Great Backup System at a Great Price!
March 21, 2016
Great Backup System at a Great Price!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with CrashPlan
We utilize Crashplan to backup anything and everything deemed non-critical. It's non-critical in that our Crashplan install is only for on-site storage, we have a different system that pushes critical backups offsite. We used to have to decide whether or not the data on a machine was worth backing up and if so, allocate a quantity of storage on a backup appliance, or a backup license, or determine if we needed to pay for cloud storage space, etc. With our on-premise Crashplan install utilizing our own storage, there's no more decision making involved - does it have data that should be backed up? Back it up. It's simple, fast, and best of all, restores are almost fun. I have three backup systems in use in my org depending on the data type: critical (onsite + cloud offsite), non-critical (onsite only), and virtual (onsite + cloud offsite). Crashplan is by far my favorite and most widely deployed.
- Makes backups a breeze - you can either install the agent and define all the settings yourself, which takes 2-3 minutes, or set the defaults on the server and let it configure the agent, which takes all of 1 minute. Everything is right up front and configured in a way that makes sense.
- Restores are amazing. Three clicks to pick your data to be restored, timeframe, and restore location (original location or a new folder), and off it does. This is the simplest program I've ever seen and it does exactly what it is designed to do.
- Licensing is straight-forward and based on number of users. We have an on-premise system so we only pay for user licenses, no per-TB or per-appliance fees. Annual support is part of the license cost, so no extra maintenance there either.
- The only thing I'd like to see changed is the admin console looks drastically different from the agent console. Otherwise this is a solid system all-around.
- Ransomware is a thing of the past. Even when we get hit, we restore from Crashplan and never look back. We got hit with CryptoTesla about two weeks ago and three clicks and an hour later, it was gone.
- Barracuda Backup and Veeam Backup & Replication
We also use Barracuda Backup and Veeam Backup in our org and while both have their niche, we found ourselves constantly running out of space on the Barracuda appliances when trying to backup non-critical systems (our classification for systems with important data, but not data we can't live without). When it came to VEEAM, it was great for virtual machines, but less so when it came to full workstations. They have the free full-client backup app, but it's of limited use to us. Crashplan fit the niche of letting us use our own backup storage without charging us for the privilege, leaving the Barracudas to the more mission-critical data, while covering the full workstations that VEEAM didn't do well.