Straight-forward Unitrends Review from an SMB
June 14, 2016
Straight-forward Unitrends Review from an SMB
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance
Finding a cost-effective, reliable backup solution for SMB has always proved quite a challenge during my tenure in IT. Tape backups and the software creating those backups were often unreliable. Even thinking about backing up multiple servers and having data safely stored offsite for any kind disaster recovery was just not in the budget. That all changed with affordable virtualization and Unitrends.
As an SMB, we're using Unitrends' R712 to backup both physical and virtual servers (Windows and Linux) for the entire organization. Nightly backups are automatically replicated from the on-site R712 to a sister R712 that resides at an offsite data center.
As an SMB, we're using Unitrends' R712 to backup both physical and virtual servers (Windows and Linux) for the entire organization. Nightly backups are automatically replicated from the on-site R712 to a sister R712 that resides at an offsite data center.
- The single biggest benefit Unitrends provided was offsite replication, which finally gave us cost-effective disaster recovery for the IT part of the company.
- Other benefits include incredibly reliable backups with flexible restore points, all while deduplicating data to maximize backup storage space. Unitrends' ability to synthesize backups to generate the proper restore points is impressive.
- Unitrends support has also been very good, with them often notifying us of a potential backup drive issue before we were aware of the problem.
- Overall, the R712s are easy to use and administer. At the time we implemented replication, however, we learned that a technician needed to be involved to properly configure both devices. That wasn't an issue, but a bit of surprise. Of course, that service was provided as part of the cost of our maintenance agreement.
- As with any organization, not all support technicians have same level of capability. At times we learned that some of the technicians were unaware of the feature we were asking for help on. I believe those types of deficiencies have decreased over time.
- As we've considered upgrading to new appliances, it seems newer, comparable units are being priced significantly higher than the units we bought in 2013.
- For the first time, because of Unitrends, this SMB finally has backups of all critical servers. That coupled with offsite replication allows for real disaster recovery.
- Being able to quickly synthesize backups to obtain a restore point saved us from the effects of ransomware.
- Being able to quickly restore a backed up VM to another VM for testing purposes has been very useful.
At the time we purchased, Unitrends was the only company I would have considered. Our very knowledgeable (hardware-agnostic) hardware consultant suggested Unitrends, and at the price we paid for the functionality, we didn't need to look further.
That said, as much as we love Unitrends, if I had to buy today I would take a very hard look at the competition because Unitrends seems to be getting significantly more expensive based on current prices of hardware comparable to what we purchased.
That said, as much as we love Unitrends, if I had to buy today I would take a very hard look at the competition because Unitrends seems to be getting significantly more expensive based on current prices of hardware comparable to what we purchased.