In this article, we will see Efficient Enterprise Backup software for Virtual Machines
Enterprise backup aims to capture point-in-time copies of enterprise workloads for rapid data recovery in the event of a failure (caused by human error, virus attack, hardware damage, etc.). For enterprises with a large number of devices and huge amounts of data, this is both a necessity and a challenge.
New challenge for enterprise: virtual machine backup
As you know, an enterprise or organization may contain many types of data, such as physical machines, virtual machines, databases, and so on. Previously, the most common was probably physical machines, and operating systems such as Windows itself came with some backup solutions to meet common data protection needs.
However, many organizations have found that dedicated servers do not make efficient use of computing resources. As a result, virtual servers have been introduced for cost-saving reasons, along with the need for virtual machine (VM) backups.
Different from physical machines, virtual machines are managed by a hypervisor, which is software that can create and manage multiple virtual machines. It does have some features for data protection or migration, but there’s no real backup option for long-term storage.
Yes, a snapshot (or checkpoint for Hyper-V) is convenient, but it’s only a rollback point before risky operations. Even VMware officially doesn’t recommend keeping it for too long. So, for enterprise users who truly care about data security, it’s always necessary to adopt an effective VM backup solution.
Pick an efficient and affordable enterprise backup software
If you have searched for enterprise backup software on the market, you may find that compared to individual-oriented products, enterprise-oriented products typically have higher price and technology thresholds.
This may not be a problem for large enterprises with skilled specialists, but for some startups, non-profit organizations, and non-technical companies, it may be difficult to find a product that works just fine.
In fact, if all you need is a reliable and flexible data protection solution for your business, you probably don’t need a lot of advanced features that will cost you a fortune.
For non-profit organizations and small start-ups, you may want to first consider the following：
Centralized management: For organizations with many devices, it is inefficient and error-prone to expect each employee to handle their own data backups individually. Relatively speaking, a centralized console operated by a single administrator can better manage enterprise backups and monitor devices.
Automated backup: Similarly, you won’t want to manually perform backups every day. It’s best to create multiple schedules for different types of data to be backed up automatically. If you are worried about the accumulated backup files taking up space on your hard drive day by day, you can also choose an enterprise backup solution with a rotation feature to automatically delete old backups.
Incremental backup: As mentioned earlier, enterprises often have large volumes of data. Making complete backup every time is not only time-consuming & storage space-intensive, but also affects the performance of the running machines. Therefore, in addition to the first backup that must be run as a full backup, you can consider subsequent backups in incremental (or differential) form, with which you can only capture changed data since the last backup.
Scalability: Any business or organization must consider the possibility of scaling up. A flexible backup solution allows for rapid expansion to accommodate more devices and data when needed and dynamically adapts to the development of the enterprise.
Simplicity: Technical knowledge and specialized terms that are common for professionals may cause higher learning costs for normal users. If you don’t want to invest a lot of time and effort into pre-study, it is better to choose a product that is easy to understand and operate from the beginning.
Here I will present a virtual machine backup product that meets the above conditions as an example.
Review: enterprise backup software for VMware & Hyper-V
AOMEI Cyber Backup is an enterprise backup software developed by AOMEI, who’s committed to providing state-of-the-art data backup software to protect all types of data and minimize manual work and unnecessary costs.
You may have heard about its previous flagship products such as AOMEI Backupper and AOMEI Partition Assistant. And just like these older products, AOMEI Cyber Backup offers robust backup capabilities while maintaining their usual simplicity and usability.
It enables you to back up VMware or Hyper-V virtual machines from a central console, saving you much time and administrative costs.
After logging into a simple web console, you can add VMware (ESXi host or vCenter) or Hyper-V devices to back up and restore the virtual machines agentless. Here are some points I like about it.
Easy-to-use
AOMEI Cyber Backup offers a centralized web console with an intuitive user interface to achieve any operation with simple clicks. Even novices can set up the first backup task in minutes.
Schedule backup and automated rotation
Set up a backup schedule to automate VM protection. For VMs running a critical business, it’s not recommended to perform backup during working hours. Instead, you can create schedules to run the backup at night or at weekends.
In consideration of storage space, you can also create a retention policy to keep backups up to date and remove old backup versions automatically.
VM migration/cloning
AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both in-place recovery and out-of-space recovery. Feel free to restore a VM entirely from any backup point, whether full or incremental/differential.
By the “Restore to new location” option, you can also restore a VM to another datastore, host, or vCenter for VM migration. It will create an identical VM directly from the backup in the specified location.
Backup scalability
AOMEI Cyber Backup offers a perpetual free edition, but with a limit on the number of devices. If your business grows rapidly, you could upgrade the software to protect more devices. It provides both yearly subscription and perpetual plans, supporting VMs/hosts from customized numbers to unlimited, and the prices are considerably affordable.
Overall, AOMEI Cyber Backup is a cost-effective choice for startups and small organizations. It provides practical virtual machine backup & restores functions with the easiest operation.
