With 87% of organizations experiencing a breach in the last year, threat monitoring and data protection are essential in the face of ever-evolving cyber threats. In addition, the lack of cybersecurity expertise among users can cause a security incident at any time, making reliable VM backups a necessity for today’s businesses.
In the list below, you can find 6 of the best VM backup solutions that can protect virtual machine data. Evaluate each of them carefully and then choose the virtual backup solution that best suits your needs.
1. Advanced VM Backup Solution: NAKIVO Backup & Replication
The top-rated solution among the virtual machine backup software on this list is NAKIVO Backup & Replication. There are several advantages that make this solution the choice of both SMBs and enterprises looking to back up virtual machines, including:
- Support for all major virtualization platforms: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Amazon EC2 and Proxmox VE.
- An extensive variety of backup destinations: onsite, offsite, cloud and tape
- Advanced automation and management capabilities
- Reliable anti-ransomware features
- Flexible full and granular recovery
- High performance with a small footprint
- User-friendly web-based interface
With a focus on data resilience against ransomware, this virtual backup solution provides immutable storage, malware scan before recovery, air-gapping, two-factor authentication and role-based access control. The set of full and granular recovery options, instant backup verification and advanced search ensure data recoverability and compliance.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication stands out among the VMware backup software due to full support for VMware vSphere v5.5 to v8.0.3 and a wide range of features that help achieve tight RPO and almost instant RTO. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can also be a suitable choice for Proxmox VE users. With incremental backups, multiple storage destinations, automation, fast recovery and ransomware protection, the solution outscales nearly every competitor in this field.
The flexible pricing model allows any organization to pick an affordable perpetual or subscription license that includes the needed feature set. In addition, you can download and install the Free Trial to use the NAKIVO solution to protect Proxmox VMs for free until the end of 2024.
2. Vembu BDR Suite
Within the backup solutions for business category, Vembu BDR Suite can be a strong contestant in particular use cases. The suite provides:
- Backup for VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV and Proxmox
- Diverse backup destinations
- Full and granular recovery
- Reporting and monitoring
- Anti-ransomware capabilities to keep your data safe from unexpected attacks.
The solution can enable fast incremental backup for VMs, as well as comprehensive data protection against ransomware and disaster recovery for entire virtualized infrastructures. The available backup destinations include local, cloud and tape storage. As for recovery, the ability to instantly restore full VMs or individual items ensures data availability and helps meet compliance regulations.
Vembu’s licensing cost is affordable enough, making the solution suitable for small and medium businesses. However, some organizations may find the available feature set insufficient. Given that some features can only work with particular platforms and the solution may not provide the needed performance in larger environments, Vembu’s virtual machine backup software may lack versatility. To sum up, Vembu BDR Suite is a strong solution that enables secure VM backup for SMBs with relatively small infrastructures.
3. CommVault
CommVault is one of the leading players within the heavyweight VM backup solutions that focus on enterprise-class infrastructures. In CommVault, you can find:
- VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV and Amazon EC2 backup
- On-premise and cloud storage
- Native cloud storage
- Flexible recovery for workloads, files and objects
- AI-integrated data protection automation
The CommVault’s suite includes multiple solutions to ensure smooth and efficient data protection for the most complicated environments. The solution is rich in features, enabling fast backup and recovery. Native AI-driven tools for threat monitoring and detection along with immutability and air-gapping provide enhanced anti-ransomware resilience.
However, the comprehensive set of CommVault’s capabilities can go far beyond the virtual machine backup requirements that small and medium-sized organizations usually look for. Besides, the solution does not officially support Proxmox backups yet. Created to deal with enterprise-grade data protection challenges, CommVault may also require serious training and expertise from IT teams. Plus, all of the above comes at a cost that most SMBs cannot sustain.
4. Rubrik
The virtualization backup software by Rubrik is another strong competitor on the list. The Rubrik solution provides:
- Backup for VMware vSphere, Hyper-V and Nutanix VMs
- Fast recovery
- Native continuous VM data protection integration
- Anti-ransomware resilience
- Policy automation
- Centralized management
Rubrik Data Protection offers a comprehensive approach to data management, zero-trust security and robust ransomware resilience capabilities. Similar to NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Rubrik provides a centralized management console to enable efficient control of all data protection activities. The user interface is convenient and the solution is easy to learn.
That said, Rubrik can be too focused on cloud backup storage, which can be a deal breaker if you need on-premise backups to minimize RTO. Additionally, the website lacks clear pricing information and pushes potential customers to contact sales managers for quotes. Moreover, Rubrik intends to add Proxmox VE support in the future, but does not enable backups of Proxmox VMs and environments right now.
5. Iperius Backup
Probably one of the lightest virtualization backup software solutions, Iperius Backup is suitable for small and medium businesses that want to keep things simple. With Iperius Backup, you get:
- Incremental backup for VMware and Hyper-V VMs
- Local, cloud, NAS, FTP and LTO tape backup destinations
- Instant recovery for Hyper-V
- VM-level and file-level recovery
- Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and disaster recovery
- Perpetual licensing
Iperius Backup can cover the basic VM data protection needs. The solution only supports VMware and Hyper-V. The main advantages are affordability and user-friendliness, enabling organizations with tight budgets to leverage local and cloud VM backups.
Compared to other VM backup solutions on the list, Iperius Backup has a limited feature set, minimal platform compatibility and basic anti-ransomware capabilities. However, if you only want to enhance VM data availability in a relatively simple infrastructure, this solution can be the right choice for you. The available licenses are affordable and exclusively perpetual.
6. NovaBackup
NovaBackup is another noteworthy solution to back up virtual servers and VM data. NovaBackup enables:
- VMware and Hyper-V backup
- On-premise, cloud and tape storage
- Full and granular recovery
- Advanced backup scheduling
NovaBackup provides fast backup and recovery of VMs. The solution is easy to learn and efficient. Similar to major competitors, NovaBackup supports critical VMware and Hyper-V technologies such as Changed Block Tracking (CBT) and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) that can cut backup windows and minimize downtime.
The solution works well as a basic Hyper-V or VMware backup software. NovaBackup is relatively affordable but does not have any notable features compared to other solutions. Additionally, NovaBackup does not offer Nutanix AHV or Proxmox VE backup.
Conclusion
These are the top 6 VM backup solutions of 2024. You can try them all by installing the free trial versions. The final decision on which virtual backup solution to use depends on your organization’s infrastructure, recovery objectives and budgets.
