IDERA SQL Safe Backup vs. Nasuni

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.

Incentivized

Well suited if you have a lot of data that doesn't need to be stored and read right away. I think even if you don't have much data, you can still use it for it's intended purpose to great effect, but think of it as the more data you have, the even better it will work. I don't think it would be particularly useful if you already have a slick file restore system in place and you don't need to store your data elsewhere with redundancy.

Incentivized

• History visibility
• Very intuitive
• Easy to set up

Incentivized

• The management console is extremely simple and easy to navigate, making common tasks easy to do.
• Our storage appliance is configured to snapshot data several times an hour, making the risk of data loss very low.
• Data restores are very intuitive, and take seconds to initiate regardless of whether it is one file or 300GB of data. We have successfully restored many Gigs of data in minutes.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Better analytics when issues arise.
• Better onboarding documentation.
• Real-time monitoring.

Incentivized

As I mentioned, the user interface is amazing and straight forward. It's very easy to learn how to configure and restore files. I would like a bit more reporting, especially in terms of live reporting and monitoring. The support is great when you have a question on how to do something, which helps with usability.

Incentivized

Again, it may have a little to do with the size and speed of your own environment, but we've been nothing but pleased with the speed of access of the files - even pulling old files from the cloud storage. Recovery of huge and many data files is a bit slow if you don't have the specs of the filer up to snuff.

Incentivized

IDERA SQL Safe Backup winning thanks to the pricing, nothing more.

Incentivized

The technical support and escalation path for Nasuni is much more reliable and efficient. No getting transferred to various teams. Often times, the person who answers your call is able to resolve your issue. If they cannot, they get the case assigned to the appropriate engineer right away. Time to close has always been very good.

Incentivized

• SQL Safe allows me to spend less time managing my DR plan and still maintain confidence that my backups and restores are solid. Saving my time means saving money.
• SQL Safe does an amazing job at backup compression over and above SQL's native compression. SQL backups are probably our single largest consumer of network drive space. Any product that helps reduce my network footprint, saves money.

Incentivized

• Dramatically reduced time spent managing our storage platform. Quotas and reporting tools take all the guesswork out of data growth. Updates are easy to deploy. Time freed up can be used for more user-facing activities that we consider more valuable to the organization.
• The overall stability of the platform has been very good. We have been running on the same hardware for the past four years without any performance issues.

Incentivized