What users are saying about
31 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.8 out of 100
Based on 31 reviews and ratings
6 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 7.5 out of 100
Based on 6 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
- IDERA SQL Safe Backup ranks higher in 1 feature set: Data Center Backup
Data Center Backup

7.1
Bacula Enterprise
71%

7.5
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
75%
Bacula Enterprise ranks higher in 7/14 features
Bacula Enterprise ranks higher in 7/14 features
Universal recovery

9.1
91%
1 Rating

8.0
80%
1 Rating
Live recovery

6.9
69%
8 Ratings

7.0
70%
2 Ratings
Recovery verification

6.5
65%
18 Ratings

8.0
80%
2 Ratings
Business application protection

3.0
30%
2 Ratings

9.0
90%
1 Rating
Multiple backup destinations

8.2
82%
23 Ratings

7.0
70%
2 Ratings
Incremental backup identification

7.9
79%
23 Ratings

7.0
70%
2 Ratings
Backup to the cloud

9.9
99%
12 Ratings

6.0
60%
2 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression

6.9
69%
17 Ratings

9.0
90%
2 Ratings
Snapshots

7.9
79%
14 Ratings

7.0
70%
1 Rating
Flexible deployment

3.9
39%
20 Ratings

7.0
70%
2 Ratings
Management dashboard

4.4
44%
20 Ratings

6.0
60%
2 Ratings
Platform support

7.2
72%
23 Ratings

7.0
70%
2 Ratings
Retention options

7.2
72%
23 Ratings

8.0
80%
2 Ratings
Encryption

10.0
100%
14 Ratings

9.0
90%
2 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Bacula Enterprise is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend

9.9
Bacula Enterprise
99%
23 Ratings

8.0
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
80%
2 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

10.0
Bacula Enterprise
100%
3 Ratings

IDERA SQL Safe Backup
N/A
0 Ratings
Usability

8.5
Bacula Enterprise
85%
4 Ratings

IDERA SQL Safe Backup
N/A
0 Ratings
Support Rating

9.8
Bacula Enterprise
98%
25 Ratings

7.0
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
70%
2 Ratings
Implementation Rating

8.0
Bacula Enterprise
80%
1 Rating

IDERA SQL Safe Backup
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise is not the easiest backup software to work with--you are expected to be competent at the command line and editing complex configuration files, even if you mostly use the web GUI for day-to-day operations. However, study is rewarded--you can do many very complex things. Easy things may not always be easy, but very hard things are possible (unlike many competitors that make easy things easy and hard things impossible).
I would not recommend Bacula to someone who just wants a quick plug and play solution; but in my opinion your backups and disaster recovery system shouldn't be plug and play - that's a great way to feel good about a solution that won't actually work for you when it's needed!
Director of IT, McLean Imaging Center
McLean HospitalHospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
SQL Safe is appropriate and well-suited for any backup scenario. Having used SQL Safe, I probably wouldn't want to manage a set of servers in the future without it. If you only have a couple of SQL servers, it might not be worth the spend as there are well-maintained free options that are very functional (though they do require more technical knowledge). But I can't think of a scenario where SQL Safe wouldn't be appropriate.
SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager
Ten CateTextiles, 1001-5000 employees
Pros
Bacula Enterprise
- The support services provided by Bacula Systems are superb. They usually respond extremely quickly and have clear and useful answers upfront, which is a welcome change. Their support enabled us to get Bacula Enterprise up and running quickly and well configured, in a relatively short period of time. In addition, they also offer proactive support on a yearly basis. This involves sending an automatically generated report on your system configuration and status from which they provide advice on any issues or configuration problems that they find. I haven't seen this level of proactive support from another company.
- The configuration is extremely powerful and flexible. If you're used to dealing with text-based configuration files then you'll find this system familiar. It also fits well with configuration management tools - in our case, Puppet - allowing the configuration across the whole system to be managed centrally. The flexibility of the system allowed us to have backups running exactly when and how we wanted, performing staging to tape via disk, and with various admin, tasks to automate the handling of tapes within our tape library.
- The command-line console tool allows all operations to be done from the command line. In an emergency situation, or stuck in a datacentre with only a dumb console, being able to do everything via the command line is an important feature to have.
- Bweb is an optional extra that provides a web-based interface for both management and configuration. If you don't want to edit text files and use the command line console tool then Bweb is the best interface to use. We don't use it for configuration (favoring external tools for managing the text-based configuration), but we do use it to monitor backups and perform restores. It provides an excellent overview of what's happening with the system.
- The manuals, whitepapers, and additional documentation cover everything in detail. The whitepapers give a good overview of the installation, concepts, and specific scenarios, whilst the manuals cover in more depth how specific areas work and how the configuration is handled. It's very easy to find out what a particular option means and does.
- The software can run on and is supported on, a wide variety of operating systems, including Ubuntu which is what we use. This is a level of flexibility that was important to us after being tied to RHEL for our previous backup system.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employeesIDERA SQL Safe Backup
- Data reduction.
- Encryption.
Lead Product Owner - Hosting
VizientHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees
Cons
Bacula Enterprise
- Takes a while to get used to the software. It's not something that you can just install and work away with. You need to figure it out first. We did get a free training course when we purchased the Bacula Enterprise version which we found very useful.
- Support Documentation is very in depth but it's a tough read sometimes. Takes a while to understand the concepts from this documentation. Could do with making the documentation a small bit easier to understand.
IT Infrastructure Engineer
DPD IrelandTransportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
- When you're adding a new SQL server, sometimes the install from the management server to the SQL server will fail. I'm guessing this happens because of some version difference in Windows components or similar. Not a huge deal because you can just copy the agent to the SQL server and install it there, but considering how easy everything else is, I would expect this to be a little more fluid.
- I ran into a situation where part of our business decided to move their servers to a third-party data center. When they took away a SQL server that I was managing with SQL Safe, anything having to do with that policy took forever. Click. Wait 10 minutes. Window reacts. I'm guessing this is because the Management Console is trying super hard to contact the server in question, but I wish it handled losing a server better than it does.
SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager
Ten CateTextiles, 1001-5000 employees
Pricing Details
Bacula Enterprise
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Bacula Enterprise Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—IDERA SQL Safe Backup
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$1,036 per instance with first year maintenance included
IDERA SQL Safe Backup Editions & Modules
Edition
Standard via eCommerce | 1,036.001 |
---|
- per instance with first year maintenance included
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise 10.0
Based on 3 answers
Easy to use, proactive and effective customer support, and simple deployment method. The high configurability is what makes this tool so effective for my organization - at no point do I have any issues of trust as to the restorability of a fileset. The GUI provided gives clear actionable reports as to the effectivity of the jobs performed.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Hospitality Company, 11-50 employeesIDERA SQL Safe Backup
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Usability
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise 8.5
Based on 4 answers
It still has a lot of flaws to overcome, especially in the area of user friendliness. Searching and filtering is quite cumbersome. Once you find the job you from which you want to restore, be sure to write that job number down because you won't be able to quickly find the job again without it during a recovery.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Logistics and Supply Chain Company, 1001-5000 employeesIDERA SQL Safe Backup
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise 9.8
Based on 25 answers
We have always been very well served by Bacula Enterprise support. The response time is excellent, and any doubts or problems are resolved quickly and easily, avoiding complications and the evolution of problems that could arise. Only praise for Bacula Enterprise's service and support. The monitoring of the entire process from acquisition to implementation was very well done.
Innovation Director
Prefeitura Municipal de Aparecida de GoiâniaGovernment Administration, 10,001+ employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
IDERA SQL Safe Backup 7.0
Based on 2 answers
We actually haven't had to use support for Safe Backup very often since it runs pretty well out of the box. When we have had to call for support we haven't seen any issues with response time of getting answers to our questions or issues.
Lead Product Owner - Hosting
VizientHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees
Implementation Rating
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise 8.0
Based on 1 answer
Ensure the backup traffic goes through separate traffic as the other environment.
ESCRYPT IT Teamlead Bochum
ESCRYPT GmbhInformation Technology & Services, 201-500 employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Bacula Enterprise
I used CTERA almost from the time they started up. In short, it was very easy to use but configuration was limited; and in the end the agents were troublesome and I could not restore files. They had one person on staff who was terrific with tech support, when he left support became difficult and I lost confidence. Acronis was my first experience with a bare-metal recovery operation and it was terrific. Really saved the day. I would still be using it except the licensing was difficult and expensive and the software wasn't Linux friendly.
Director of Information Technology
Architectural Design Consultants, Inc.Architecture & Planning, 11-50 employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
SQL Safe is the first managed backup solution I've used. Before SQL Safe I used SQL's native backup mechanism and scheduling. And as an extension of that I used Ola Hallengren's SQL Server Maintenance Solution (which is a set of scripts that take amazing advantage of SQL's native capabilities). However whenever changes were needed (moving backups to new storage, adding/removing a server), it just took a long time because I had to touch each server. With SQL Safe, I can seriously change the backup location of every server I have by changing one policy setting. Likewise, I can quickly add or remove a server from being backed up with a few simple clicks.
SQL Database and Business Intelligence Manager
Ten CateTextiles, 1001-5000 employees
Return on Investment
Bacula Enterprise
- Quite transparently for the applications to allow online backup and guaranteed enough confidence due to its efficient algorithms of verification of media and blocks.
- The cost of purchasing and updating the annual support is very low compared to other "Veeam and Backup Exec" tools that I analyzed in the pre-project phase.
Manage Network and Virtualization
Claudino SARetail, 501-1000 employees
IDERA SQL Safe Backup
- SQL Safe backup has reduced our storage footprint for SQL Backups significantly. This has kept us from having to buy new expensive storage.
- Our DBA's are able to self manage backups and restores of SQL servers - So this has freed up our backup administrators to focus on other things.
Lead Product Owner - Hosting
VizientHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees