Top 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions

This article, published on November 18, 2021, was written by Jerome M. Wendt, president and founder, DCIG LLC.

2022-23 DCIG TOP 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions Report

DCIG announced the availability of the inaugural 2022-23 DCIG TOP 5 Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions report.

This report unveils the Top 5 midsize enterprise backup solutions that organizations should consider for protecting their applications, data, and workloads hosted on vSphere.

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 most 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 efficiency.
VMware also makes multiple tools available to complement vSphere to assist midsize enterprises in deploying and managing it.
Consider:
• VMware’s vRealize Suite visualizes virtual infrastructures to create and simplify virtual workflows within enterprises.
• vSphere HA and Fault Tolerance help enterprises create and maintain virtual data centers with uninterrupted 24x7x365 availability.

These tools and others from VMware position large 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.

Distinguishing Features of Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
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 evaluated solutions can backup vSphere environments with more than 10,000 VMs. However, DCIG finds the solutions and their feature sets most appropriate for vSphere environments with 1,000 to 10,000 VMs.
2 Support leading guest OSes. 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, and 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 network-attached storage devices 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.

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

The general categories under which the features evaluated for these solutions fell included:
• Backup administration
• Backup capabilities
• Configuration, licensing, and pricing
• Recovery and restore
• Service and support

Based on these criteria, DCIG awarded the following midsize enterprise vSphere backup solutions a Top 5 ranking (in alphabetical order):
• Acronis Cyber Protect
• Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP)
• HYCU for VMware (Top 5 solution profile linkhttps://bit.ly/HYCU_mevv_top5)
• Quest NetVault Plus (Top 5 solution profile linkhttps://bit.ly/Quest_NV_MEVv_TOP5SP)
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