Distinguishing Features of Large, Midsize, and Small Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions

This report was written on December 9, 2021 by Jerome M. Wendt, president and founder, DCIG LLC.

Distinguishing Features of Large, Midsize, and Small Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions

VMware offers APIs that backup software may use to integrate with vCenter to centralize and administer data protection. Backup providers may also leverage separate vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection (VADP) and Storage vMotion features. These APIs accelerate and simplify the backup software’s deployment and the ongoing VM backup and recovery management.

These integrations with and leveraging of the VMware APIs influence which types of enterprise environments these backup solutions best fit. DCIG just recently completed and released TOP 5 reports on large, and midsize, enterprise vSphere backup solutions with a small enterprise edition forthcoming shortly. Here are distinguishing characteristics of each type.

Large Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
1 Leverage VADP in VM backup and recovery. All large enterprise backup solutions universally incor?porate VADP into their vSphere backup offering. Backup solutions targeted at smaller environments certainly can and do support VADP. However, organizations must first confirm if those solutions support it and how they implement it.
2 Protect the data of VMware-specific applications. VMware offers multiple software tools to help large enterprises orchestrate and manage their virtual infrastructure. These include tools such as vCenter Server, vRealize Orchestrator, and vSphere with Tanzu Objects, among others. These tools create their own application data. All these backup solutions offer options to protect data stored in one or more of these VMware-specific applications.
3 Support for multiple types of backup media targets. Ransomware’s prevalence has forced enterprises to rethink how and where they store their backup data. Ransomware attacks may target backup software and its backup data stores. These attacks may put backup data stored on direct- and/or network-attached disk storage at risk.

All large enterprise backup solutions help mitigate this risk by supporting multiple other backup media targets. These include object storage in public and private clouds and potentially tape. Stored on these alternative media types, backup software can take advantage of the data immutability features they offer.

Midsize Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
1 Optimized for the backup and recovery of vSphere environnments with up to 10,000 VMs. Some of the solutions covered can backup vSphere environments with more than 10,000 VMs. However, 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 OSs the backup software protects comes into play in midsize enterprises. All these solutions protect the primary OSs 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.

Small Enterprise vSphere Backup Solutions
1 Optimized for the backup and recovery of vSphere environments with up to 1,000 VMs. Some of the solutions covered can backup vSphere environments with more than 1,000 VMs. However, these solutions and their feature sets most appropriate for vSphere environments with 50 to 1,000 VMs.
2 Focus on protection of Windows guest OSs. Small enterprises largely host their applications, data, and workloads on Windows platforms. All these backup solutions protect recent versions of Windows Server (2012, 2016, & 2019) as well as Windows 10.
3 Integrate with and create application-consistent backups for leading Microsoft applications. Nearly 90% of these solutions integrate with and can create application consistent backups of the Exchange and SQL Server.
4 Support for replication. More small enterprises want to copy and store backup data to another on-premises location or off-site for DR purposes. Of these solutions, nearly 90% support replication of backup data.
5 Provide multiple restore options for VM file data and images. Using almost any of these solutions, small enterprises may perform multiple types of restores. Nearly 90% support granular file and folder restores. About 80% support VM image restores to the same vSphere host, a different vSphere host, or restoring the VM with a different name.
6 Same-day and online support. About 80% of these solutions provide small enterprises with access to support the same day they initiate a call. The same percentage also provide an online knowledgebase they may use to freely research issues they may encounter.