Unitrends Enterprise Backup™ Versus Veeam

Disclaimer: Sentral IT, based in the United Kingdom, has been a proud Unitrends Reseller for over 6-years.

For the first part in a series of competitive analysis blog posts showing how Unitrends compares to the competition, please see a comparison detailing Unitrends Enterprise Backup [UEB] Versus Veeam.

versus

Primary Advantages of Veeam:

• Veeam focuses only on protecting the VMware virtual environment and offers supplementary tools and utilities to manage the virtual environment.

Primary Disadvantages of Veeam:

• Veeam Backup and Replication product only protects the VMware virtual environment (with the recent announcement to protect Hyper-V). In a heterogenous environment of physical and virtual servers, Veeam’s solution is inadequate.
• Veeam’s license is dependent on the number of processor cores being utilized, which tends to be expensive for the growing business and for predictable cost estimation based on growth.
• Veeam tends to have a lower ROI (Return on Investment) and higher TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) due to higher operational expenses of putting together, managing, and monitoring servers, storage, networks, operating systems, and data protection (backup, archiving, and disaster recovery) software.
• The non-integrated nature of Veeam leads to finger-pointing among the server, storage, networks, operating systems, and data protection (backup, archiving, and disaster recovery) software vendors when a problem occurs.
• Veeam does not provide site-level replication and disaster recovery for physical and virtual servers in the environment.
• Integrated fixed/rotational archiving (D2D2-disk, -tape, -NAS, -SAN) is not supported by Veeam.
• Application resides on a Windows operating system and open to malware/ viruses
• Single point of failure for Veeam’s backup repository.  Does not back up Veeam server
• Additional resources used for replication on the hypervisor
• Veeam does not offer encryption for both data in-flight and data at rest
• Veeam does not have native application agents for protecting Exchange / SQL -> Higher backup data footprint
• No way to exclude and include a set of databases for backup and recovery
• No way to recover a SQL database back to any minute with transaction log roll back
• No way to set RPO policies for application databases different from RPO policies at the HOS level

Product and Licensing
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Non-restrictive licensing	No	Yes	Standard licensing does not include restrictions on features, platforms supported, or per-client fees.
Integrated appliance	No	No	Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance – not just software.
Available as physical appliance	No	No	Available as integrated server, storage, networking, operating system, backup software, archiving software, replication software, and so forth as a physical appliance.
Available as virtual appliance	Yes	Yes	Available as integrated operating system, backup software, archiving software, replication software, and so forth as a virtual appliance.
Available as software only	Yes	No	Available as non-integrated software. Veeam is primarily sold in this manner; Unitrends does not offer non-integrated software.

Support
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Supports hardware and software	No	Yes	Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance – not just software. Veeam doesn’t do this with their product; Unitrends does this with their physical appliance.
Proactive hardware monitoring	No	Yes	Standard support includes proactive hardware monitoring.
Remote diagnostics	Yes	Yes	Remote diagnostics are available from support.
Self-installable	Yes	Yes	The product may be installed by a customer.
On-site support	Yes	Yes	On-site support is available.
Phone support	Yes	Yes	Telephone support is available.
E-mail support	Yes	Yes	E-mail support is available.
Online interactive chat support	No	Yes	Online interactive chat support is available.
Online support form	Yes	Yes	An online support form (or portal) is available.
Knowledgebase	No	Yes	A knowledgebase is available.
User forums	Yes	Yes	Support monitored and managed user forums are available.
Video tutorials	No	Yes	Video tutorials offered by the backup vendor.

Monitoring and Management
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Appliance-based monitoring/management	No	Yes	Monitoring and management of data protection software, operating system, storage, server, and other solution components.
Single pane of glass	Yes	Yes	Monitoring and management of backup servers (in the case of Veeam) or appliances (in the case of Unitrends) from a single web-based user interface.
Web-based management	Yes	Yes	Monitoring and management can be performed via the web.
SNMP/SMTP/alert-based notifications	Yes	Yes	Notifications are available via SNMP traps, SMTP e-mail, and alerts.

 

Recovery and Restore
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Instant recovery for Windows (physical server)	No	Yes	Recovery from a failed Windows server in less than 5 minutes.
Instant recovery for VMware	Yes	Yes	Recovery from a failed VMware server in less than 5 minutes.
Dissimilar bare metal restore	No	Yes	This includes P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V. Veeam only protects the virtual environment; Unitrends has integrated dissimilar bare metal restore support.
Heterogeneous bare metal restore	No	Yes	This includes not only VMware but Windows, Hyper-V, XenServer, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. Veeam only protects VMware virtual environments; Unitrends has integrated bare metal restore support.
Heterogeneous backup	No	Yes	Veeam only protects the VMware virtual environments and can support a variety of guest operating systems. However, it doesn’t support operating systems that cannot be virtualized into a VMware environment. Unitrends offers protection for over 100 different operating systems, platforms, applications and hypervisors.
Audit mode recovery verification (Windows)	No	Yes	Ability to boot into a failover virtual instance of the physical Windows server for audit and recovery verification.
Audit mode recovery verification (VMware)	Yes	Yes	Ability to boot into a virtual machine backup for audit and recovery verification.
File Level Restores from virtual machine backups on VMware	Yes	Yes	Supports recovery of files from image-based backups in a VMware environment.

Backup
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Virtual and physical backup	No	Yes	Supports virtual and physical environments.
Heterogeneous backup	No	Yes	Veeam only protects the VMware virtual environments and can support a variety of guest operating systems. However, it doesn’t support operating systems that cannot be virtualized into a VMware environment. Unitrends offers protection for over 100 different operating systems, platforms, applications and hypervisors.
Heterogeneous storage protection	No	Yes	Support for protecting NAS and SAN volumes.
Integrated fixed/rotational archiving	No	Yes	Integrated Disk-to-disk-to-disk, -tape, -SAN, and -NAS for both long-term retention and disaster recovery.
Continuous incrementals supported	Yes	Yes	Continuous (includes near-CDP snapshot)-based incremental backup is available.
VMware CBT (Change Block Tracking)	Yes	Yes	Support for VMware CBT is available.
Hyper-V CBT (Change Block Tracking)	Yes	Yes	Support for Hyper-V CBT (which Microsoft does not support) is available.
Integration with vCenter	Yes	Yes	Virtual machines are protected in an VMware ESX and vCenter setups.
Support for virtual machines in a HA/DRS setup	Yes	Yes	Support for vMotion.
Application-level backups	No	Yes	Application-level backup is available; Veeam only protects the VMware virtual machines at the image-level and does not provide native agent for application protection. Unitrends has native agents for Microsoft applications and also integrated support for application tools (ex. Oracle RMAN).
Differential backups supported	Yes	Yes	Differential backup is available.
Maximum concurrent backups	Unlimited	Unlimited	The number of concurrent backups.

 

Technology
	Veeam	Unitrends	More Detail
Supports agents	No	Yes	Supports client-level, agent-based protection where necessary.
Deduplication	Yes	Yes	Supports deduplication.
Retention control policies	Yes	Yes	Supports minimum and maximum retention settings.
Encryption	Yes	Yes	At least AES-256 level encryption; Veeam only encrypts data in-flight and not at rest. Unitrends appliances encrypt data at rest and in-flight.
Failover virtualization	Yes	Yes	Supports Windows and VMware instant recovery. Veeam supports only VMware instant recovery.
Grid-based scalability	Yes	Yes	Backup servers (or appliances) are configured in a grid for interoperability, monitoring, and management.
Integrated symmetric and asymmetric replication	Yes	Yes	Veeam provides replication of virtual machines to a remote location. Unitrends can replicate the entire site (physical and virtual environments) for disaster recovery.
Hub-spoke replication	No	Yes	Veeam does not offer many-to-one replication; Unitrends offers integrated replication to off-site locations on a single-tenant basis.
Integrated peer-to-peer replication	No	Yes	Cross replication between backup servers in case of Veeam and appliances in the case of Unitrends.
Integrated private cloud replication	Yes	Yes	Veeam can replicate virtual machine backups to a remote site; Unitrends offers integrated replication to off-site locations on a single-tenant basis.
Integrated public cloud replication	No	Yes	Unitrends offers Vault2Cloud, which is a public multi-tenant disaster recovery solution.

Unitrends & Sentral makes this 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.

For more information and Unitrends pricing, please contact Sentral’s sales team on 08456 448016 or email us at sales@sentralsystems.com.