Likelihood to Recommend There are few scenarios that it's not well suited for as long as it's either VMware or Agent Based installations. I have not had success with directly backing up a non-Windows file share. I would definitely test the product first if you are not planning to directly backup through an agent.
Read full review This software is well suited for companies that want to be very in control of their backups but need a simple tool. It could be convenient for them to just buy their own node, locate it in a different location, and set up the jobs for their machines to backup to the cloud with the specific plugins. However, it would not be convenient for companies looking to have a tool that needs to be secure and compliant, and that need to have different other options for business continuity.
Read full review Pros Quickness to deploy. You will not need an expert to get this up and running. Extremely intuitive interface: Brand new techs can pick this up without much training. Global Accessibility: The cloud interface allows administrators to access their backups from everywhere for quick restores after hours. Read full review Avamar performs data deduplication on the remote host. This greatly reduces the amount of traffic that each backup requires. This even applies to the virtual environment through change block tracking. Backup times are reduced from hours to minutes. The management interface makes it easy to configure and maintain data retention periods. Many times certain data must be kept for an extended period of time. There is a specific menu for managing retention periods. The system is able to recover itself from a hard failure with virtually no loss of backups. There is a checkpoint taken each day that provides a recovery point in the event of a catastrophic failure. Since this is a node based system, the loss of more than one node could require a recovery be performed. While another grid must be purchased, the replication utility allows all backups to be replicated to another grid at a remote location. This ensures the resilience of the backups in the event there is the loss of the primary data center. Also works on HCI devices performing image-level backups as in our primary data center environment There is also now an All-in-One appliance for smaller locations Read full review Cons In some of the older version of the software, drilling down to restore a single files was quite the process. It's still a little slow to this day, but improvements have been made. It would be nice to have the ability to spin up a virtual machine directly on the backup appliance in the event of a failed server. At current time you need a Hyper-v or VMWare environment to restore a failed machine to. Once you put the device in cloud control mode, some of your options are limited when you log directly into the local appliance. I personally would like to see all the options remain the same so I can administer the device the same remotely and I would sitting in front of it. Read full review The client interface has constant JAVA issues and can be slow and chunky. We have often had issues with current versions of JAVA breaking it so it will not even run. The backup clients are split out for function. Although this makes them light, it also makes it cumbersome to upgrade clients. The naming scheme can also be confusing for the clients. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Love the units
Read full review I have been using the product for over five years. This has performed so well that with the current system reaching its End-of-Life with EMC next year, I have proposed replacing it with the latest version of the product. Now that it integrates with Data Domain, the cost has been greatly reduced. Instead of the need to purchase many nodes, one Data Domain can replace them creating a significant cost savings.
Read full review Usability The front-end webpages are basic without to much clutter which makes finding what you are trying to do fairly easy.
Read full review The system overall is easy to monitor and see your backup/restore status. The user interface could use updating as it relies on Java and any updates to Java cause the interface to stop working need to be reinstalled
Read full review Support Rating They are always quick to get you routed to a tech support person and always get follow up after contacting them. Last experience was amazing, she adjusted my boxes and they perform even better. I cannot say enough about the support. We had some trouble with one of the windows servers leaving the volume shadow copy out there and would fail. They worked with us to adjust and get working. After that it has been months since I have had to do anything with the server to keep the backups running.
Read full review Support is very convincing, always eager to solve issues from the root rather than workaround, don't hesitate to take webex, describe the issues to the core and recommend configuration to avoid further issues. We can ask few questions other than the main issue. They don't hesitate to answer.
Read full review Implementation Rating Work on a backup agent for Mac OS X or any Apple OS.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I'm much happier with how Barracuda lays out their console and user interface. Acronis is a great product and you do get what you expect. But to have a the learning curve personally cut by at least 50% is a great thing to have when it comes to training new members to the IT team and getting them up to speed of our procedures.
Read full review Avamar has simplied the back up approach in their VE edition and is much easier to use than
Data Protector . Backing up multiple VMs takes minutes instead of hours now. Creating policies, retentions, and schedules, is vastly improved and much easier.
Read full review Return on Investment We've had a couple situations where we've had to pull data back down from the BBS cloud and while it can take a while sometimes, we haven't had an issue where we haven't been able to restore something that we needed. Overall it has been very reliable. We've had to implement two other backup systems in addition to Barracuda Backup and dedicate our BBSs to just mission-critical data because we're size-locked in our appliances. Upgrading to larger models is not financially viable at the moment and we can't expand their internal storage or point them to an iSCSI share or likewise. We brought in other systems to handle non-critical and virtual data because of those storage limitations. Read full review Absolute Zero ROI This appliance does not work in its current state and to update we need to wait 2-3 months Can't wait to get rid of it and replace it with something else. (not even sure if we will be able to get it running before that) [I think] this is one of the worst mistakes we made Read full review ScreenShots