DCIG, INC. AND SMB RESEARCH ANNOUNCE INSIDERS GUIDE TO EVALUATING VIRTUAL SERVER BACKUP SOFTWARE (PRESS RELEASE)
Press Release: DCIG, INC. AND SMB RESEARCH ANNOUNCE INSIDERS GUIDE TO EVALUATING VIRTUAL SERVER BACKUP SOFTWARE
− Newest, Comprehensive Resource Guide Provides Users With Industry’s First Report on Offerings to Backup, Protect and Recover in Virtualized Environments −
AUSTIN AND BOSTON, December 14, 2010 – For the first time, users have a comprehensive Buyer’s Guide for Virtual Server Backup Software to assist them in the all-important buying decision while removing the mystery behind which choice is best suited for their needs. Designed to take out the heavy lifting needed to best understand what solutions exist that are ideally suited to handle key management and technology functions in virtualized server environments, this first Annual Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide is an “at-a-glance” comparison of the vendor landscape and will serve as a complement for deep evaluations and due diligence needed to determine a user’s specific needs.
In a collaboration between DCIG, LLC, and SMB Research, 30 different offerings and solutions were researched with 130 different criteria across seven categories were weighed, scored and ranked. Solutions were ranked “Best-in-Class,” “Recommended,” “Excellent,” “Good,” and “Basic” across functionality and capability with the intent to provide an “at-a-glance” comparison from which users can select the most appropriate solution for their existing needs.
“The number one complaint we hear from end users is that there is no easy way to quickly compare and contrast key features and functions across a number of available solutions,” said Jerome Wendt, co-author and founder, DCIG, LLC. “When we started putting the Buyer’s Guides together, it’s always been with this overall intent in mind. Give end users a resource to help them make better decisions for what they need. We feel with this latest Buyer’s Guide, we are doing just that for users looking for ways to best handle their virtual server software backup and recovery needs.”
Observations from questionnaire responses and end user conversations netted a few surprises, including:
- Some 46% of the software vendors participating in this Buyers guide offer their solutions both as stand-alone software products, or bundled in an appliance.
- Over 45% of vendors report that they do not do mirror backups.
- Nearly 80% of the software solutions are able to do object-level recovery.
- 75% of the vendors in this Buyers Guide offer source-based deduplication.
- Nearly 60% of vendors claim to be able to alert you if your tape libraries are approaching capacity (compared to 85% of vendors for disk libraries.)
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70% of vendors provide the capability to auto-discover new Guest VMs.
More than 60% of the vendors in the Buyer’s Guide do not presently offer what are universally considered to be best-in-class features, including: - Backup software’s administration function prioritize a server that has gone the longest since its last backup
- Detect servers backing up significantly more data than previously and provide alerting
- Integration with VMware’s Change Block Tracking
- Integration with VMware vCenter Converter
- Ability to multiplex concurrent backups to a single tape drive
The DCIG 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide Top Ten solutions include (in alphabetical order): Arkeia Software Network Backup v9, EMC Avamar, CA ARCServe r15, CommVault Simpana 9, HP Data Protector 6.1, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 6, Quest Software vRanger PRO 4.5 and Symantec Backup Exec 2010.
“The 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide from DCIG is very informative,” said John Johnson, manager, IT Consulting, Sirius Computer Solutions. “The guide is a good follow on to the 2010 Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide, which I also found really informative. I really support the quantitative analysis and scoring in comparing products. I believe it lends more credibility to the comparison of the products and feel this will be a useful guide for anyone looking at Virtual Server backup solutions.”
“We’re proud of the results of our research,” said Robert Eastman, managing director, SMB Research, LLC. “Our mission continues to be about providing affordable, right-sized, targeted research and analysis to SMB-to-traditional Enterprise IT communities. For us, it’s about the right research and analysis at the right time for the right reason. With the continued growth in virtualization, this Buyer’s Guide will serve as the seminal document in helping enterprise users best understand their options and help augment the evaluation and due diligence they continue to do to find the best solution available to meet their needs.”
Disclosure and Methodology
DCIG and SMB Research identified 30 plus companies that provide Virtual Server Backup Software solutions and followed up with a detailed questionnaire of 130 questions across seven key categories. After responses were received from 24 companies, DCIG and SMB research spoke to several end-users to get a sense of how they weigh their needs in various areas. After scores were compiled, a ranking was assigned to each solution. A number of the storage providers included in the Buyer’s Guide are or have been DCIG clients. No vendors, whether clients or not, were afforded preferential treatment in the Buyer’s Guide. All research was based upon information provided directly by vendors, research and analysis by DCIG and SMB Research, and other publicly available information.
Availability
The 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide may be downloaded from CommVault Systems, Inc.’s website at http://info.commvault.com/forms/DCIG-2011-VSBS-Buyers-Guide-Pt1?cmpgn=70140000000MKmL
Resources:
DCIG Blog: http://www.dciginc.com
SMB Research Blog: http://smbresearch.net/blog/
About DCIG
DCIG, LLC, is an analyst firm with headquarters in Texas, focusing on archive, backup, retrieval and storage systems. DCIG’s analysts blend analysis, journalism, advertising and marketing into compelling blog entries at www.dciginc.com as well as journalistic writings with leading trade and industry publications. DCIG’s goal is to provide evaluations and interview content on sponsoring and non-sponsoring companies to consumers, public relations firms, business analysts and other companies. DCIG distributes industry, company and product analysis by way of viral marketing and community building using the burgeoning BLOG infrastructures created worldwide.
About SMB Research
SMB Research LLC, provides research, analysis, insight, and technology advisory for enterprises, and software and technology vendors, who need highly focused and specialized, and high-touch, assistance on-demand from experienced industry analysts. Based in Boston, Mass., SMB Research focuses on the emerging, and small-to-medium(SMB)-large enterprise segment, companies with $1M to $1B in revenues – or any company looking for exceptional, “concierge-level” technology analysis.
Media contact:
Jim Nash
DCIG, LLC
952.442.8608
Robert Eastman
SMB Research, LLC
781.904.0408 x734
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Robert,
This may be a bit late in posting, but I hope you will evaluate my response fairly. I work for Dakota Backup; an Asigra partner.
It appears the “Vendor Support for Servers and Virtual Platforms” does not accurately represent the full spectrum of operating systems supported for backup by Asigra v10 Cloud Backup. I believe this may have resulted from the ‘agent-less’ nature of Asigra.
On a quick review, I would estimate you didn’t list Asigra as supporting 8-10 operating systems it actually does support for backup.
Please request the “Asigra v10 Installation and Support Matrix for Cloud Backup” guide from Asigra and query them if further explanation is required (or use Google to locate the document online). You’ll find that Asigra supports a myriad of operating systems for backup through native connectivity options.
Additionally, I did see that ‘On-Site’ support and ‘Online Interactive chat’ were listed as ‘unsupported’. Although this may be true for Asigra, you must know that Asigra is a channel-only solution. As such, I know that most Asigra partners provide on-site support and may provide chat support as well. Often, this is a local MSP/VAR the customer may have built a relationship with over the years.
Lastly, this is a minor point of contention; I’m not sure how the report calculated ‘Restore’ points, but since Asigra implements Autonomic Healing (CommVault and AppAssure offer similar functionality) as a method to validate the integrity of data post-backup, I would have thought the ‘Restore’ score would have been a bit higher. If you cannot ensure data integrity after backup, the result of any future restore attempts are questionable.
On the whole, your report is appreciated. However, if my points are found valid, I believe an amendment should be provided.
I await your reply.
Rodd Ahrenstorff
Dakota Backup
Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article
Rodd,
Thank you very much for your information and for taking the time to provide this to us. The information that we have published for the operating systems supported by Asigra represents the information provided directly to us by Asigra. Readers who want to explore Asigra further and learn more about their operating system support should go to Asigra’s website, at http://www.asigra.com/ .
I appreciate your clarification around support for Asigra. While again our published information on Asigra was provided directly by Asigra, we will urge readers to check both with Asigra and/or their Asigra partner of choice to assess the support options available.
Rodd, thanks again for your comments, and taking the time to provide them to us.
- Bob Eastman