Likelihood to Recommend If I were speaking to a fellow Managed Service Provider, I would likely NOT recommend this product. There are simply too many other tools out there that are better hitting this particular market. And the pain points that we do have with them are especially difficult because of our business model. However in speaking to pretty much anyone else in IT/Disaster Recovery this is an enterprise tool built to handle anything you throw at it. UNC paths and linking backup servers to one another, the flexibility of the tool allows for maximum cost savings if you build it right.
Read full review In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
Read full review Pros It is reliable and once it is up and running you do not need to worry about it. It is flexible; you can use it to backup on-prem or in the cloud. Backup and DR Read full review Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well. Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional. BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space. Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose. Read full review Cons Notifications - on the odd occasion something doesn't work, I get way too many email notifications! Explanation of issues - sometimes when there is a problem, the explanation is a bit lacking in the logs as to why Flagging of errors - sometimes minor errors just get a warning flag, and it doesn't really notify you that they are there. Read full review In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs. Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure. Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
Read full review Usability It works great in our infrastructure, we have reduced the risk of losing information at a lower TCO compared to other solutions. The implementation process was precise and fast and upgrades have always been smooth. It delivers what it promises.
Read full review Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
Read full review Reliability and Availability It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review Support Rating Pretty good--I haven't actually had to call them much so it's hard to say. The box works well enough and most of my issues have been related to the rest of my network, rather than the appliance itself.
Read full review Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
Read full review Implementation Rating As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Arcserve [UDP] has stood the test of time due to its low cost-to-feature value proposition for our company. We have ultimately decided to move to a more MSP-friendly product in N-Able Backup, but Arcserve [UDP] kept us around for years with their reliable and inexpensive product that delivered above and beyond technologically of their competitors throughout all that time.
Read full review As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
Read full review Return on Investment We have been able to keep our clients' costs low and add advanced features with no additional overhead for us in licensing. It does however cost us a significant amount of additional technician time to review backups each day compared to other products aimed in our vertical. Read full review Brings down Capex to customers. Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers. Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure. Read full review ScreenShots