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Unitrends - the best kept secret in backup

Overall Satisfaction with Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance

[It's being used as a] complete backup for our clients either as an on-premise solution, managed solution or remote backup solution. We are using it for both virtual and physical backups as well as application and file backups. We are also utilizing the replication and cloud features. This ensures local and off-site backups and provides fast restores and application consistent data.
  • Easy to use interface.
  • Full virtualization support.
  • Physical server support.
  • Full application support.
  • Scriptable via powershell.
  • Improved KVM support.
  • Improved XEN Server support.
  • Ensure application consistent backups
  • Recover to Azure DR site
  • Unified backup solution
  • Unified backup solution for both physical, application, file level, and virtual level backups in a solid easy to use interface.
  • Not complex like the EMC and IBM solutions and not lacking in features like Backup Exec and Veeam.
For almost all scenarios Unitrends is an ideal solution. However, sometimes you will want to use the UEB software rather than the appliance. Workstation backup is not its strongest strength, though. If you can get the data to a server you are, however, well off when using either the appliance or the software solutions.

Unitrends Feature Ratings

Data Center Backup
10.0
Universal recovery
10
Instant recovery
10
Recovery verification
10
Business application protection
10
Multiple backup destinations
10
Incremental backup identification
10
Backup to the cloud
10
Deduplication and file compression
10
Snapshots
10

Evaluating Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance and Competitors

Yes - IBM Spectrum protect (TSM) and Veeam.
Spectrum protect creates too many complications though it is the swizz army knife of backup, it just takes too much time and energy to run and manage.
Veeam is too simplistic though and can only handle VM backups well.
Both products are also comes with a pretty high price tag.
Unitrends is simpler than both Veeam and TSM.
It is cheaper as well.
And finally it is also much more flexible than Veeam - in our case it can replace both products and make operations simpler and give us new options like completely automated DR testing.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Analyst Reports
It could do everything needed and more. And had a much lower price tag and still had a long track record.
There where no good reasons to not go this way.
For future backup evalutions I would add criteria to make it simple to move backup between on-premise and cloud and have broad support for major cloud solutions like Azure and AWS. In this way I'm not making it hard to migrate if at some point it makes sense.
With Boomerang I can even automate it here.

Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance Support

Very responsive and they don't give up untill the problem is solved. It would have been a 10 if it weren't for the fact that escalation to developers can be a hassle since they operate only in the US time zone (ie. this is only an issue if you are not in the US).
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - It is part of the regular support contract, so you do pay, however unless you are not maintaining the software it is non-optional. So it is not an extra premium for just support.
I had a Unitrends tech work with me on the phone for 5 hours straight, to get backup up and running for a client over the weekend after a combination of disasters, not following best practice and misunderstandings their backup was completely screwed and needed to be reimplementet, and the support team helped every step to make sure this happened.