Arctera Backup Exec is a backup and disaster recovery solution. It works in virtual, physical, and multi-cloud environments and integrates with several third-party software releases and applications.
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Asigra
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Asigra is an enterprise-level, agentless, cloud-based recovery software to provide data backup and recovery of servers, virtual machines, endpoint devices, database, and SaaS/IaaS-based applications. Asigra charges customers by the amount of data they recover rather than the amount they back up.
I would say that it has the same functionality as the three mentioned above in their respective fields (might have a bit less than some of them) but Asigra offers all of this and more so if you are looking for a single backup solution across the entire firm then Asigra is the …
Best of all options, covers most if not all scenarios, granular backup, scheduling, and retention options. Provides self-service restores, centralized web management interface, and granular reporting.
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Asigra
I have used Symantec Backup Exec, Symantec System Recovery, Datto and RBS Cloud Backup.
Asigra has great compression. No need to install additional agents across a company is great. End Users often blame agent installs for messing up workstations etc so not needing an agent in …
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.
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.
Provides capability of local backups while maintaining remote copies on cloud to ensure faster recoveries of recent data and remote protection of all data.
Helps reduce cost of long term retention by leveraging the BLM functionality.
It does not need specialized hardware for it to work. Customers and Service Providers can choose their own infrastructure and do not need to rely on any OS or storage based replication even for deploying replication of backups.
Supports wide range of environments including virtual environments with remarkable features like remote VDR with incremental restores.
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.
We would like to see Asigra come out with a Replication Model for quick Recovery of systems upon Disaster. We can have quicker recovery, DR, with Virtual Machines but we would like to have Physical Machine recovery in less than 2 hours. Replication can accomplish this...
We would like to see Geolocation and remote wipe for endpoint devices
We would like to see the solution provide easy "roll back" after a disaster.
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.
Compliance is a tricky thing. Jumping backup software means having to deal with previous copies somehow. Asigra is built for the long haul.
Asigra is continuing to increase their feature stack. They have made huge steps in the VM backup in the last 3 years and continue to implement features there.
As far as cloud backup software goes, there are many that can do it, but none that do it as well as Asigra.
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.
It is a bit rough around the edges and the GUI feels like a wrap around of a CLI but it is simple to use. The problem comes in when there is an error code you are usually chasing down the error code in the specific vendor's forums rather than Asigra's
Over 6 consecutive years our Asigra Backend had 99.99% uptime and provided 7x24 data restore availability. Software is robust in operations, provides N+1 node architecture to protect against failure of half of the nodes (majority of the nodes still up) and software based replication to protect against data loss across two geographically independent datacenter locations. Why not 10 points? Some major upgrades still require short downtime within a planned maintenance windows.
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.
They respond quickly on your request. They ask for details at the time of logging the support request itself ensuring the first response is not for collecting the basic details only. They refund you the support request if they find it as a functionality issue. They follow up on you to ensure you are satisfied and happy with the response and resolution that they have provided.
Anything training past level 1 and level 2 is a waste of time. They do not offer training, just an exam and require you to read 2500 pages of their documentation as their training. They are selling you something which you already have. Training exams are far fetched and cover topics hidden within the documentation. A lot of their documentation does not match across itself. They don't even follow the standard versions Major.Minor.ServicePack.Hotfix. They use the MAJOR.MAJOR.MAJOR.Hotfix method, which doesn't match their documentation. They require you to take training in order to keep your engaged hybrid partnership. If you ask me personally, their training is a scam to make more money.
Quick to install, easy to create jobs, schedules and retention policies. No large cycles of setting up backup volumes or trash volumes. Retention job itself configures the BLM functionality so you don't need an expertise to handle the BLM module separately.
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.
I would say that it has the same functionality as the three mentioned above in their respective fields (might have a bit less than some of them) but Asigra offers all of this and more so if you are looking for a single backup solution across the entire firm then Asigra is the much better choice
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.
