Think All BDRs Are Equal? Think Again.

By The Business Solutions Network

Here's a sneak peek into the testing that's currently underway on seven hybrid backup solutions, which will be featured in the March 2013 issue of Business Solutions magazine. I spoke with our tester, Eric Brown, CEO of Remote Technology Management, this week, and he shared some interesting feedback . "After testing StorageCraft and seeing how well their product performed and how much flexibility they offer regarding off-site backups, I could see where it would make sense for an MSP to rent storage space from a cloud data center and start reselling their own cloud services. Right now, we're considering using StorageCraft for some of our clients' laptops, unless one of the other software-based BDR vendors turns out to have a superior product." At the time of my call with Brown, he had yet to test Asigra, CharTec, KineticD, and Unitrends.

One other highlight Brown shared with me was how unique Axcient was among the BDR solutions. "They are the only one we've tested so far that's agentless. All you need to do is enter the IP address of a supported operating system you want to back up, and it does the rest. Plus, they can back up Mac PCs and laptops, which is something none of the others offer. We have one client that's completely Mac based. And, what we've had to do to back up their data in the past we've used their devices as an iSCSI target for a product called Time Machine, and that's been a very clunky procedure to say the least. The Axcient BDR solution identified all the Mac devices and backed them up with no problems."

One of the big tests Brown was just getting started on is the bare metal restore, which is the process of reformatting a computer from scratch after a catastrophic failure. Could it be possible that the results from this test could change his initial opinions on the BDR products he's looked at? Will any of the other vendors surpass his current expectations and become preferred vendors in the near future? Stay tuned for this and a whole lot more.