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Symantec’s user forum seems full of complaints about BE2012. Does anyone know of an alternative? I know Appassure from Dell is a good candidate, but are there others? One requirement I have is block level backups.

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Veeam, Unitrends, vRanger, Datto

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Veeam for Virtual Machines without a doubt.

here’s a nice list I just found (courtesy of http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/96944-windows-server-2008-backup-solutions)

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Veeam or Unitrends for sure.

Thanks,

A.J.

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Unitrends is the big one. Veeam is awesome but doesn’t compete toe to toe with BE. Along the lines of BE is ArcServe, they share a similar design. But Unitrends is the most popular, all around backup product.

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We are looking to go with Unitrends, we looked at AppAsure, but with Dell’s poor customer service, we decided to avoid it.

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Arcserve is a decent alternative, +1 Unitrends and Veeam. BE 2012 is a nightmare and have heard nothing much good about AppAsure.

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Hello David 5134,

Wow! There are a couple Veeam fans online today.

Veeam’s own website describes them as a “VMware Backup, Hyper-V Backup and Virtualization Management” tool. However, Symantec’s Backup Exec product line works well with both physical and virtual devices. My point is that you may be looking for a solution that meets both your virtualization and physical device needs.

Let me introduce StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect, an image-based backup software with patented Hardware Independent Restore technology to enable you to “backup fast, recover faster” to both virtual and physical environments. ShadowProtect is an image-based software allowing for fast incremental backup chains with managed retention levels for a very granular Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Add to this the ability to easily mount backup chains as NTFS shares or virtualize these as native VMWare, VirtualBox, XenServer, Hyper-V or Redhat KVM machines and ShadowProtect is a very powerful tool!

But don’t take my word for it, download a 30-day, full-featured copy from our website and try it out for yourself. Here’s the link for the download: www.StorageCraft.com.

Oh, and since it’s Friday, here’s a little early entertainment for the rest of you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewuyNwzpSr4&feature=youtu.be

Best regards,

Steven Snyder

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Hi David -

Yes, there are many complaints about BE 2012 in the user forum. And there are many here inside Spiceworks as well. However, there are also many satisfied users around the world who do not post because the product is simply working for them. Mistakes were made with the latest release and we have been working hard to fix what needs fixing, improve what is lacking and create the enhancements folks like you Spiceheads have requested.

That being said, have you looked at BE 2012? If not, you can grab an eval here . As you have likely read elsewhere, it looks very different from its predecessors. Also, there have been some significant changes in how it backs up. Primarily, it is now server-centric, meaning that each server backup is its own job. That was a very polarizing decision (mentioned on many other threads within Spiceworks) that has worked well for some, not so well for others. But really, the only opinion that matters in your case, is yours.

I’d be happy to have a detailed discussion with you about how BE may be the best choice, but this thread might not be the best place for it. Please feel free to drop me a DM and I will send you my contact info. You can also find me out on the Twitters at @PackMatt73

Hit me up!

Matt

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Thanks for mentioning Veeam guys!

David, you can download Veeam Backup Free edition which doesnt have any limitations on the number of VMs and is free forever.

Are you looking to protect both physical and virtual environments?

If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask here or pm me.

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+1 for Unitrends and Veeam (Virtual only). Steer clear of AppAssure 5.

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Any specific reason for no love for AppAssure?

I went to a Dell lunch a little while ago and talked with someone there about AppAssure. He had been using it for a while, and he was praising it.

I looked into it, but the lack of ability to back up to tape was a problem, since I was looking for D2D2T. But otherwise it looked great, especially how fast you can get users back online after a complete loss. Also, while I have a good relationship with my current Dell sales rep, AppAssure has their own and they were a little bit too pushy for my taste.

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I am only referring to version 5. When we looked into AppAssure late Spring/Early Summer the demo and trial we did was of Replay 4. It was awesome. When purchase time came around we were sent version 5 license. Thinking ok this should be just as good if not better considering the dedupe and all of the other goodies coming with 5. Wrong. The web interface was very clunky. Never new if a backup job was going to pass. We were running a couple of cores on 3 identical pieces of hardware (Dell R710, dual procs, 24GB RAM, 15 SAS). It was just sluggish. From August to November (That’s when I pulled the plug) their were several new builds and things just got worse. 2 builds actually hung during the upgrade process resulting in having to rebuild cores and restore the registry so the Repositories would reattach. It was all just a headache. I never spent so much of my time on a backup solution. The documentation was lacking detail and best practices and support wasn’t very helpful. I have a buddy at Dell and he said that we weren’t alone with AppAssure 5 issues. If you look around the Storage and Backup forums you’ll see. On the other hand you will also see people who are happy with AppAssure although some of them may still be Replay 4 customers. YMMV. Sounds like it was rushed out for the Linux support. I really wanted it to work but in the end it just wasn’t worth the time anymore. We are really loyal to Dell and in the end my Dell team took care of us.

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I have many clients that are running BE2012 successfully. That being said… There is no perfect backup product. There will always be some speed bumps along the way. What is critical to backups is reliability, support, and most importantly integrity of your data. I would recommend evaluating the product yourself, and finding a trusted reseller that will introduce you to some customers running so you can ask them.

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Thanks for all of the Unitrends mentions!

David - Are there any other requirements, other than block-level backup, that you have?

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That was my primary concern. I’ll also need the ability to backup Exchange and SQL Server

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Great to hear Alexander! As always, hit me up if you need anything.

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Unitrends has native agents for both Exchange and SQL. Are you virtualized? Do you have any retention or archiving requirements?

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I haven’t made any firm decisions yet but I’m working with a Unitrends rep to see what it will do and what it costs. I expect to evaluate other systems as well. The responses from everyone have been very informative. Thanks everybody.

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David - Thank you for considering Unitrends. Please let me know if there is anything that I can help you with.