Backup And Disaster Recovery (BDR) Solutions Product Reviews - Table Of Contents
Article By Jay McCall, networking and managed services editor
Testing By Eric Brown, CEO, and
Kevin Danis, Technical Manager, Remote Technology Management
A managed services provider (MSP) evaluates seven Backup And Disaster Recovery (BDR) solutions and shares the pros and cons of each.
There are a lot of services an MSP can sell its customers, but almost every MSP includes BDR services as one of its core offerings. For this month’s product review, Business Solutions once again turned to MSP Remote Technology Management (RTM). CEO Eric Brown and Technical Manager Kevin Danis tested seven BDR solutions in their Massachusetts test lab over a two-week period, investing more than 40 hours. True to RTM’s conclusion when it tested RMM (remote monitoring and management) products for our January issue, Brown says, “There is no single solution that meets every MSP’s needs perfectly.” To that end, we share highlights of RTM’s tests of the following vendors: Asigra, Axcient, CharTec, Datto, KineticD, StorageCraft, and Unitrends. The MSP met with key product experts from each of the above vendor companies and went through the onboarding process with each one.
Click Here To Read The Testing Methodology
-- Click Here To Read The Side-By-Side Product Comparison Article --
Individual BDR Product Reviews
|
|
Asigra has the most thorough onboarding process out of all the BDRs we reviewed. Their program takes 90 days from start to finish and includes partner support such as assistance writing a business plan, generating marketing collateral, and education about specific vertical markets. |
|
|
All calls with their support went well. They gave us a demonstration of their virtualization platform, and explained all the features clearly. They seemed to be very knowledgeable. The thing we really liked about Axcient is that because they’re agentless, and they can backup Mac laptops and desktops. |
|
|
Customer server was great. Part of the installation entails calling their support center and establishing a time to complete the BDR setup. They quickly scheduled the install and started on time. They completed the install and started the initial backup for us. |
|
|
Customer service is excellent when it comes to the appliance and the backup agent. All answers were correct and received quickly via their ticket system (accessible to only the reseller), and they have a well-documented knowledge base, which is also accessible to the reseller only. |
|
|
KineticD seems to be in a whole other category of backup than the other vendors. First, it offers continuous file-based backups on applications such as Exchange, SharePoint, SQL databases, and QuickBooks, plus it offers image-based backups for VMware- and Hyper-V-based virtual machines. |
|
|
StorageCraft BDR Solution Review The StorageCraft solution is a software solution only. The benefit of this is that there is no hardware that you have to purchase to get started. You can also control where you would like to replicate the data. You can choose to replicate the backups to a USB drive, your own data center (using StorageCraft software and an FTP client), or directly to one of their data centers. |
|
|
Unitrends provides partners with the ability to set backup intervals in 1-minute increments, meaning you could have a 6-minute interval or 17-minute interval. This is nice if you have a specific requirement from the customer. Most of the other vendors have a list of backup intervals that they support, such as 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 1 hour. |
