Unitrends Recovery Series Backup as an SMB DR solution
August 09, 2016

Unitrends Recovery Series Backup as an SMB DR solution

Brian Fordyce | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance

We use the Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance across the whole organization to backup our physical and virtual environment. Settings for backing up VMWare, SQL, and Windows are often pre-configured allowing for a "point and click" experience. Reporting is easily accessed and emailed making the ability to document backups even easier. The added ability to configure the appliance as a virtual failover really makes the appliance shine as a true recovery solution. We are able to spin up a server from the appliance while the actual server is offline so that we can update or perform maintenance without missing a beat. We also integrate this into our DR plan so that we can provide great recovery times.

Pros

  • The scheduling of the backups and the ability to set retention time is incredibly easy to set up and it's very easy to get a overview of your overall backup strategy.
  • Archiving backups is a snap and is easily accomplished using a separate archive dock via a USB.
  • The ability to spin up a VM as a virtual failover is really a great asset and one of the reasons we went with this appliance.

Cons

  • Occasionally difficulties arise with pushing out backup agents to Linux clients. It would be better to have more "agentless" options.
  • The backup reporting is easily set up to email out notices and reports, doing the same for updates would be equally useful.
  • Sometimes the help videos do not specifically address the "how" of "How To". It took me a really long time to figure out how to build a virtual failover.
  • Unitrends Series Backup appliance has helped our organization plan for recovery from ransomware and create specific policies and procedures to address this serious issue.
  • The Unitrends Series Backup Appliance has helped us with compliance by showing that we can audit our backups as well as proving we have the capability of recovering and restoring files.
  • We were able to significantly improve our DR plan using the Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance.
The biggest difference between the Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance and the other two options we used, Veeam and Windows Server Backup was the physical appliance. The other two were software based and were not giving our organization a fully unified backup strategy or disaster recovery solution. With the Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance we were able to have a target to backup up to, separate archive media, AND software to aid with the kinds of backups necessary. The additional benefit of having the capability to spin up our own VM as a virtual fail over really put the Unitrends solution over the top.
I think that the Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance is very valuable in the SMB setting. The appliance and its capabilities not only help to develop good backup strategies and disaster recovery (DR) plans; the appliance also allows for testing and verification to show that your strategies are accomplishing your DR and backup goals. The hardest part is choosing a size for the appliance.

Unitrends Feature Ratings

Data Center Backup
9.6
Universal recovery
10
Instant recovery
8
Recovery verification
10
Business application protection
9
Multiple backup destinations
10
Incremental backup identification
9
Backup to the cloud
10
Deduplication and file compression
10
Snapshots
10

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