Top 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions

This report is authored by Jerome M Wendt, president and founder, DCIG, LLC.

DCIG Top 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions

• Unitrends Unified BCDR
• Acronis Cyber Protect
• Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP)
• HYCU for VMware
• Quest NetVault Plus

Solutions evaluated:
1. Acronis Cyber Protect
2. Altaro VM Backup and Replication
3. Arcserve ShadowXafe – Solo
4. Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP)
5. Asigra Cloud Backup
6. Dell Avamar
7. Druva Phoenix
8. HPE Zerto Platform
9. IBM Spectrum Protect
10. Infrascale Backup and DR
11. Metallic by Commvault
12. Nakivo Backup and Replication
13. Quest NetVault Plus
14. Quest Rapid Recovery
15. Unitrends Unified BCDR
16. Veritas Backup Exec

Solutions featured evaluated:
• Backup administration
• Backup capabilities
• Configuration, licensing, and pricing
• Recovery and restore
• Service and support

vSphere Leads in Enterprise Server Virtualization
Analyst market reports that track server virtualization software indicate it will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. These reports also find vSphere maintains its lead as the server virtualization platform midsize enterprises frequently use.

Server virtualization in general and vSphere specifically have transformed how enterprises manage their physical infrastructure. Used to host multiple applications on a single physical machine, vSphere simultaneously lowers costs while increasing operational ef ciency.

VMware also makes multiple software tools available to complement vSphere to assist midsize enterprises in deploying and managing it. Of VMware’s available software tools, vCenter Server represents the one that midsize enterprises may most likely utilize to centralize vSphere management. Many also use VMware HA and vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to improve the availability and manage their vSphere environment.

These tools and others from VMware position midsize enterprises to create stable, high performing virtual infrastructures. However, they must still protect the VM applications, data, and workloads hosted on vSphere. This necessitates they acquire backup software specifically tuned for this task.

Backing up and Recovering vSphere VMs
Midsize enterprise vSphere backup solutions capitalize on specific features VMware offers to backup and recover VMs. These include VMware vCenter integration and leveraging its vSphere Storage APIs-Data Protection (VADP) and Storage vMotion features, among others.

Their use of these features typically appears in the following 3 ways:
• Backup and recovery management within VMware vCenter. 75% of midsize enterprise vSphere backup solutions directly integrate with VMware vCenter. Through this integration, administrators may manage backup within the vCenter console without separately logging into the backup software. Some backup solutions make all their function-ality available through vCenter. Others offer just a subset, such as the ability to schedule and view backup jobs and perform recoveries.
• Non-disruptive VM backups. 69% of midsize enterprise vSphere backup offerings leverage vSphere VADP feature to perform agentless VM backups. This feature minimizes the need to put a backup agent on all VMs. Using VADP, the backup software tracks changed blocks in each VM. It then only backups the blocks that have changed since the last backup. This facilitates the ability to perform non-disruptive backups and to backup more frequently since backups incur less overhead.
• Instant VM restores. A VM or VMs may go down due to user error or perhaps a ransomware attack. In those circumstances, enterprises need to recover the VM quickly. To accelerate recoveries, 88% of these solutions offer an instant recovery option.

While implementation nuances exist between backup solutions, most initiate the VM recovery while it still resides on backup storage. This permits the VM to resume production operations, though possibly with degraded performance. Once restarted, the backup solution may use vMotion or some other technique to copy the VM’s data back onto production storage. This restoration may occur in the background even as the VM continues to run.

Distinguishing Features of Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
DCIG identied over 30 solutions suitable for protecting applications, data, and workloads on vSphere. Of these, 16 met analyst’s definition of a midsize enterprise vSphere backup solution.

Attributes that help distinguish midsize enterprise backup solutions from those that target small and large enterprises include:
1. Optimized for the backup and recovery of vSphere environments with up to 10,000 VMs. Some of the solutions covered can backup vSphere environments with more than 10,000 VMs. However, the analyst finds these solutions and their feature sets most appropriate for vSphere environments with 1,000 to 10,000 VMs.
2. Support leading guest OSs. The breadth of guest OSes the backup software protects comes into play in midsize enterprises. All these solutions protect the primary OSes midsize enterprises likely possess. For instance, they protect all recent versions of Windows Server (2012, 2016, & 2019). The majority (90+%) also support the Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE Linux OSes.
3. Integrate with and create application-consistent backups for leading Microsoft applications. 90+% of these solutions integrate with and can create application consistent backups of the following on-premises Microsoft applications: Active Directory, Exchange, and SQL Server.
4. Support for block, file, and cloud storage backup media targets. All these solutions support using local block and NAS for storing backups. They also support using off-premises, S3-compliant cloud storage to store backup data. Of these solutions, 90% have gone the extra step to certify AWS S3 as a cloud storage target.
5. Provide multiple restore options for VM file data and images. Using almost any of these solutions, midsize enterprises may perform multiple types of restores. All support granular file and folder restores. They also all support VM image restores to the same vSphere host, a different vSphere host, or restoring the VM with a different name.
6. Email, phone, and web chat support. All these solutions afford midsize enterprises the option to contact them for support using email, phone, or web chat.

How the Top 5 Solutions Differ from Other Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
The Top 5 solutions differ from the other midsize enterprise vSphere backup solutions in at least the following six ways:
• Broader support for the protection of Linux guest OSes supported by vSphere. vSphere formally supports 7 different Linux releases as guest OSes. Each of these 5 backup solutions support the protection of 5 of them: CentOS, Debian, Oracle, RHEL, and SUSE. Only Amazon Linux 2 and Canonical Ubuntu Linux are not universally supported by these 5 backup solutions.
• Universal backup support for Microsoft 365. More midsize enterprises than ever host their Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data in Microsoft 365. Each of these ve backup solutions provide the option to backup and recover Microsoft 365 online. Less than 50% of the other backup solutions offer an option to protect Microsoft 365 online.
• Universal backup support for Oracle Database. Oracle Database remains a database commonly used by midsize enterprises. Each of these 5 backup solutions provide one or more options to backup and recover Oracle Database. About 70% of the other solutions offer the option to backup and recover Oracle Database.
• Universal backup support for VMware vCenter Server metadata. vSphere vCenter Server has its own set of metadata that midsize enterprises may want to backup and recover in the event it becomes compromised. Any of these 5 solutions give midsize enter-prises the opportunity to back it up and recover it. In comparison, only about 35% of the other evaluated backup solutions offer the option to protect vSphere.
• Leverage vSphere vCenter Server, VADP, VADP CBT, and vSphere Storage vMotion for backups. Midsize enterprises want to centralize, simplify, and accelerate their VM backups and recoveries. These 4 features available as part of vSphere or as optional licensable features equip midsize enterprises to accomplish that objective. All 5 of these solutions integrate with or support these 4 VMware features.
• Universal support for the most common backup storage targets. Midsize enterprises need more storage options than ever to control backup storage costs and shelter data from ransomware attacks. These Top 5 solutions each support all common backup storage targets. In addition to local disk targets, they all support tape; S3-compliant, off-premises, purpose-built clouds; and, on-premises, S3-compliant private cloud targets.

Differences between the Top 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
The Top 5 solutions differ in how they deliver their respective offering for vSphere backup in at least the following 5 ways:
• Deployment options. Midsize enterprises will need to consider how they will deploy these backup solutions. Four of 5 offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) and software license options. These solutions also give midsize enterprises the choice of a physical appliance, a virtual appliance, a converged solution, a hyperconverged solution, and an on-premises SaaS. Two also offer backup server and proxy servers and backup server and media agent options.
• Licensing options. These providers all embrace new options to simplify the task of software licensing. However, they differ in the options they embrace. Depending on the solution selected, midsize enterprises may choose from capacity-based or per-VM licensing options which includes all or most of their features. However, not every provider offers every licensing option. Further those that do offer multiple licensing options may not make all the licensing options available or license them differently.
• Support for all officially supported vSphere guest OSs. Many midsize enterprises may use some version of Windows Server or Linux OS release on a vSphere guest OS. However, vSphere officially supports 16 different OSs as guest OSs. These include macOS, OS X, FreeBSD, Novell NetWare, Sun Solaris, and Kinvolk Flatcar Container Linux. The Top 5 backup solutions differ in their ability to backup these various other OSs hosted on vSphere guest OSes.
• Creating application-consistent backups of various database types. Oracle Database and SQL Server often represent the most common databases used by midsize enterprises. However, more midsize enterprises leverage databases such as MariaDB, MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SAP HANA. If needing to protect any of these databases, the Top 5 solutions differ in their ability to back them up.
• Integration and use of other vSphere features. vSphere offers multiple features to deliver and manage data protection, fault tolerance, and HA for applications and VMs. These include options such as vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Fault Tolerance (FT), HA (HA), and Tagging. These solutions differ in their utilization of these features to manage the backup and protection of applications and VMs.

Top 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solution Profiles
The following Top 5 midsize enterprise vSphere backup solution profiles highlight various ways each offering distinguishes itself. These differentiators represent some of the distinctive techniques each solution offers to deliver vSphere data protection. These identifying features of each solution may better meet the specific needs of an individual midsize enterprise.

Unitrends Unified BCDR
The solution harnesses firm’s expertise across backup appliances, backup software, BC, and DR. It provides midsize enterprises with the compo- nents they need to protect their vSphere environment. It simultaneously lays the foundation for them to implement strategic BC and DR initiatives locally, in the cloud, or both.

The following Unitrends Unified BCDR features highlight its strengths that help distinguish it from other Top 5 offerings:
• Self-healing SaaS remediation platform that updates physical backup appliance hardware and software. Unitrends uses its Helix software platform across its physical appliances which automatically updates itself. This frees midsize enterprises to focus on backup without having to worry about needed but ongoing, cumbersome appliance maintenance concerns.
• Available for all Unitrends appliances, midsize enterprises may subscribe to it in 2 ways. The Standard version of Helix automates appliance updates. The Premium edition performs this task plus detects and remediates Windows VSS as well as HDD and SSD disk issues.
• Offers copy data management options to facilitate BC, DR, and lab testing. Unitrends offers 3 direct copy access modes to copy data once backups complete for VM testing and validation.
• In the default Run Test mode, Unitrends first stands up VMs before automatically tearing them down once testing completes. Midsize enterprises often use this mode to demonstrate RPO/ RTO compliance, look for malware, or examine application behavior. Midsize enterprises may schedule Unitrends to auto- matically spin up and shut these VMs down on a schedule.
• The Failover mode facilitates orchestrating failovers to recovery networks.
• The Instant Lab mode enables creation of fully functioning but isolated testing labs that possess copies of production data. Midsize enterprises often use this option to scan for malware, run compute intensive reports, or perform business analytics.
• Maintains VM replicas for near-instant, full recoveries of failed VMware VMs. Unitrends’ VM replica feature ensures that midsize enterprises can instantly bring up a VM should a production VM fail. This feature differs in a slight but significant way from the instant recovery feature other solutions offer. Unitrends uses the most recent backup of the original VM as the source of the data for the replica. It then creates the replica VM on a specified ESXi host. Unitrends configures the replica as a cold stand-by so it consumes no compute resources. It then keeps it current by queuing a replica restore job each time a backup successfully completes.

Acronis Cyber Protect
Acronis provides midsize enterprises with a single solution to meet both their combined cybersecurity and vSphere data protection needs. It brought backup and cybersecurity together in its Cyber Protect offering to help midsize enterprises deal with modern security threats. In particular, the product enables midsize enterprises to detect and recover from ransomware whether it resides in their backup or production data.

Cyber Protect offers the following features that help distinguish it from other Top 5 offerings:
• Provides proactive, active, and reactive ransomware protection. Simply hosting applications, data, and workloads on VMware VMs does not exempt them from ransomware attacks. Midsize enterprises must prepare to detect and recover from ransomware even on VMs. Cyber Protect uses a single agent to deliver its data protection and cybersecurity features. This combined functionality scans and monitors for ransomware across both production and backup VM data stores. Should it detect ransomware in production data stores, it can automatically stop the attack and restore infected data. It can scan backups of entire Windows machines or Windows disks or volumes during restores. These scans check for any latent forms of ransomware in the backups.3
• Automated monitoring and rebalancing of VM backup jobs. Events may occur in one’s environment that result in backup jobs negatively impacting backup or production performance, or both. To help mitigate this possibility, Cyber Protect automatically monitors and rebalances backup jobs across managed environment. Cyber Protect deploys a virtual appliance, its Agent for VMware, on each vCenter host. This agent initially optimizes overall system backup performance across available agents. The Cyber Protect management server then monitors backup perfor- mance across these agents. Over time, events occur that impact backup performance, such as adding new VMs or an Agent for VMware being removed. Should the management server detect a backup load imbalance of greater than 20% occurring, it acts. It redistributes the backup jobs across available agents. However, Cyber Protect can bind specific VM backup jobs to a specific agent to prevent them from moving to another agent.
• Maintains replicas of VMs for instant recoveries. Cyber Protect can create an exact copy or replica of a VM and keep it in sync with the primary VM. Started either manually or on a speci ed schedule, it first creates a full copy of the VM. It then performs subse- quent replications incrementally using VMware’s CBT feature.

Replicas make the most sense for midsize enterprises that need to restart an application faster should the primary application fail. They may clone multiple VMs to another host or datastore in the same site or a remote site. Once replicated, they may use test replicas to verify they work correctly or failover to them. They may even use them as the source for backups to remove the backup load from the primary VM.5

Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP)
It specifically targets meeting the virtual backup and recovery needs of midsize enterprises. Recognized as a Top 5 solution for protecting vSphere VMs in midsize enterprises, it clearly meets that stated goal. However, UDP continues to mature and evolve to meet the newest data protection needs of midsize enterprises. These needs now often surface in how well backup software prepares them to stop and recover from ransomware attacks.

The following three UDP features help differentiate it from other Top 5 offerings.
• Combined cybersecurity and data protection solutions. Recognizing the threat that ransomware poses to midsize enterprises, Arcserve has partnered with Sophos. It now offers Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server with its UDP software and Arcserve appliances. This approach provides midsize enterprises with a combined backup and threat detection solution to deter and recover from ransomware attacks.
• Support for multiple immutable cloud storage offerings. More strains of ransomware target backup data stores during an attack to encrypt or delete it to prevent recoveries. Storing backups in an immutable or unalterable data store preserves the data for recovery efforts.

In that vein, the company continues to support more immutable cloud storage offerings to address concerns about cost and location. It offers its own OneXafe immutable scale-out storage solution for midsize enterprises needing a private storage cloud.

It also supports the Object Lock feature available from general purpose (AWS, Azure Blob) and purpose-built (Wasabi) public cloud storage providers. These give midsize enterprises multiple ways in which to secure their backups based on their specific cost constraints and geographic preferences.

• Offers 2 instant recovery options for VMs. Due to ransomware’s impact, midsize enterprises place a higher premium on a backup solution’s instant recovery capabilities. UDP offers 2 instant recovery options through its Instant VM (IVM) and Virtual Standby (VSB) machine features.

Using IVM, UDP creates a VM on a Hyper-V or vSphere hypervisor and reads the virtual disk data directly from its de-duped backup repository. This eliminates the need for any pre-data conversions or downtime should an unplanned recovery needs to occur. It simultaneously provides instant access to applications and data.

The virtual standby (VSB) option differs in that it pre-populates VM disks after every incremental backup. UDP converts a VM’s recovery points into a virtual disk VM format usable by a hypervisor or on a cloud platform. VSB can recover a VM to a vSphere, Hyper-V, or Nutanix AHV hypervisor or to the AWS or Azure cloud. Once restored, the VSB VM may perform as well as a production VM.

HYCU for VMware
It represents a relatively new entrant into the vSphere backup solution marketplace. While new, HYCU intimately knows midsize enterprise backup. It has previously built and delivered backup solutions for AWS, Azure, GCP, and Nutanix. It leverages this expertise and experience to deliver an enterprise grade backup solution for vSphere.

HYCU for VMware offers the following features that help distinguish it from other Top 5 offerings:
• Automatically detects and creates application-appropriate backup jobs. HYCU does more than simply discover and protect VMs running in a vSphere environment. It also discovers, identi es, and sets up protection for the applications each VM hosts. During the discovery and identification phase, the firm detects application versions, other hosts where the application installs specific components, and the role of each host. It then configures backups to protect all application data across all application hosts in a recoverable, consistent state. It can then perform entire application restores or may optionally restore only specific application components depending on the application.

• Runs as-a-service in an existing VMware cluster. HYCU for VMware runs as a service in an existing VMware cluster which mini- mally accomplishes the following 3 objectives:

• Accelerates deployments by installing the HYCU OVF package into an existing VMware environment.

• Eliminates the need and cost of introducing a physical backup server.

• Avoids the need to deploy and manage anti-virus, OS, and database software on the backup server.

• Facilities immediate implementation of intelligent backup and recovery policies. HYCU’s inclusion of 3 predefined backup policies further spotlights its focus for fast backup implementations. HYCU for VMware natively includes 3 default backup policies: Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

Backup policies automatically get assigned when HYCU discovers the applications or data each VM contains. It may assign VMs with critical applications a Gold policy that performs a backups every four hours. Alternatively, HYCU may assign a lower priority application a Bronze policy with a backup occurring every 24 hours.

It carries this frequency of backup over to creating the appropriate recovery policies. It automatically positions and stages data on different storage tiers based upon their assigned policies. For example, enterprises may recover applications with a Gold policy in four hours. Those assigned a Bronze policy it may recover in 24 hours.

Quest NetVault Backup
Quest NetVault Plus represents Quest broadening its original NetVault offering to deliver a single, more comprehensive data protection solution. The firm incorporates its associated de-duping software-defined secondary storage (SDSS) solution, QoreStor, to create the NetVault Plus backup solution. As one, they accelerate vSphere VMs backups and equip enterprises to store de-duped backups in fully virtualized environments.

Quest NetVault Plus offers the following features that help distinguish it from other Top 5 offerings:
• Accelerates and optimizes VM backups. NetVault Plus leverages Quest’s Rapid Data Access (RDA) agent which enterprises may deploy on VMs to accelerate backups.

NetVault Plus achieves some of the industry’s highest backup throughput performance benchmarks using the RDA protocol in conjunction with QoreStor. Using these two solutions together, NetVault can attain backup throughput rates as high as 20TB/hour.
• Minimizes data backed up on source VMs. NetVault Plus leverages 2 options, Active Block Mapping (ABM) and Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to monitor and track data within VMs. Using these 3 agentless features, it only backups changed data that require backup.

Like other offerings, NetVault Plus uses VMware’s CBT to monitor and track blocks of data that change between VM backups. It then augments VMware CBT with its ABM feature. ABM improves upon CBT by identifying only those active blocks requiring backup. This allows NetVault to ignore page files and blocks with deleted files when performing differential and incremental backups. Once backed up to QoreStor, midsize enterprises can reasonably expect to realize about a 20:1 de-dupe ratio.
• Preserves VMware’s use of thin disk provisioning during VM restores. Many midsize enterprises preserve storage space by hosting their VMs on thinly provisioned storage. However, during a VM restore, this setting can get ignored. VMware automatically converts a VM with a Thin Provisioning drive into a Thick Provision Eager Zeroed drive when restored.

As a result, restored VM images with Thin Provisioned drives consume whatever storage was allocated to it in production. This can result in VM restores consuming more storage than the VMs use in production.

NetVault Plus helps prevent this occurrence. It offers an option to preserve the type of drive used in production by the VM when restoring it. Any VM backup completed using the VMware CBT feature may use this restore option.

Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions Inclusion Criteria
• Protect applications, data, and workloads hosted on and supported by vSphere
• Meets backup and recovery requirements of midsize enterprises
• Solution is shipping and available by August 1, 2021
• Information available to make an informed, defensible decision