by Data is no exception. Data backups for enterprise must be as secure as vaults. You need to know that you can quickly recover your data in the event of a disaster and your company will resume normal operations. This is what a solid backup strategy and a set of backup tools must do.
Many people live in blissful ignorance, believing that company data is secure, but not knowing how it is implemented.
It is important to think of your data as money. If you are unsure, you can check out the prices your competitors pay.
First, create your backup strategy.
- You will need to store backups on a public cloud, or in a private network.
- How long can you keep them?
- What type of backups are you going to make?
- What are the chances that you will be able to recuperate at a specific point?
These are just a few questions that your backup strategy must answer. These questions will help you choose the right tools for your strategy. Not all tools are created equal.
Backup and restore procedures are an important part of your backup strategy. Which can be automated and which need manual intervention? What resources and how much effort they take. These factors are directly related to the backup tool you choose. The following descriptions will give you an overview of the different tools that are available to meet your data backup needs.
Acronis
Acronis offers many options for backup, including file backups on workstations and application-based backups in servers. The reports include detailed information about failures and successes. This makes it easy to identify and fix issues.
This product is ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses looking for a hybrid cloud solution. It provides a reliable and solid backup and offers excellent tech support. Acronis is not suited for larger networks and systems. A product that can be used by larger companies should be considered.
Acronis protects critical systems and creates images to move individual systems to new hardware. It also makes virtual hard drives for VMware and Hyper-V.
Uranium Backup
Uranium backup offers many benefits and is very lightweight.
You can get it both for free and for a fee.
You can perform complete backups of folders and files, both incrementally and differentially, with the free version. You can create unlimited backups and copy data to multiple destinations. You can also compress files with Zip64 technology and encrypt data. It is easy to schedule backups and even set them up automatically, so you don’t have to remember to start them manually. It has a simple interface that can perform incremental, full, and differential backups.
Paid versions of Uranium backup (with prices starting at 80 euros and a lifetime license that never expires) can also perform backups of mailboxes (Drive Image), disk images (Drive Image), and databases on many storage devices including cloud services, hard drives, FTP servers, and NAS.
A single license is required for each installation on specific devices (PCs and Servers). It includes technical support and free updates.
Rubrik
Rubrik allows users to go beyond backup and restoration with the Cloud Data Management platform. They have access to a full set of tools that allow them to fully control their enterprise data. This includes the ability to mobilize applications, analyze application data and deliver instant application availability.
Users of Rubrik hybrid cloud love its speed for VM restores and the additional use cases, such as having a virtualized environment available for temporary testing, or performing VM relocation via cluster replication among data centers. The Rubrik API also allows integration with vCenter or Powershell. It is a costly solution but system administrators love how it makes them feel like heroes after they recover from major disasters in a matter of seconds.
Veeam
Veeam is loved by users for its reliability and transparency. They know exactly what’s being backed-up and where it’s going. This solution can be used to back up hundreds of virtual machines. The supporting media could either be a Veeam Cloud Connect repository or a local NAS.
Veeam’s job runs options allow for a lot more customization of backup settings, copies and replication. This allows you to adapt backup procedures to meet your business needs regardless of how large they are. You can get a lot more information about backup status using the reporting and notification tools that are available.
The user interface is very intuitive and easy to use. The guidance for job creation is one of the weak points. A friendly wizard would be most welcome.
Cohesity
Cohesity is a cost-effective storage solution for cold data and a backup solution for hyper-convergence. It can integrate with other systems like AWS, Pure Storage or VMware and offers a wide variety of APIs that are directly accessible to the user. It’s said to be extremely fast for indexing, restoring and backing up virtual machines. It has robust engines for data compression, deduplication and replication.
Cohesity’s user interface is simple and straightforward, which allows for a short learning curve. You can choose from different levels of restoration including files and folders for partial recovery. Cohesity also offers sound planning and replication options for disaster recovery. It is the best choice for replacing existing backup solutions such as tape libraries or integrating with public cloud services.
Commvault
Commvault provides a solution that can be used across an entire organization. It includes mail backup for Office365, which allows you to move entire sites between cloud servers, full system imaging and point-in time recovery for SQL databases. It allows end-users to perform data restoration themselves, which relieves IT staff from having to assist in this matter.
This solution is best suited for large enterprises that have consolidated data deployments. It could not be considered cost-effective if compared with other, less comprehensive, cloud-integrated options. Commvault may not be able offer a solution if your company has a lot of unstructured data that is located in different data sources.
Spectrum Protect Suite
IBM’s Spectrum Protect solution provides a single point for all enterprise backups and recovery processes. It can operate with any size of cloud or physical backup environment.
Spectrum Protect protects user data using a hierarchy of storage media, including raw devices, filesystem containers and streaming tape. It allows for off-site backups and the possibility to create duplicate copies of sequential media.
Spectrum interfaces with VMware via its Virtual Storage API. This allows Spectrum to interact with VMware and determine the best way for them to set up virtual environments.
Veritas Backup Exec
Veritas backup Exec is a powerful tool that supports a variety of storage devices including legacy models and enables you to restore your data at lightning speed. It is easy to use and provides high reliability. Veritas customers often complain about the high price but say that the features are worth it.
Veritas provides a 60-day free trial to help you decide if it is right for your business.
Unitrends
This is an appliance!
Unitrends Backup Series Backup Appliance is designed to combine enterprise backup and ransomware prevention into a single platform that is easy to use and install. It provides proactive monitoring and support as well as recovery assurance and cloud continuity. This helps to reduce the time to value. It supports multiple backup types including files, virtual machine infrastructures and applications. It allows multi-server scheduling as well as customized backup strategies.
Unitrends Recovery Series provides a single appliance that stores data, making it easier to perform backups and recoveries. This solution is ideal for companies dealing with increasing data volumes and short backup windows. It supports heterogeneous infrastructures and eliminates the need for additional staff, money, or resources to support different workloads.
Barracuda Backup
Barracuda provides backup appliances that can adapt to a variety of situations. They can also replicate data to the cloud, or to an appliance at a remote location. Service providers that need to adapt the infrastructure to meet their customers’ needs have this freedom. If a customer does not want their data to be sent off the network, he can choose only local network replication options.
Barracuda appliances are a great way to reduce your workload, as they are easy to set up, configure, and then restore. The ability to automate tasks that would otherwise take too much time, such as restoring an entire system to a virtualized environment.
Be conscious
Here is a collection of backup tools that can solve various needs. Pick the one that is most compatible with your environment. You should consider that the best cloud storage may not be compatible with legacy systems. Or that the one that provides application level backups might not be the best option if you only need to restore a few files.
Maybe the one that does everything is too expensive for you. We hope you have found this information helpful.
