Item: Unitrends
Rating: 8
Author: Bill Jacoby

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery across the whole organization, as we are a small private school. The main reason we use it is for the ability to spin up some vital servers in the cloud, should we ever lose them, so that learning would not be disrupted. In an era of hybrid learning, the ability to stay up has become even more vital, as classes are available in so many formats--a power outage in the past that fries a server might have resulted in a day off (and time to recover), but now that all learning can be shifted to virtual almost automatically, there is no "school down" downtime to recover a machine; it has to be available quickly.

Pros and Cons

It runs without intervention--some other programs were prone to just stopping with an error
The user interface is easy to understand and use
The ability to spin up virtual servers in the cloud allows the time to get bare metal ready for a restore

Testing of the spin-up seems rather difficult--I'd like to see an easier way to be sure that the spin-up will work

Return on Investment

As a school, our main objective is to make sure services are up and running for students and teachers. We get peace of mind from knowing that the servers that provide these resources can be brought online virtually in the event of a disaster.

Key Insights

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

Alternatives Considered

Veritas Backup Exec

Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery is simply better than Backup Exec. It is more flexible and provides services that Veritas does not. We replaced a very old implementation of Backup Exec with Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery and have not looked back.

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Microsoft Azure Active Directory

Likelihood to Recommend

In any situation where almost immediate access is required to a server that isn't healthy, the cloud aspect of virtual servers cannot be beaten. I would imagine anyplace with access to printing servers or databases would find this feature useful. Cloud-based resources like O365 and Google Drive have kind of removed the need for file servers to spin up, but certain servers simply need a physical component on the network, and it's nice to know that the physical can become virtual rapidly if need be.

A backup you can depend on

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Unitrends Data Center Backup and Recovery