For smb, we just build a windows box with hyper v with spinning drives. Should primary fail, spin up from veeam and run the vm
Not the most automated. But gets the job done.
If you're looking at DATTO already, might as well also look at Unitrends, which is also owned by Kaseya anyways.
Know you mentioned you're apprehensive about Hyper-V, but Windows Server + Hyper-V includes native failover capabilities with Hyper-V Replica, and you have additional DR options with Storage Replica as well, which also works across geo-locations.
I would never ever ever recommend unitrends after seeing it in action and working extensively with their engineering team to support a ransom engagement I was on. The whole thing was bad, but the unitrends portion was an absolute nightmare on the recovery aspect.
HyperV works great. It's not the HyperV in server 2008 anymore, it's far more capable then you think it is. In fact, HyperV as a role in Windows Server has no extra cost (you install HyperV on the bare metal, then you can with the same license install 2 vms) and when compared against ESXi Free, is more capable.
Datto works fine for backup and gives you what you need. But you know, the big evil K corp and all that.
We use Veeam. Client's use HyperV or Vmware for their hypervisor, we provide a server with Veeam running on hyperv so the client can fail over to our veeam box.
Like 5 clicks in Veeam. You can restore anything to any supported hypervisor. So for example I typically use Veeam to P2V physical servers. I've also used it to migrate HyperV vms to VMware and visa Versa.
Built in Hyper-v replication works well if you’re just doing local failover (or even across to another site). Datto is an appliance that has virtual standby capability of the backups on itself. I prefer veeam, it does all the things.
We have lots of clients with both datto and veeam. Used lots of different products over the years. Datto Siris is fine for SMB. It does not scale for mid market or enterprise. It’s also a restricted platform with a limited feature set. Veeam is a Swiss Army knife.
If you sell cookie cutter and your tech skills aren’t great datto works.
We use infrascale. They are a good all around back and disaster recovery solution. They connect directly to hyper-v and complete cbt backups. They also provide cloud replication using block deduplication which reduces bandwidth usage. Great support. Basically datto backup without the kaseya ownership. Best part is backup verification. You can boot up every back to verify it’s good on their provided appliance. They also have a MSP dashboard.
Looking in to this myself right now and found Axcient as a potential Datto like equivalent, but they allow you to supply your own hardware for the on prem appliance. Looks promising so far but haven't done due diligence yet on trial/testing.
Datto let's you provide your own hardware if you want, just for most use cases, unless you're putting refurb in place of a larger datto, just not worth it.
We've been happy with their account support and their interface; so far it has done everything we've needed it to. Are using it for servers and some Office 365 clients (FYI). We haven't done/used any BYO appliances yet.
Thanks for the input. We went through the technical demo/presentation and our thoughts at the end were "where's the catch?" lol. Seems reasonably priced for the solution it provides, especially considering it includes up to 30 days of "cloud online" time with 16 cores/32GB of RAM (from our understanding for each device backed up) for business continuity in the event of a disaster and periodic testing.
We are using Acronis, I was apprehensive but it's working well.
Onsite NAS and BDR host (usually old host or repurposed device with decent storage).
Good thing with Acronis restore is you can restore a VM to vmWare or Hyper-V with minimal effort.
Also have their off-site disaster recovery on in case of a major disaster.
Their support has been good when needed.
I’ve been running barracuda intronis backup. It does work but I still don’t think I’ll recommend it. It’s on my roadmap to start moving servers to veam
Cove is a good choice. (We were also an Acronis MSP)
You can build a BU/DR using either VMware, Hyper-V core or Azure cloud. It is very flexible.
We just set up a DR solution for a customer. Two host servers running Hyper-V core and one SAN. (edit: a little over 20 servers in total)
If you know how to set up disks/volumes using DISKPART, then you are golden. If not, it takes about 20 minutes to follow a youtube video. The Cove wizard will set up everything else for you including setting up the VMs. Cove support will actually walk you through everything if you really wanted help. Cannot say enough good things about their support.
We moved everything over from Acronis to Cove and could not be happier. Across the board everything is just better and eliminated the security risks of Acronis.
To give you an example of what you could set up with Cove.
You can save a copy of your backup to the Cove data centers. Or you could redirect this to your own data center if you have compliance requirements. Support will help set this up for you.
You can then save a local copy to any CIFS/SMB accessible storage location. A NAS, a file share, USB drive, anything the local machine can access.
Both of those saves happen at the same time, so backups do not stop if one storage location is offline. Backups only stop when the backup target is offline.
Then you can have the DR copies restoring to the BU/DR device that is either onsite or offsite, depending on where you want the DR device to be.
Automated recoveries (cloud or DR device) are true recoveries. The cloud based recoveries do a full restore test to an Azure VM to generate the recovery testing boot up screen shot and reports, so it qualifies for any insurance/compliance needs that need actual recovery testing. It doesn't just spin up the backup image to create a screen shot.
Think of it as a 4-3-2 backup.
Plus you don't have to worry about the security risks of using Acronis.
Win/Win
Good luck
Used Unitrends in the past (not in an MSP) - worked perfectly locally and in the cloud - liked the Ransomware protection as well. Have also used Veeam - worked fine (dedupe ratios were poor but disk is pretty cheap) but for local I prefer the appliance approach. Looking at Datto now (MSP) for both local and direct to cloud - so far in my testing it's been good and I like the integration with VSA X and DRMM.
Doing more direct to cloud these days. Only one I don't recommend is Cove - had poor results with it and had issues scaling it. If you can, look for CBT (Change Block Tracking) rather than just raw VSS snaps - scales better both as you protect more data and allows you to have finer grained recoveries (RPO.)
\[EDIT\] I looked for what Datto uses, they say KVM, here is the source: [How virtualizations work (datto.com)](https://continuity.datto.com/help/Content/kb/siris-alto-nas/217259206.html)
If you have the money for it, Cohesity is a super impressive product. You can spin up the servers on the backup device, and users can log in and use the services once it boots up. In the meantime, it will use V-Motion or the Hyper-V equivalent to restore the backup to a server.
It's not cheap, but not over the top expensive either.
We are veeam on prem sync to cloud but we have axcient in a few places testing it out.
I have faith veeam will have their proxmox version ready in time for us.
>Essentially, we land local Acronis backups to our provided VMWare Server, which allows us to quickly spin up a failed server, then offsite that data to the cloud each night.
You can do the same with [Hyper-V](https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/CyberProtectionService/#running-virtual-machine-from-backup-instant-restore.html). Are there any other reasons for switching?
I'm diehard vmware and unless you're getting into clusters or something, it's just a lot more trouble free compared to vmware (easier to maintain in small environments, less picky on hardware).
Is the price your only problem with it? We have everything from capital investment firms to schools using it and it's a great product. But I suppose it makes a difference whether or not your clients take their IT seriously.
We’re a datto shop
Datto is solid!
For smb, we just build a windows box with hyper v with spinning drives. Should primary fail, spin up from veeam and run the vm Not the most automated. But gets the job done.
Solid states are cheap enough these days you should ditch, at least for the replica jobs
I don’t know if I’m comfortable calling it a failover solution, but axcient has an appliance solution that can spin up a recovery very quickly.
Any idea what hypervisor they’re using? Looks like pretty quick RTO times.
Pretty sure it’s KVM running on Ubuntu.
QEMU
Locally you can run their appliance directly on hardware or, nested in Hyper-V or esx. I have mutiple running in Hyper-V and esxi works very well.
If you're looking at DATTO already, might as well also look at Unitrends, which is also owned by Kaseya anyways. Know you mentioned you're apprehensive about Hyper-V, but Windows Server + Hyper-V includes native failover capabilities with Hyper-V Replica, and you have additional DR options with Storage Replica as well, which also works across geo-locations.
I would never ever ever recommend unitrends after seeing it in action and working extensively with their engineering team to support a ransom engagement I was on. The whole thing was bad, but the unitrends portion was an absolute nightmare on the recovery aspect.
HyperV works great. It's not the HyperV in server 2008 anymore, it's far more capable then you think it is. In fact, HyperV as a role in Windows Server has no extra cost (you install HyperV on the bare metal, then you can with the same license install 2 vms) and when compared against ESXi Free, is more capable. Datto works fine for backup and gives you what you need. But you know, the big evil K corp and all that.
We use Veeam. Client's use HyperV or Vmware for their hypervisor, we provide a server with Veeam running on hyperv so the client can fail over to our veeam box.
Could you expand on your config?
How do you failover from VMware to hyperv?
Like 5 clicks in Veeam. You can restore anything to any supported hypervisor. So for example I typically use Veeam to P2V physical servers. I've also used it to migrate HyperV vms to VMware and visa Versa.
Veeam all day every day
Built in Hyper-v replication works well if you’re just doing local failover (or even across to another site). Datto is an appliance that has virtual standby capability of the backups on itself. I prefer veeam, it does all the things.
Veeam is the correct answer
Why because that's what you use? Datto hasn't failed me yet.
We have lots of clients with both datto and veeam. Used lots of different products over the years. Datto Siris is fine for SMB. It does not scale for mid market or enterprise. It’s also a restricted platform with a limited feature set. Veeam is a Swiss Army knife. If you sell cookie cutter and your tech skills aren’t great datto works.
Running an SMB. Haven't had any problems with Datto.
We use infrascale. They are a good all around back and disaster recovery solution. They connect directly to hyper-v and complete cbt backups. They also provide cloud replication using block deduplication which reduces bandwidth usage. Great support. Basically datto backup without the kaseya ownership. Best part is backup verification. You can boot up every back to verify it’s good on their provided appliance. They also have a MSP dashboard.
Looking in to this myself right now and found Axcient as a potential Datto like equivalent, but they allow you to supply your own hardware for the on prem appliance. Looks promising so far but haven't done due diligence yet on trial/testing.
Datto let's you provide your own hardware if you want, just for most use cases, unless you're putting refurb in place of a larger datto, just not worth it.
We've been happy with their account support and their interface; so far it has done everything we've needed it to. Are using it for servers and some Office 365 clients (FYI). We haven't done/used any BYO appliances yet.
Thanks for the input. We went through the technical demo/presentation and our thoughts at the end were "where's the catch?" lol. Seems reasonably priced for the solution it provides, especially considering it includes up to 30 days of "cloud online" time with 16 cores/32GB of RAM (from our understanding for each device backed up) for business continuity in the event of a disaster and periodic testing.
We are using Acronis, I was apprehensive but it's working well. Onsite NAS and BDR host (usually old host or repurposed device with decent storage). Good thing with Acronis restore is you can restore a VM to vmWare or Hyper-V with minimal effort. Also have their off-site disaster recovery on in case of a major disaster. Their support has been good when needed.
Our experience as well.
I’ve been running barracuda intronis backup. It does work but I still don’t think I’ll recommend it. It’s on my roadmap to start moving servers to veam
Cove is a good choice. (We were also an Acronis MSP) You can build a BU/DR using either VMware, Hyper-V core or Azure cloud. It is very flexible. We just set up a DR solution for a customer. Two host servers running Hyper-V core and one SAN. (edit: a little over 20 servers in total) If you know how to set up disks/volumes using DISKPART, then you are golden. If not, it takes about 20 minutes to follow a youtube video. The Cove wizard will set up everything else for you including setting up the VMs. Cove support will actually walk you through everything if you really wanted help. Cannot say enough good things about their support. We moved everything over from Acronis to Cove and could not be happier. Across the board everything is just better and eliminated the security risks of Acronis. To give you an example of what you could set up with Cove. You can save a copy of your backup to the Cove data centers. Or you could redirect this to your own data center if you have compliance requirements. Support will help set this up for you. You can then save a local copy to any CIFS/SMB accessible storage location. A NAS, a file share, USB drive, anything the local machine can access. Both of those saves happen at the same time, so backups do not stop if one storage location is offline. Backups only stop when the backup target is offline. Then you can have the DR copies restoring to the BU/DR device that is either onsite or offsite, depending on where you want the DR device to be. Automated recoveries (cloud or DR device) are true recoveries. The cloud based recoveries do a full restore test to an Azure VM to generate the recovery testing boot up screen shot and reports, so it qualifies for any insurance/compliance needs that need actual recovery testing. It doesn't just spin up the backup image to create a screen shot. Think of it as a 4-3-2 backup. Plus you don't have to worry about the security risks of using Acronis. Win/Win Good luck
Used Unitrends in the past (not in an MSP) - worked perfectly locally and in the cloud - liked the Ransomware protection as well. Have also used Veeam - worked fine (dedupe ratios were poor but disk is pretty cheap) but for local I prefer the appliance approach. Looking at Datto now (MSP) for both local and direct to cloud - so far in my testing it's been good and I like the integration with VSA X and DRMM. Doing more direct to cloud these days. Only one I don't recommend is Cove - had poor results with it and had issues scaling it. If you can, look for CBT (Change Block Tracking) rather than just raw VSS snaps - scales better both as you protect more data and allows you to have finer grained recoveries (RPO.) \[EDIT\] I looked for what Datto uses, they say KVM, here is the source: [How virtualizations work (datto.com)](https://continuity.datto.com/help/Content/kb/siris-alto-nas/217259206.html)
If you have the money for it, Cohesity is a super impressive product. You can spin up the servers on the backup device, and users can log in and use the services once it boots up. In the meantime, it will use V-Motion or the Hyper-V equivalent to restore the backup to a server. It's not cheap, but not over the top expensive either.
We are veeam on prem sync to cloud but we have axcient in a few places testing it out. I have faith veeam will have their proxmox version ready in time for us.
Veeam
Who down voted this?! You must be gay
Cove with a local recovery to Windows 11 running hyperv.
>Essentially, we land local Acronis backups to our provided VMWare Server, which allows us to quickly spin up a failed server, then offsite that data to the cloud each night. You can do the same with [Hyper-V](https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/CyberProtectionService/#running-virtual-machine-from-backup-instant-restore.html). Are there any other reasons for switching?
Right now it’s on our shortlist - we just don’t love HyperV.
Understood. LMK if you stay with Acronis and need any help.
I'm diehard vmware and unless you're getting into clusters or something, it's just a lot more trouble free compared to vmware (easier to maintain in small environments, less picky on hardware).
I did come across one such solution previously, which was BDRSuite, have anyone heard of it?
Appassure / RapidRecovery
$$$$$
Is the price your only problem with it? We have everything from capital investment firms to schools using it and it's a great product. But I suppose it makes a difference whether or not your clients take their IT seriously.
I've heard about DATTO for localized server failover, but I'm not sure about the underlying hypervisor they use.
# BU/DR?
Back Up / Disaster Recovery
oh, thanks!