Unitrends is a Prudent Choice for Smaller Private University
March 11, 2021
Unitrends is a Prudent Choice for Smaller Private University
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance
Overall Satisfaction with Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery
We have two people who manage our [Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery] appliance. Many people can recover their own files using the "previous versions" tab in Windows Explorer. However, when this is not sufficient we will get the restore request.
We back up Hyper-V virtual machines directly from the Hyper-V servers. We do backup some systems directly as well, stand-alone servers, SQL servers, file servers, and until recently, VMware and Exchange servers as well.
We have redundant data centers with ongoing replication between them, so the loss of the virtual environment at one site is not being addressed by Unitrends. The remaining problems addressed by the appliance are:
1. Recovering historic files that were deleted long ago and now are needed.
2. Recovering SQL data to a prior state following a disaster.
3. Recovering servers or other virtual IT systems to a prior state following a disaster.
4. Maintain recover-ability of our entire infrastructure at a new location in the event of the loss of this entire site, including both data centers.
We back up Hyper-V virtual machines directly from the Hyper-V servers. We do backup some systems directly as well, stand-alone servers, SQL servers, file servers, and until recently, VMware and Exchange servers as well.
We have redundant data centers with ongoing replication between them, so the loss of the virtual environment at one site is not being addressed by Unitrends. The remaining problems addressed by the appliance are:
1. Recovering historic files that were deleted long ago and now are needed.
2. Recovering SQL data to a prior state following a disaster.
3. Recovering servers or other virtual IT systems to a prior state following a disaster.
4. Maintain recover-ability of our entire infrastructure at a new location in the event of the loss of this entire site, including both data centers.
- Unitrends provides easy discovery of history restore points for specific systems. Restoring these historic moments is quite simple.
- Unitrends provides rapid and discrete backups of Hyper-V virtual systems, SQL databases, Exchange databases, and file-level direct system backups. The impact on the servers being backed up is not noticeable if your backups are scheduled to not cause disk contention on the virtual servers. This is easy to accomplish. Virtual Machines do not need any agents installed, just the virtual hosts containing them. This low-impact but comprehensive backup strategy is quite scalable and easy to manage.
- Restoring individual files may seem trivial from a global DR perspective, however, sometimes it really matters. An errant configuration file on a virtual system can cause grief. [Let's] just say that you don't want to roll the system back, due to data consistency concerns. No worries, just create a File-Level Recovery instance of the desired restore point and select the needed file directly from the appliance, then drop the restore point. This is a quick process.
- Restoring a specific SQL or Exchange database to a specific point in time has saved us a few times.
- Virtual machine backups for RHEL or CentOS do not provide usable FLR instances. It would be nice if they did. On the windows side, that is a stellar feature.
- "The predictive analytics engine has detected anomalies on the following systems which probabilistically matches the behavior of systems impacted by Ransomware." - It would be nice if we could whitelist certain content that we have encrypted intentionally so that future alerts would be raised if new encryption is detected elsewhere.
- Active Jobs view: It would be nice that when you have the View Details option selected and also have multiple jobs selected that they would all display in the details. If this is too resource-intensive, then preferably the most recently selected job would display.
- Job Manager view: When selecting multiple jobs, only the toggle button remains enabled. It would be nice if the delete button also remained enabled so that multiple jobs could be deleted at the same time.
- Job Manager view: When filtering the view by typing text into the column headers, the selected [checkboxes] should be cleared. It is essential that the [checkboxes] no longer displayed are cleared, but normally if you are adding a new filter, it is a new task. Clearing all should be fine.
- IPv6 connectivity between appliance and agents would be nice. Full dual-stack would also be nice, but failing that, being able to select IPv4 or IPv6 would be great.
- The appliance cost more than we had budgeted, so it was an effort to justify to Finance.
- The speed and responsiveness in DR situations is a difficult value to measure, but this has exceeded our experience when compared with any previous solution we used. Identifying what went wrong, developing the remediation strategy, then using the appliance as required is simple. DR used to be hours of work.
- A big positive is [the] corporate confidence in our DR plan and capabilities. Easy to test, demo, and actually use when needed.
Do you think Unitrends delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Unitrends's feature set?
Yes
Did Unitrends live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Unitrends go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Unitrends again?
Yes
[Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery] was presented with glowing promises. I was hoping they were true. It cost more than previous solutions to purchase (a lot more) but the ease of use and speed of both backups and recovery is incomparable. The time saved immeasurable. The stress not endured in difficult moments because the appliance was so effective is also difficult to quantify. It was often the difference between disaster depleting me mentally because [of] the complexities around DR, or happening quickly with Unitrends and going on with my day.