Backup And Disaster Recovery (BDR) Solutions Product Review Part 2 - Table Of Contents
By The Business Solutions Network
Testing By Eric Brown, CEO, Remote Technology Management
A managed services provider (MSP) evaluates three Backup And Disaster Recovery (BDR) solutions and shares the pros and cons of each.
When we launched the first BDR product review in the March 2013 issue of Business Solutions magazine, we had no idea that it would become one of the most downloaded articles of the year. This is a testament to the fact that backup and recovery is a core service all customers need, regardless of the size of their business or their vertical market. As a follow-up to the original test (which included Asigra, Axcient, CharTec, Datto, KineticD, StorageCraft, and Unitrends), Eric Brown, CEO of Remote Technologies Management (RTM), recently tested the following three vendors: Acronis, Barracuda, and Continuum. (Note: STORServer was not able to have its product tested within our deadline, but the basic spec sheet details are included in the matrix in the side-by-side comparison article).
To ensure consistency between the previous test and this one, we applied the same test procedures. Brown and I interviewed each vendor prior to the test, and he was added as a new reseller partner, so he could experience each vendor’s onboarding process. Next, over a two-week period he conducted tests on each BDR appliance, which included an image-based backup, a local virtualization recovery test, and a bare metal restore. Below are highlights of our interviews and Brown’s testing.
-- Click Here To Read The Side-By-Side Product Comparison Article --
Individual BDR Product Reviews
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The Acronis Backup & Recovery product offered an impressive breadth of functionality, including an easy-to-use setup interface, image- and file-based backups, support for a wide range of virtualization environments, diverse off-site capabilities, a bare metal restore to dissimilar hardware, agent-based and agentless backup options, and Apple desktop/laptop backup capabilities. |
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Barracuda stood out in the area of support, offering technical support out of San Jose, CA, which Brown found very helpful during his initial setup of the Barracuda backup appliance. Barracuda also offered the most flexibility with regard to off-site backup capabilities, allowing backups to the Barracuda cloud, another cloud of the VAR’s/MSP’s choosing, or even allowing customers with multiple sites to perform backups among their own facilities. |
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The biggest difference with Continuum was that the vendor bundles RMM and 24/7 NOC support with its BDR Vault. While Brown felt this created a price advantage over other similar BDRs (e.g. CharTec, Datto, and StorageCraft), some MSPs might have reservations about working with a NOC support center that’s based outside the U.S. One other area in which Continuum stood out from the other two vendors was that it offered the only appliance that could start a VM on the backup appliance, which would give a VAR/MSP extra time to repair the customer’s primary server. |
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STORServer BDR Solution Review STORServer was not able to have its product tested within our deadline, but the basic spec sheet details are included in the individual review sidebar along with other information collected from the vendor. |
