Hornetsecurity VM Backup vs. SharePlex

Altaro VM Backup is great if you have 1 or 2 VMs that aren't backed up by any other means. I initially had some issues with setting it up so it backed up to a NAS, and sometimes the host wouldn't sync to the client. There probably wouldn't be an issue if the host system is the backup location. The interface and configuration were pretty intuitive and gave you a lot of information on the status of your backups.

Incentivized

SharePlex is best suited for replicating relatively small but steady streams of data, instead of huge amounts of data surge. Keep in mind that it relies on database logs (redo logs in Oracle) to replicate data in the form of "messages", and therefore it is mandatory to put the database in forced logging mode - that may be a prohibiting factor in some situations.

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

• Replicate data for Dev/QA
• Easy setup/upgrade
• Support is easily reachable

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

• Documentation: There are some areas where the documentation is weak or dated. In particular, running SharePlex on RAC is a more involved process than the implementation guides would have you believe. When reaching out for assistance, the answer from Dell (a few years ago) was to engage their consulting team.
• Built in scripts/agents: SharePlex comes with a handful of monitoring and management scripts that can be run as cron jobs. Unfortunately, these scripts are primitive and rigid, requiring the user to hard-code values into the script body and limiting their usefulness when you're running multiple replication streams. Some of the methods and dependencies are heavy. We ended up writing custom scripts that do what we need but it would be helpful if there were greater functionality and flexibility out of the box.
• Compared to other tools, there is not as wide (or at least as active) a user presence. If you're having difficulties you may have to engage a consultant since it's less likely that you'll find an answer in a forum or blog post.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We depend on it to supply data to our various OLTP and Data Warehouse environments

Incentivized

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

It is very usable once you get over the initial setup.

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

Support is very responsive. They take ownership of the problems and see them through to the finish. When a bug is found they work towards developing testing and making the fix available to us to solve the problem.

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

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.

SharePlex was a clear winner in comparison to its competitors. It beats GoldenGate on price, providing equivalent features and performance at a fraction of the price and without the need to license costly Oracle features at the database level. DB Visit was a strong contender for us as well and it is an excellent product I would also recommend, but it did not have quite enough of a user and community presence and penetration for our management to feel comfortable with.

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

• Data migration allows the company to make solid business changes, more so on new business plans.
• Further, system flexibility supports multiple business plans, hence, efficient and reliable.
• Finally, real-time decisions are arrived at using SharePlex, a procedure that ensures there is transparency in the entire operations.

Incentivized