Item: NAKIVO Backup & Replication
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We've been using NAKIVO to back up data across our office locations, as well as the VMs themselves. It has helped us leverage our resources by enabling us to use local storage at one location and allocate it as a recovery site for an office at another location.

Pros and Cons

You can implement NAKIVO on your own relatively quickly without needing consultants to come in spending hours to get it in place.
It's cost-effective.
The interface is simple and straight-forward. It's not overly complicated.

You can only backup virtual machines.
Although you can easily set up NAKIVO, the more specific or complex your configuration, the more reliant you become on tech support. Knowing Linux would be a big plus with these types of configurations.
Updating the software could be a little more user-friendly.

Return on Investment

NAKIVO only costs a fraction of many other backup solutions.
After the initial setup, I've had to spend very little time on the maintenance of NAKIVO. That's freed me up to work on other projects.
We were able to leverage pre-existing storage to save the cost of using a cloud service.

Alternatives Considered

Veeam Backup & Replication, Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance, Code42 (formerly CrashPlan) and Zerto

We were previously using Code42 (CrashPlan) prior to them changing their service. They no longer offered local backup as an option. We also used Zerto, but we found it painful and time-consuming to reconfigure the settings and re-sync every time we increased the volume size. Unitrends worked well, but required heavy implementation time, as did Veeam. With the exception of CrashPlan, all the other services were expensive comparatively. The cost of a 3-year license cost less than the initial setup and implementation of the other solutions alone. In the end, we selected NAKIVO because it stood out in regards to cost, ease of use, and flexibility.

Other Software Used

Code42 (formerly CrashPlan), Zerto, Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance, Dameware Remote Support, SolarWinds ipMonitor, Jive Hosted VoIP, Sophos UTM, VIPRE, Splashtop Business Access

Likelihood to Recommend

NAKIVO works really well if you are trying to avoid the dread and drain of implementation or overly complex interfaces, and are not trying to spend a ton on backup software costs. It provides flexibility if you are looking to back up to the cloud, local storage, or across the WAN. Be it just data or actual VMs, you can pick and choose. Since it doesn't work with physical servers, if your environment is still set up as such, NAKIVO is not a good fit.

NAKIVO: The Answer to Your Backup Prayers

Overall Satisfaction with NAKIVO Backup & Replication