UNITRENDS CLOUD SOLUTION

What is our primary use case? I use Unitrends to back up my VMware virtual machines and files, ensuring redundancy for both disks and protection against ransomware. I have implemented an air gap strategy by keeping some backups physically disconnected for added security. How has it helped my organization? Using Unitrends has significantly improved our organization's functionality. The onboarding process was helpful, and now I can create scripts for virtual machines. With the sandbox environment, I can test functions like pinging between the domain controller and file server, transferring files, and checking SQL Server queries—all from the backup without affecting our live environment. The automated process provides a detailed report, giving me confidence in the backup's reliability for potential restores. It is a great peace of mind to see everything in the green. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback. It lets me know that tests have been successful without the manual effort, saving time and avoiding getting bogged down in the details. What needs improvement? In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't straightforward; it took some time and had a few hiccups. Simplifying the scripting process and improving UI clarity would be beneficial. In the next release of Unitrends, I would like to see the ability to set retention based on the destination repository. Currently, I can set retention based on the data being backed up, but having the flexibility to specify retention periods for different repositories would be beneficial. This would allow me to tailor retention settings based on the importance and nature of the data stored in each repository. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Unitrends for four months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would rate the stability as a ten out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I would rate the scalability of Unitrends as a ten out of ten. It is highly scalable, allowing easy expansion to multiple locations or environments. The cloud dashboard feature is well-suited for bringing everything together in one place. Currently, it is servicing data for about 70 users. How are customer service and support? I would evaluate Unitrends' tech support as a nine out of ten. They have been responsive, addressing my questions promptly and effectively resolving the issues I encountered. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I switched from Veeam to Unitrends because I had difficulty with Veeam's scripting, and I preferred Unitrends' offer of a physical hardware appliance at a similar price point. Veeam provided only software, and I missed the inclusion of free hard drives for extra storage. After using Veeam for about two years, I decided to try Unitrends for a two-year trial, and it has been working well for me. How was the initial setup? I would rate the easiness of the initial setup of Unitrends as an eight out of ten, with the scripting part being a bit challenging. It took about three weeks to complete, mainly due to waiting for post-backups and testing. The appliance was up and running within a day and a half. The deployment process involved assistance from a Unitrends representative, guiding me through the setup and configuration in either the appliance or web interface, based on preference. What other advice do I have? Overall, I would rate Unitrends as a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We use Unitrends to back up all our servers and Hyper-V cluster nodes. What is most valuable? The backup feature and recovery option are good because they allow the instant recovery of Hyper-V nodes and files. Since we have set up versioning on our file servers, often there is no need to recover using the Unitrends appliance. We use the instant recovery option to recover if it's an entire server. What needs improvement? The solution’s support and onboarding process needs to be improved. If you purchase a Unitrends appliance, they'll give it for free but charge you heavily for the support. We got the Unitrends appliance worth $ 67,000 for free but paid $ 90,000 for three years of support. We've had a couple of renewals since then, and we've negotiated and got better renewals per year, paying around $ 16,000 to $ 18000 per year instead of $ 30,000. Unitrends' support is super expensive, and sometimes they are unresponsive. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using Unitrends since 2017. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I wouldn't rate Unitrends a ten out of ten because we had some hard drive failures in the appliance. Typically, when you have OneDrive, you can get it replaced. For some particular reason, the situation caused the entire system to crash. We had to reinstall the CentOS operating system on it, and we lost all our backups. They said there was no way to retain it, and it was pretty devastating and concerning that a drive failure would cause the loss of all the data on the appliance. It was extremely disappointing, and we had to start from scratch after three years worth of backup data. I rate Unitrends a nine out of ten for stability. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? While buying a Unitrends appliance, you must specify the size you think you'll need for three to five years. They have an 18-terabyte and a 120-terabyte type of appliance. So it's your responsibility to at least provide them with the amount of data you have. Then when you work with the person quoting from Unitrends, they'll provide a quote based on their existing data and what will be calculated over three to five years. That way, you are sizing up the correct appliance. Unitrends is used in our organization by the IT team, comprised of a small group of IT professionals who manage and support it. I rate Unitrends an eight out of ten for scalability. How are customer service and support? It's easy to create a support request through their portal, but often, the support person is not responsive or doesn't get back to you when they say they're going to. You find yourself bouncing back and forth to get them involved. It shouldn't be that complicated, considering the amount we pay each year. How would you rate customer service and support? Neutral Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? Previously, I have worked with NetBackup Enterprise, Commvault, and Veeam solutions. How was the initial setup? The solution's initial setup is fairly easy. Setting up the jobs and establishing the SLAs for each job is easy with Unitrends. It is easy to configure each protected asset to have a specific retention. Since Unitrends didn't explain the process during the initial setup, we learned how to establish retention over the years and got better at it. Maybe Unitrends has a better process now, but back in 2017, when we initially acquired the appliance, its onboarding was not that intuitive. After the first year or so, the engineers on my team scheduled time with the support people who helped them. So it is something that is covered under the support cost. We could have had a better overall onboarding experience when we initially set up the appliance. Maybe Unitrends has improved now because some other organization acquired it. They've expanded their toolset, and they have a much broader option of packages besides the backup appliance, like a service desk. What about the implementation team? The solution’s deployment took two to four weeks. We implemented Unitrends through an in-house team. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Unitrends is an expensive solution. We've negotiated deals where they've given us the $ 62,000 to $ 64,000 appliance for free but charged $ 90,000 for three years of support. What other advice do I have? We are using Unitrends Version 10.6.7-2.202209062126. We're still a Unitrends customer for one site. Unitrends is deployed on-premises in our organization. We do have a support agreement where we can upload data to the cloud. Unitrends does have its own cloud offering, which is decent but pricey. Initially, we had a total of nine terabytes, and it was a bit expensive for their offering. Maybe Unitrends will be more competitive now since Nutanix and Wasabi offer cloud backup data. I advise users to consider how they negotiate the price of the tool. The way we negotiated with them was that they would have promotions and give us the appliance for free. Although it seems like you're getting it for free, you're paying a lot more for support, making you wonder if they're hiding the appliance's cost in the support they're charging you. I like the appliance. Although I was unfamiliar with it, it was a decent product after its use. The only thing I would be concerned with is the solution's price. Overall, I rate Unitrends a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We are using the solution for real-time synchronization. Also, we use Unitrends RXDA. What is most valuable? The instant power-on feature of the operating system and real-time synchronization are some of the features which I have found to be valuable in the solution. What needs improvement? The solution’s UI can be improved. I am saying this because I have seen solutions with better UIs. I am uncertain whether the solution already includes these features, but I suggest synchronization and support for VXLAN capabilities as the additional features to be incorporated in the future release of the solution. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for one year. I don't remember the version of the solution I am using. However, talking of the model, it's a hardware appliance. Also, I am a customer of the solution. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is a highly scalable solution, and for scalability, I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The plan to increase the solution's usage is something we, in our company, will definitely consider. Basically, as and when the need arises, we will increase the solution's usage. How are customer service and support? On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, I rate the solution's technical support an eight. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We didn't switch over to Unitrends from any other solution. Actually, DR was a new requirement in our company. How was the initial setup? On a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I would rate the setup process of the solution as seven. For concrete completion of the deployment process in our company, it took two weeks. Apart from that, the entire setup was done in three to four days. What about the implementation team? An expert from Unitrends based in the UK directly assisted our company with the complete setup process, and their assistance was excellent. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Based on a scale of one to ten, with one being low and ten being high, I would rate the pricing of this solution as a three. Also, there are no additional costs involved in the standard licensing of the solution. What other advice do I have? Overall, I rate this solution a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We use Unitrends to back up our virtual machines and files. Every once in a while, we also use it for restoring files. What is most valuable? What I found most valuable in Unitrends is its simple user interface. It also works reliably. What needs improvement? It's a little complicated for us to speak about areas for improvement in Unitrends because the previous director didn't renew its maintenance, so we're running an old version. We haven't been talking with the Unitrends team about updating to the most recent version, but one of the problems we have is that the device will be EOL in two years. We could switch to their software, but we're not sure we want to go through that. Unitrends can be challenging to scale. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using Unitrends for about four months, but my company has used it for about five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Unitrends has been stable, and I've not been making any changes to it either. It's more of a setup-and-run, where I set up new VMs, and then add the VMs, and that's about it. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The version of Unitrends used within my company isn't easy to scale as it's a hardware appliance. If the company needs to add more storage, it wouldn't be able to. How are customer service and support? We spoke with Unitrends support about renewing the maintenance on the appliance and the features we're looking for. We were looking to back up our Microsoft 365 in addition to our local backups. We were also looking to move some VMs into Azure, so we asked if they had another product for cloud-based backup, and they suggested the software version of Unitrends. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I used Symantec and Commvault. I used Commvault in the previous cloud company I worked for, where I implemented solutions, and the implementation department used Commvault for backups. How was the initial setup? The initial setup for Unitrends is pretty straightforward. I implemented it at my previous company and found it easy. I rate the implementation as seven out of ten. I don't remember how long the deployment of Unitrends took. What was our ROI? I stepped into this environment with Unitrends already running, so I have no information if there's ROI from it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? When we renew the Unitrends maintenance contract and update it to the latest version, the cost would be $5,000 per year. We don't want to venture into a project where, two years from now, we have to search for a new backup system because Unitrends will be EOL in two years. We'd instead present a cohesive package to the executive committee, so we're hesitant to continue with Unitrends. There are no hidden costs. They've been transparent with the costs. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We have Veeam as our prime candidate. Most likely, we're not going to continue with Unitrends because it will reach its end of life in less than two years. We have a major project with a time horizon of five years, not two years. What other advice do I have? My company has a whole variety of products, but it's using Unitrends as a backup solution. I can't recall the version number I'm using for Unitrends. I advise anyone looking into using Unitrends to check if the particular device is going EOL, particularly if running the physical version. However, I have no idea if Unitrends is going EOL on all physical devices or just the version my company uses, which goes EOL in two years. My rating for Unitrends is six out of ten. My company is a Unitrends customer. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for Unitrends is backup. What needs improvement? Probably the biggest issue I've had is actually paying for the unit and part of that problem is that they use a third party for the billing. When my sort needs to be renewed, I'm never notified. So, six months later, I will have an issue and try to get support for it, and then it will be a big hassle because I was never built for the support to begin with and then they wouldn't give me the support. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Unitrends for five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Recently, we've been having some issues that I haven't reported yet. They're related to backups being skipped because some of our servers need an update. I'm not sure why it's happening. It doesn't happen to every server; it's just one server occasionally. And as soon as I do the update, then it's fine. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Scalability is where I'm running into more of an issue right now. To upgrade is pretty expensive. It's not like you can just buy a smaller appliance and put it with the one you already have. You need buy a larger appliance and that can get fairly pricey. How are customer service and technical support? When I have had to use tech support, they've been very good. I've had a couple instances where something wasn't happening correctly and I called them and got a call back within the hour and we were able to get through it. I've been very happy with the couple times that I needed them. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were using Backup Exec before that, but they had made updates to their software which I just didn't like at all. It also did not give me the ability to do a bare metal restore if I needed to; that's why I went with the Unitrends. How was the initial setup? It was pretty straight forward in setting up at the beginning. The original software was probably a little easier to use than their current software. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I think it's a decent platform to go with; I don't have any issues with it. I guess the one thing that I would say is get a bigger unit than what they recommend because if I had done that, I wouldn't need to be upgrading now; I could have stayed with the same size. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We used Unitrends for Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster, VMWare ESXi Clusters, physical servers, virtual servers, SQL databases, and Exchange DAGs databases. How has it helped my organization? We consolidated down from several disparate backup applications to Unitrends and AvePoint. What is most valuable? The daily reports that showed Red, Green, Yellow status for each asset/server/database protected. Simple and easy to use for daily logging, providing assurance all was well. What needs improvement? It seems like Unitrends moved away from enterprise customer engagement and moved more towards the managed service provider market. I'm familiar with that market because I do that type of work on the side. That's great, but that's a whole different market and avenue from the enterprise backup market; how they interact is totally different as well. I don't know what happened, but their customer engagement went completely downhill on their sales side. You just can't do that. I don't know what happened, but I looked at their cloud product and it just looks like an IaaS implementation of their on-premise product. Cloud products really need to be engineered to be cloud-aware. I haven't looked at it for several months now, but at that time, I wanted it to work out, it just did not seem like it was cloud-aware in terms of being able to have tiered storage and different capabilities that I wanted. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using Unitrends since august of 2015. We're still using it for a few things but we are in the process of switching to Rubrik. What do I think about the stability of the solution? All I can tell you is my friends made fun of me because of how often I had to call technical support. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It's not easy to scale it. At some point, it requires a forklift upgrade. So that's not very conducive to scaling well; at least for what we were using it for. How are customer service and technical support? The technical support was awesome. They were very good people to work with and I liked them a lot, but the product needed some work. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We used a lot of different solutions before Unitrends. We had so many different solutions that we were using to meet our needs and Unitrends was able to help us bring that down to just Unitrends and DocAve. Before all of that, we were using a combination of Symantec Backup Exec, Dell AppAssure, Dell Quest vRanger, and a little bit of Metalogics — there were just too many. It was painful trying to work with all those. With Unitrends we were able to get down to just Unitrends and AvePoint. The main reason we left Unitrends to go with Rubrik was due to its lack of a clear cloud unification and direction. For several years I liked the product in terms of their support and willingness to keep it going. It was very cross-platform compatible in the number of things that it could back up — way more than I ever needed. We had bought it in August of 2015 when they were selling it as software; however, they no longer sell it as plain software anymore; unless you're talking about their cloud products. I just felt like it got to the point where the company was no longer responsive. We told them we were getting ready to evaluate new products and wanted them to submit a plan as we were going to start over with them, but we never heard anything back from them. I blame that on Kaseya (who bought them), which I feel bad about that because I really liked the company. I really liked the people. I really liked the support. I really liked the product. It was the first time I had ever seen a very good reporting system that provided a daily report that some people have called a "Christmas tree" report. Other people have called it a heat map report because it provides a red, green, or yellow indicator for each asset that you're trying to protect. That's why I was so in love with it — that report made my job a lot easier. Before choosing Rubrik, we looked at several other products: Arcserve, Veeam, and several other solutions, we had to weed through hundreds of reports and carefully read through them to determine whether they were successful or not — how much they backed up and so forth. Whereas with Unitrends, you just got an indicator — red, green, or yellow: green means everything is good; red means you definitely need to look at it; yellow means look at it tomorrow and make sure it's not yellow tomorrow unless you know it's okay for it to be yellow. That was the beauty of Unitrends that I really liked. Cohesity does have that feature, which is a nice thing about Cohesity. Rubrik Compass hopefully will also be included in the future as part of their product. When you're looking at hundreds of backup jobs every morning, and you want to know how they performed, it's too much to try to read dozens if not hundreds of reports and lines. I'd rather see red, green, or yellow. Rubrik and Unitrends both give you seven days at a view. So whatever day you were looking at, you always had the previous seven days. For that alone, the three products — Rubrik, Cohesity, and Unitrends — were wonderful for my needs. I Almost bought Zerto. I kept begging Zerto to show me their reports and I'd actually almost committed to them. Finally, I got tired of waiting; I then configured the reports on my own and they were awful. Zerto makes a fine product as well, but their reporting is awful. I hate to say it, but that's a big deal for me — daily reports that make sense and are easy to understand and use. How was the initial setup? What about the implementation team? What was our ROI? What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Unitrends licensing depended on the number of CPUs you had, simple. It was competitive with other products. I think it was around $1000 a CPU a year. We have about 40 CPUs so It was costing us about $40,000 a year — that was our renewal price. I think the initial price may have been more. We didn't buy their hardware. We built our own and deployed their solution on our hardware, which was a blessing and a curse. Which other solutions did I evaluate? ArcServe, Veeam, Zerto, BackupExec, vRanger, vmPro, AppAssure, Metalogix. What other advice do I have? Buy everything from them. I don't even think you even have a choice anymore. After us and another big client, they told me they did away with the idea of selling their software. They only sell solutions that are their hardware and their software. You can't install it on your own equipment anymore. Also, beware of the forklift upgrades that are required at a certain point. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Unitrends a rating of seven. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? We use it to back up our VMware environments. We do daily backups of virtual servers and databases. How has it helped my organization? It has reduced recovery time. From recovering VMs to just simple file-level recovery. It's all fast and easy. What is most valuable? The daily backup report is one of the most valuable features. There is a clear report sent and emailed to me every morning that shows if all backups were successful. What needs improvement? The only area that I would say needs some improvements is the initial setup. A little more assistance and help during implementation would be great. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

What is our primary use case? It performs as a backup product. How has it helped my organization? The whole appliance needs to be more resilient. It lost our database, and that is something that cannot happen. If the data was written and managed a little better, we would not lose our entire backup. A bit more thought needs to be put into the process. What needs improvement? There are some questions as to how safely they are storing backup data. We had an issue about a year ago, but it actually ended up wiping our entire backup history, because one of the databases got corrupted, and we couldn't recover the backup data. Six to seven years of backup data just disappeared. So, obviously we weren't too happy. It's one of the primary reasons we're looking at the market and have gone down a different route for backups, essentially. I also think there should be a lesser focus on the physical appliance, which was virtualized. I'm willing to look at it from the ground up and go actually a bit more resiliency, we don't want to lose the entire database because it took a snapshot of the appliance. This is a pretty common thing. We unravel all this data that's backed up if we need to collaborate. For how long have I used the solution? One to three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's fairly stable, it runs, it does a backup like you said. Things don't tend to go wrong until either VM upgrades or Unitrends breaks with an update. In terms of that it just carries on. It does its job, that's the main thing. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It's scalable to a point. Yes, it is quite scalable. How is customer service and technical support? The technical support team is pretty good, actually. In all fairness to them, they are good. It is not their fault that their products are not functional in all aspects. But, from the support perspective, they did work quite hard to get things working in our favor. They did try their best. We cannot fault the support team for a problem with the product, itself. How was the initial setup? I was not involved with the initial setup. It was inherited by me. What was our ROI? Always look at your backups strategy, and what your RPO and RTO are. Also, understand your infrastructure and the risks involved, including how the backup works. If you are a large organization or corporation, with multiple sites, you can replicate the data from one Unitrends device to anoter Unitrends divide appliance. Then, this is definitely a solution for you. But, if you are a smaller corporation or organization, and you are worried about your backups, Unitrends may not be your best product choice. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I have no advice about the pricing of the product. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I inherited the product, so I did not comparison shop or evaluate other products. What other advice do I have? It hasn't improved our backup because of the signal comeback with their solutions. They purchased RDR, but we don't know whether, I believe there's new functionality now in the current version, but it's not quite there yet. But there's still the pitfall there. If the database gets corrupted you lost access to your data unless it's stored under the appliance. So, you are basically doubling up on your data storage. So, I can't really say much more than that. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.