Backup Exec 3600 vs Unitrends AppAssure -vs- Unitrends A GLANCE INSIDE: Company Overviews Competitive Analysis Product and Licensing Support Recovery and Restore Monitoring and Management Backup Technology Learn More About Unitrends Unitrends Success Story COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
AppAssure vs Unitrends Company Overviews AppAssure AppAssure s Replay software is best suited for storage specialists who want to focus on high touch backup and who also want to integrate multiple storage, networking, and software components in order to stitch together a solution that meets their needs. This approach is the opposite of Unitrends appliance-based value proposition which wants you to focus on your business instead of on your backup. Unitrends Unitrends offers data protection appliances that provide the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in the industry. Our family of disk-to-disk (D2D) appliances provides unmatched backup and rapid recovery of lost systems, applications, and unstructured and structured data. Our backup, archiving, and cloud-based disaster recovery appliances eliminate the need for multi-vendor software and hardware. Instead, Unitrends provides an integrated, simple, and elegant solution that is designed from the ground-up for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Competitive Analysis Product and Licensing n-restrictive licensing Standard licensing does not include restrictions on features, platforms supported, or per-client fees. Integrated appliance Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance - not just software. Available as physical appliance Available as virtual appliance Available as software only Available as an integrated server, storage, networking, operating system, backup software, archiving software, replication software, and so forth. Available as an integrated operating system, backup software, archiving software, replication software, and so forth as a virtual appliance. Available as a non-integrated software. AppAssure is primarily sold in this manner. Unitrends does not offer nonintegrated software at this time. Support Competitive Analysis Page 2
AppAssure vs Unitrends Supports hardware and software Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance - not just software. AppAssure doesn't do this with their software product. However, Unitrends does this with their physical appliance. Proactive hardware monitoring Standard support includes proactive hardware monitoring. Remote diagnostics Remote diagnostics are available from support. Self-installable The product may be installed by a customer. On-site support On-site support is available. Phone support Telephone support is available. E-mail support E-mail support is available. Online interactive chat support Online interactive chat support is available. Online support form An online support form (or portal) is available. Knowledgebase A knowledgebase is available. User forums Support monitored and managed user forums are available. Video tutorials Video tutorials are offered by the backup vendor. Recovery and Restore Instant recovery for Recovery from a failed Windows server in less than 5 minutes. Windows Recovery from a failed VMware server in less than 5 minutes. Since AppAssure does not leverage VADP, instant re- Instant recovery for Limited VMware covery is limited to virtual machines running the Windows operating system. This includes P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V. Unitrends has integrated dissimilar bare metal restore support. AppAssure Dissimilar bare metal restore requires an additional licensed product to offer this capability. This includes not only Windows but also VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other operating Heterogeneous bare metal systems. AppAssure only supports Windows environments restore whereas Unitrends has integrated bare metal restore support for Windows, Linux, Mac and many other operating systems. AppAssure only supports Windows environments, while Heterogeneous backup Unitrends supports a variety of operating systems, applications, and hypervisors. Monitoring and Management Competitive Analysis Page 3
AppAssure vs Unitrends Appliance-based monitoring and management Single pane of glass Web-based management SNMP/SMTP/alert-based notifications Limited Monitoring and management of data protection software, operating system, storage, server, and other solution components. Monitoring and management of multiple Replay Cores (in the case of AppAssure) or appliances (in the case of Unitrends) from a single web-based user interface. Monitoring and management can be performed via the web. tifications are available via SNMP traps, SMTP e-mail, and alerts. AppAssure only supports SMTP and does not support SNMP trap notifications. Backup Virtual and physical backup Limited Supports virtual and physical environments. AppAssure has limited support for physical environments, largely due to the lack of protection for heterogeneous environments. Heterogeneous backup AppAssure only supports Windows environments, while Unitrends supports a variety of operating systems, applications, and hypervisors. Heterogeneous storage protection Integrated fixed/rotational archiving Continuous incrementals supported VMware CBT (Change Block Tracking) Support for Hyper-V Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) Hyper-V CBT (Change Block Tracking) Limited Support for protecting NAS and SAN volumes. AppAssure only supports SAN and DAS configurations. NAS is not supported by AppAssure. Unitrends supports SANs, NASs and DAS configurations. Integrated disk-to-disk-to-disk, -tape, -SAN, and -NAS for both long-term retention and disaster recovery. Continuous-based incremental backup is available (includes near-cdp snapshot). Support for VMware CBT is available. AppAssure does not leverage the vstorage API for Data Protection (VADP) and relies on the "Smart Agents" to be installed in the guest virtual machines. Protect virtual machines configured in a Clustered Shared Volume configuration. Support for Hyper-V CBT (which Microsoft does not support) is available. AppAssure seems to protect the entire host volumes rather than tracking the changes on the virtual machine hard disks. Application-level backups Application-level backup is available. Differential backups supported Differential backup is available. Direct backup to tape Direct backup to tape (also called D2T) is available. Maximum concurrent backups Limited Unlimited The number of concurrent backups. Competitive Analysis Page 4
AppAssure vs Unitrends Technology Supports agents Supports client-level, agent-based protection where necessary. Supports agentless Supports agentless-based protection where necessary; Unitrends supports agentless-based protection for VMware, NAS storage, and iseries (AS400) environments. Deduplication Supports deduplication; Unitrends supports target-based, byte-level (content-aware) deduplication. AppAssure supports target level, block deduplication. Retention control policies Limited Supports minimum and maximum retention settings. Encryption At least AES-256 level encryption. AppAssure does not support encryption of data. Unitrends encrypts data at rest as well as in-flight to the off-premise appliance. Failover virtualization Supports Windows and VMware instant recovery. Grid-based scalability Backup servers (AppAssure Replay Cores or Unitrends appliances) are configured in a grid for interoperability, monitoring, and management. Integrated symmetric and asymmetric replication Hub-spoke replication Integrated peer-to-peer replication Integrated private cloud replication Integrated public cloud replication AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery. AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery. AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery. AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery. AppAssure does not seem to support public cloud disaster recovery; Unitrends offers Vault2Cloud, which is a multitenant public cloud disaster recovery solution. Unitrends makes this document available for informational purposes only. While we do our best to keep this up-to-date and accurate, we can not and do not represent, warrant or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up-to-date, nor does Unitrends offer any certification or guarantee with respect to the opinions expressed herein. Changing circumstances may change the accuracy of the content herein. Opinions presented in this reflect judgment at the time of publication and are subject to change. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, Unitrends assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or damages resulting from the use of the information herein. Thank you all for the great feedback keep it coming! If you have a question, or believe there is an error in our reporting, please contact us at info@unitrends.com Competitive Analysis Page 5
About Unitrends Learn more about Unitrends. Unitrends Recovery- and vrecovery-series of physical and virtual appliances provide next-generation data protection. Here s just a few of the features that come standard with our appliances. Family of scalable, integrated backup, archiving and disaster recovery appliances enables businesses to decrease capital and operational costs associated with procurement, integration, management, monitoring and troubleshooting of disparate hardware and software technologies. A federated, scalable architecture also means flexible deployments and no more fork-lift upgrades. per-licensing fees with Unitrends Limits Licensing enables businesses to have the freedom to protect rapidly growing IT environments without having the dreaded backup tax imposed - no nickel and diming on protected system count, operating systems or applications. Enterprise-level heterogeneous backup offers network, server and storage administrators advanced administrative policies and multiple backup methodologies for 100+ versions of computers, storage devices, operating systems, hypervisors and applications. Adaptive byte-level deduplication enables not just block-level deduplication but contentaware, byte-level deduplication to offer more bang for the buck in terms of backup retention. Integrated dissimilar bare metal recovery for physical and virtual servers helps in quickly restoring systems, not just data, for both physical and virtual systems. P2P (physicalto-physical), P2V (physical-to-virtual), V2P (virtual-to-physical) and V2V (virtual-to-virtual) are all supported. Instant Recovery with failover virtualization drastically reduces downtime due to a Windows or VMware system failure. It also offers better business continuity with typically less than five minutes to recover your system. Live and audit modes are supported for system recovery and verification in a sandbox virtualization environment. Physical and virtual versions of the Unitrends backup, archiving and disaster recovery appliances are available. They work together in heterogeneous environments to best match the needs of each business. Intuitive, federated, web-based user interface allows administrators to monitor and manage one to hundreds of physical and virtual appliances from a single pane of glass web 2.0 user interface. Cloud-based disaster recovery enables private cloud via our appliances and public cloud disaster recovery via our Vault2Cloud. Our vaulting is WAN-optimized, asymmetric (appliances don t have to be the same size) and allows true disaster recovery of entire premises from an off-site disaster recovery location. High-performance rotational archiving with disk, tape, NAS and SAN via USB 2.0, esata and LAN. High performance networking support enables support of up to 8x1Gb Ethernet, 2x10Gb Ethernet and 8Gb Fibre Channel interfaces. Competitive Analysis Page 6
TM De Success Story: Arrowhead Dental Laboratory Unitrends was hands down the best option at the best price point that would allow us to quickly visualize and monitor our recovery readiness, while at the same time allowing us to backup our data within a specific time frame, all from one interface. Matthew Cook, Arrowhead Dental Laboratory Quick Facts Industry Healthcare Protected Platforms HP Proliant Servers Windows Linux Challenges Need for a simple, easy-to use backup solution Rapid Recovery Data security Unified Reporting Solution Recovery Appliance Vault2Cloud Benefits Easy single-user interface Automatic scheduled backups Rapid, reliable whole system recovery Expert 24/7 product support Customer Profile Arrowhead Dental Laboratory is a large dental lab serving dental professionals in both rth America and Europe. The company produces precision dental restorations such as crowns and dental implants. Arrowhead Dental has a single production facility and is heavily dependent on its information infrastructure to coordinate daily operations. The production facility uses HP Proliant servers running both Windows and Linux operating systems, alongside their Network Attached Storage (NAS). Among these, there are seven key servers with a combined data volume of about 900 GB. Challenges In a fast-paced medical production facility dependent on data systems, IT director Matthew Cook, must prepare his data center for anything. Cook was under pressure to find a backup solution that would keep him ahead of the game to help the facility run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. This is especially critical because we ship everything next day early delivery. A case that doesn t ship means there is a doctor with a patient in the chair that won t be getting his case, Cook said. In order to be prepared for any interruptions during the process, Cook needed to be able to backup information within a strictly specified window. To add, he also wanted Page 7
Customer Success Story TM unified reporting to monitor the status of all backups and detect any issues as soon as they occured. With the company s strict criteria for backups, reliability was also a main concern for Cook. Benefits By choosing the Unitrends solution, Cook was able to meet and exceed each of his backup requirements. Unitrends was hands down the best option at the best price point that would allow us to quickly visualize and monitor our recovery readiness, while at the same time allowing us to backup our data within a specific time frame, all from one interface, Cook said. The clean and simple user interface for Unitrends solution monitors backups of all protected systems in one place. The at a glance diagnostic capabilities allow users to easily detect when any systems are encountering a problem. The interface includes exceptional features such as graphical reporting, flexible backup scheduling and even a backup wizard for novice users. In addition, Unitrends sets itself apart as a rapid and reliable, integrated backup and recovery provider. The ability to rapidly restore a server using the bare metal capabilities was far superior to competitors and allowed for recovery of core systems to be accomplished within a timeframe that met our executive mandates, said Cook. As the leader in bare metal, Unitrends solution enables users to dramatically decrease the amount of time and effort required to restore a system to its original state. This was a critical feature for Arrowhead when their outbound shipping server went down 40 minutes before shipments were due to start processing. Because we had a bare metal image that we knew was good, thanks to the excellent reporting, we were able to restore that server in 27 minutes. The shipping process was not impacted at all and our shipments went out on time, Cook said. The ability to rapidly restore a server using the baremetal capabilities was far superior to competitors, and allowed for recovery of core systems to be accomplished within a timeframe that met our executive mandates. Because we had a bare metal image that we knew was good, thanks to the excellent reporting, we were able to restore that server in 27 minutes. The shipping process was not impacted at all and our shipments went out on time. For more success stories, including video success stories, please see /success_stories.html For more information concerning Unitrends, please see Page 8