Lastly, any other restores we have done for retrieving files or testing backups were so simple and easy to do that the process didn't take long and saved us time and cost.

Incentivized