Unitrends

Outside of manually swapping external drives we haven't used any other appliance solution. We did move to CrashPlan now Code42 for backup file redundancy of our file servers to ensure two points of recovery with the external drives. We have since kept CrashPlan for an added layer of redundancy on top of the Unitrends appliance for just the file servers.

We compared solutions from Datto, and Veeam and found that Unitrends MSP gave a lower barrier to entry from a cost standpoint. The features that were available out of the box and multi-platform support made the choice a no-brainer when we were looking for options to protect our environment.

We used a tape system. (See prior answer) Unitrends participated in our software user group and came well-recommended by other users in the group.

The interface is much better and user friendly compare to previous software. The hardware takes up less space in a rack. Configuring a backup is much quicker. Recovering from a backup is much quicker. Support is available via chat, not just the phone. Chat is really knowledgeable and easy to understand.

After reviewing other backup solutions prior to deciding on Unitrends backup systems, I have a chance to evaluate and learned it’s pro and con on each backup system as well as comparing pricing. Unitrends was the best choice at the time for what I need to replace my old backup system and worked with what I already have in place.

They are pretty much the same in the service they provide.

Datto needs a client on each device and that could be a level of failure.

Compared Unitrends amongst other vendors. We liked their sales presentation and the product seemed to provide more Return on Investment as compared with other vendors.

I've found that the tech support with Unitrends is the best and most helpful of any of the companies I've used. They have true 24x7 support and unlike Rapid Recovery who changed to a call back model, Unitrends is still answering the phone, or allowing you to wait on the phone. When you need to recover, you need support immediately.

Less expensive and can accomplish mostly the same things.

The appliance and the cloud features way outweigh the configuration issues and failures I was always troubleshooting with BE. I save so much time with Unitrends it is unbelievable. With me being a 1 man team this time savings is crucial.

Appliance concept and multiple choices of appliances.

I think the biggest thing is stability and recovering from failed incremental backups. Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery's process is simple and does not require modifying the original job except adding a custom field in the job calendar. A simple drag and drop and you're done. Try that with DPM or Veritas.

Most companies have been using tape backups for along time and Unitrends allows to completely move away from tapes.

Once the Unitrends solution is in place, I don't really have to worry about it. I get notifications to my email about every job and that's how this is monitored.

I've also used HP Vault robotic tape changers, however they jammed, or the bar code reader would fail and the backups would fail. Unitrends uses hard drives to store the local backup and then sends the backup to the cloud which eliminates the need for expensive devices and tapes. Tape backups also take a much longer time to complete a full backup.

Smaller companies use single tape backup devices that need to be manually changed every day and require human intervention. This becomes tedious and at times a backup is not created because the tapes were not changed.

We tried Veeam, and while it worked, it was more complicated to operate in my experience. Unitrends was very intuitive from the beginning. The installation was assisted via remote support and walked me through each step to ensure a full and complete understanding.

Unitrends is the market leader for a reason, you can tell they put a lot of thought and R&D into designing the software and making it work the way you want it to. I no longer have to guess whether or not a restore will work or what incremental the file I am looking for is on.

I laid out some simple requirements going into this process. I wanted to be able to back up my Hyper-V environment (just two standalone hosts) including the VM's and the hosts themselves (the OS at least, not the vhd/vhdx files of course), 1-2 bare metal servers that were still straggling along, and then keep a second copy of all of my backups as a failsafe in some cheap cloud storage. Preferably Azure as we already have engagements with them and for the type of usage we'd see (mostly space consumption, very little data transfer OUT of the cloud and very little operations done to the files as they sit in the cloud) Azure was the cheapest. I thought -- pretty simple, right? Well it turns out backing up to the cloud is a bit of a tricky situation here -- as most of the vendors are going to try to get you on their own cloud or use some very specific infrastructure to set it up. Being able to just point the backup engine at some Blob storage was actually a pretty rare feature, oddly enough.

I tested several other software packages including Veeam, Altaro, Nakivo, Storagecraft, and Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS), Out of all of those Altaro and Unitrends were the ones that really stood out. Nakivo was a disaster -- their windows agent, including the Hyper-V host agent doesn't even support installation on server core -- and then after talking to several of their employees about the subject I got a rather clear indication that they really didn't know what they were doing. Veeam seems to be talked up a lot on forums and such but they really didn't have a solution to just archive data in the cloud, you had to build a massive infrastructure in the cloud as well -- totally impractical for a smaller company such as mine. Now Unitrends has some strictness on external backups -- but it is definitely much more workable than Veeam was going to be. Storagecraft got a bit of a short stick here as ultimately they probably should have been one of the final contenders but I engaged them towards the end of the process and I don't think I really gave them a fair shake at it, I had spent two months on this process, and already had two good contenders. We really liked Altaro, their software was polished and just did what you asked it to, but ultimately Unitrends got me by throwing in the Appliance, throwing in some of their cloud storage space, and throwing in their DRaaS solution for so cheap -- I couldn't resist. I'd imagine I would have been happy with either Altaro or Storagecraft as well, though.

I was using BackupExec before switching to the Unitrends appliance. BackupExec was not working well and the maintenance window was getting too long to backup what I needed to. With BackupExec, I needed to provide the storage medium as well as take care of the backup strategy and it was just too complicated. I selected the Unitrends appliance because everything was in one package and the licensing was much simpler.

I wanted to switch from a tape backup system to an appliance based system. In my opinion tape backups are old and unreliable.
We achieve greater efficiency using two appliances at two different locations.
While we did use tape backups originally it was still dependent upon a person taking the tapes off site every night. Then depending on how they actually stored the tape drives, you never really knew if they were being taken care of properly off site.
For example, if the staff member in charge of the tape backups took them off site and kept them in their vehicle, they could be damaged from heat during the summer months.
Using appliances resolved this issue for us.

Unitrends is just so much easier to install, set up and maintain. From an ease of use standpoint, it's a no brainer.

When I took over managing our IT infrastructure, Unitrends was already in place.

I have used many other backup solutions over the years, and have evaluated many. The only solution I have nothing negative to say about is Unitrends.

We have used Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery for a while now, so it has been a long time since I shopped the backup market. I honestly don't even know what's out there Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery, today but I can say that I have been disappointed with enough to go shopping to make sure there is not something better out there.

We did not compare Unitrends to another vendor. We found this and went through multiple discussions, and webinars and felt this was the unit for us. We just had to convince management to allow the money to be spent. It was pricey but worth it. I highly recommend purchasing this unit from unitrends.

I have used many backup systems in my career. This one is, by far, the most reliable and easiest to use.