Item: Hornetsecurity VM Backup
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Altaro VM Backup was chosen as our backup solution for our physical VM host servers to backup the many virtual machines we had. We wanted this solution as the setup was fast and straightforward, and we were backing up within 10 minutes! It also helped that the product was very reasonably priced, and licensing was simple to understand.
Restoring is also super comfortable, with various options to restore as a clone for quick testing, restore individual virtual disks, or maybe restore just some files or exchange items. Or failing that, if you don't have time to do a complete restore, boot from the backup. Altaro VM Backup can also be set to test and verify backups, so you know that you have valid backups on hand.
The licensing covers either VMware or Hyper-V HyperVisors are making it easy to learn one product and use it across various platforms.
Over the years, a constant stream of added features or enhancements has been made to ensure this product is relevant and adding value. Some of the notable improvements/features added have been Data Deduplication, Offsite copies (remote Altaro and now Azure) with WAN acceleration (Altaro server), Constant Data Protection, Cloud management, and many more.

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.

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.

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.

Veeam seems like another excellent backup solution, and appears to have many similar features to Altaro VM Backup but also seemed more complicated to set up when I tried 5+ years ago.
Also, at the time, Veeam's licensing was very confusing where you needed to count CPU's on the physical host then VM's I think. Plus, you needed to provide a lot of details to get a trial where Altaro VM Backup seemed more straightforward to get that.
I have recently read somewhere that Veeam's licensing has been simplified.

Luckily I have only had to use support two times since using Altaro VM Backup for more than five years. Both times was quick and easy to get some information and links to the relevant KB articles they had to resolve my issue.
Last time I contacted support, they also gave me an option to do a remote session so they could help resolve the issue for me.

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Within our SMB space, it is a perfect solution as it's simple to set up and use for either VMware or Hyper-V hosts. The licensing is simple to understand, and purchasing is secure either direct from Altaro VM Backup or via their worldwide resellers.
The options for where to backup is good, local USB drives, network drives, offsite Altaro VM Backup server, and recently Azure cloud storage.
Testing of backups is easy, restore as clone, start Altaro VM Backup and check it (it disables the network on these) for accuracy and function.
Data Deduplication means less storage than is being backed up, even with versioning enabled.
The only scenario I'm not sure of its suitability would be when there are lots of physical hosts. Where it may be cumbersome track and control many physical hosts, Although Altaro has its Cloud Management Console to do precisely that. I haven't used this, so can't provide much insight.

Altaro VM Backup - Quick, Easy and Great Value.

Overall Satisfaction with Altaro VM Backup