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Azure Backup vs Bacula Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Azure Backup is 3.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Terry Tull - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward to set up and manage and allows us to monitor all backups in one place
I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. Setting up Azure Backup was pretty straightforward, especially if you follow the steps in the right order. It might seem a bit complex at first, but with experience, subsequent setups become easier. Planning is key to optimizing its effectiveness. Deploying Azure Backup typically takes around half an hour to an hour to set up one VM, involving creating a recovery services vault, defining a backup policy, and configuring storage options. For a more comprehensive setup including proper recovery planning, it might take a few hours. The key steps involve creating a resource group, and a recovery services vault, selecting a storage type, and defining backup policies. I deployed the solution myself.
Roni Alvarenga Ferraresso - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use with many useful plugins and extremely helpful technical support
A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed. I would also like a mobile application to manage the Bacula Enterprise environment where I could perform backups and restores directly from my cell phone or tablet. Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive. They need a clearer and faster restore screen to get the information about the data we want to restore; it's a little uncomfortable to find the files to restore on the current screens.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The compression features save us money and speed up the backup and restore process."
"You have the flexibility to encrypt your backups and choose the storage capacity you're comfortable paying for."
"The daily backups have become easier since we no longer need to handle large backups. The use of Azure Backup as a service has proven reliable and simplified our daily operations. Previously, we relied on LTO backups for data retention, but after migrating to the cloud and adopting Azure Backup, the delivery process has become smoother."
"Azure Backup is good because it is entirely cloud-based, which means that you can be 99.9% sure that your backup is safe."
"We use the normal features for Azure Backup, specifically to make backups of the VMs."
"It's easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Backup is its simplicity."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Backup is its ease of use and good integration with other Azure services."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to back up to different cloud providers."
"I can’t use the solution to restore another native cloud solution. Azure must add this new feature."
"Azure Backup needs improvements in allowing more specific backup options rather than just full VM snapshots. It lacks features for cybersecurity, such as ransomware protection."
"Connection with more legacy data services could be beneficial as some are currently unsupported."
"My company faces a lot of difficulties in restoring any encrypted VM backup."
"The support for Office365 backup is atrocious and is something that has to be improved."
"The tool's backup should be faster. Azure Backup's support should be faster."
"Azure Backup must include features similar to enterprise solutions."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Customers prefer Azure Backup because it has a pay-as-you-go model, and they won't have to pay an upfront amount at the initial level."
"The product's pricing is a three or four out of ten, where one is inexpensive, and ten is costly."
"The pricing of this solution is ok, but I'm expecting that the price will decrease in the future."
"This is an expensive solution in the Bangladesh marketplace."
"The product is neither too expensive nor too cheap."
"We have enterprise-level pricing. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"It is a very cheap cloud solution."
"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Backup differ from Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam has a version for Azure but there are organizations, like ours, that are considering moving to an Azure environment and wonder if Azure Backup is better than Veeam Backup and Replication (Vee...
What do you like most about Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is easy to configure and restore.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is expensive relative to the value we get from it. I do not have specific details about the licensing cost as it falls under another department.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Russell Reynolds Associates, Somerset County Council, Kardem, PCL Construction
NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Backup vs. Bacula Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.