Backup Solutions: Veeam vs. Acronis

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All businesses can experience data loss, whether as a result of hardware failure, natural disaster, or malicious attack. Even cloud storage can experience downtime or data corruption if not backed up properly. For any business, downtime can be disastrous.

Businesses also rely on their backups as a means of ensuring continuity and preventing financial losses in case of catastrophic disasters such as fire, flood, or utility power outages. A backup solution offers enterprises multiple ways to retrieve lost or corrupted files so that enterprise workflows aren’t interrupted.  

Backup platforms offer the following functions:

• Granular restore allows administrators to restore specific files or folders from within an entire backup, rather than an entire system image. This granularity is particularly helpful when there are several versions of a file you need to recover but only one version was backed up during an incremental backup operation. 
• Snapshot technology ensures you can safely make updates without compromising your data or needing daily backups for every file changed throughout your organization. 
• Replication lets you protect both physical and virtual infrastructure in multiple locations by copying backup data to remote servers, storage arrays, external hard drives, or even another cloud provider. 
• Disaster recovery (DR) capabilities give IT managers confidence they’ll be able to continue operations in case their primary facility becomes unavailable due to disaster or any other unplanned situation.  
• Comprehensive reporting gives admins insight into not only how backups are performing but what data has been lost or corrupted as well as what kind of protection is being provided overall for different departments and business units. 
• Archiving helps ensure organizations comply with regulatory requirements such as SOX, HIPAA, and FISMA among others. 
• Compliance features ensure firms stay in line with laws regarding email retention periods and when personal information needs to be deleted from backup media. 

Also read: Best Enterprise Backup Software & Solutions 2021

Veeam Backup and Replication

Veeam Backup & Replication tool offers backup and recovery solutions designed to protect and recover Hyper-V, VMware, and physical machines. The solution offers quick VM-level recovery and scalability with enterprise-class performance and efficiency. It supports both storage snapshots as well as integration with Veeam’s cloud backup as a service offering.

Veeam’s backup solution allows users to restore their data from a central location. It comes with features such as the real-time recovery of workstations, instant file recovery from individual files and folders, full VM recovery from backups, data deduplication, and replication tasks. 

Key Differentiators

• Continuous Data Protection (CDP). Veeam CDP provides continuous backup of VMs and recovery options for any data change ensuring protection even if their associated host fails, offering real-time visibility and recovery point optimization. Users can choose to schedule automatic backups or set up a retention policy and then restore data directly from vCenter Server or vCloud Director.
• Ransomware protection. Veeam ransomware protection protects virtual machines from a ransomware attack by performing a proactive backup of a VM’s files. It protects users’ backups from encryption ransomware by storing backup files in repositories that are not vulnerable to most types of ransomware.
• Instant recovery. Veeam’s instant recovery technology allows users to perform a bare-metal restore of a VM directly from a backup file. It does not require any agents on the source or target machines, unlike traditional file-level backups that require VMs to be rehydrated. This way it provides instant recovery that is also fully automated and consistent with a complete granularity of data protection—right down to individual files and folders.
• Veeam-powered BaaS & DRaaS. Veeam has partnered with numerous DRaaS and BaaS providers so that Veeam Backup & Replication users can leverage hosted secondary site infrastructure. These secondary site infrastructures are managed by professionals who enable service providers to offer DRaaS and BaaS of mission-critical applications directly from their backup infrastructure. It makes recovering virtual machines after a disaster a lot easier.
• Veeam agentless: Veeam agentless backup & replication uses image-based backup, which reduces resources consumption by up to 80% compared to traditional backups. No agent is required for backup, which means there’s nothing to install, no management overhead, and high availability is possible even on computers with no agents installed.

Pricing:

Veeam offers a 30-day free trial. You can contact the sales team for detailed pricing.

Read next: Cloud Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Backup

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is a comprehensive solution for backup and disaster recovery. It safeguards physical, virtual, cloud-based, mobile, and system resources across on-premises and public cloud environments. It combines backup with AI-based anti-malware, antivirus, and endpoint security management and enables secure data exchange with remote users, which reduces complexity while improving productivity and lowering operational costs.

Key Differentiators

Data Protection. Acronis delivers a complete range of security and management tools that protect users’ digital assets from ransomware, malware, and cyber-attacks. It ensures that company data stays safe in the event of a disaster recovery situation.

Business continuity. Acronis’ cloud-based disaster recovery solution ensures users can always access all of its data, regardless of where it is stored. With Acronis Full availability, the enterprise won’t be down if a physical or virtual server fails; data is continuously replicated to a second site and automatically recovered in case of failure. It enables easy testing and failover. 

Fast backup. With fast backup, if files are added or changed, Acronis updates only the block that has changed. This allows for non-stop backups, so users don’t have to take their system down for backups. If disaster strikes, Acronis can quickly recover lost data, replacing all users’ files with their versions from the latest backup.

Pricing:

Acronis Cyber Protect prices vary. Pricing depends on the user’s plan/edition. Acronis cyber protect essentials starts from $59.00, Acronis cyber protect standards start from $79.00, Acronis cyber protect advanced starts from $119.00, Acronis cyber backup standards starts from $69.00, and Acronis cyber backup advanced starts from $99.00.

Veeam vs. Acronis

Choosing the Right Backup Solution 

Disaster recovery and backup and recovery solutions are some of the most important pieces of any business’s IT strategy. As such, it’s important to choose the right backup and recovery solution with care. 

When it comes to data backup, having solutions that can cover your RPO and RTO is of utmost importance. Both Veeam and Acronis offer enterprises good backup solutions to protect their data. 

They serve customers in different ways, so to make an informed decision on which product to use (or if using both is right for your business), you should evaluate their unique features, and how well they fit into your IT infrastructure and meet your business’s objectives and needs.

Read next: Cloud Disaster Recovery Best Practices