NAKIVO Backup & Replication Reviews

As a software house, we make heavy use of the VMware vSphere environment for hosting our test lab along with the software repositories and other data.

There are some software repositories, file shares, and a VMware vSphere environment with about 60 virtual machines (few transient but the majority evolving), all weighing in at around 3.4 TB of data to backup.

Our data is mostly NAS-centric so we need a comprehensive solution to back up our NAS, possibly without allocating an additional instance of operating system and related hardware.

It is also necessary to make local and offsite backup copies of our data without recurring, if possible, scripting.

Nakivo permits easy installation natively on a NAS and has a low-impact footprint for needed resources. It can be quickly configured via web pages.

It is strongly oriented to backup VMware vSphere environments yet permits us also to protect data based on CIFS (Microsoft SMB) shares, thus covering our needs.

We can protect our environment by backing up data to local, offsite, and Amazon storage - making use of backup and copy jobs offered natively by Nakivo.

After an initial configuration and calibration work, the software now works successfully.

It can be installed natively on NAS appliances (it supports Qnap and other kinds of NAS) permitting the use of underutilized appliances without installing the software on Windows or Linux Servers.

The solution has frugal resource needs.

We can backup natively our VMware Virtual Machines and File Shares.

We can store backups (or make copies of them) onto Microsoft shares, Amazon S3, (which is ultimately on more economical Backblaze), and remotely to other sites using their little transporter VM.

Jobs can be chained one after the other to not overload the system with overlapping jobs or to start a backup copy job after its relative backup has ended.

We have rapid add/remove/reorder priority of VM to backup and their backup archive.

Nakivo Service is very helpful and pretty fast to respond (about 1-2 days).

We would like to back up File Shares to Amazon S3/Wasabi.

Email notifications should allow for the subject to be customizable and permit the use of some predefined variables (like {JOBNAME}, {DATETIME}, {JOBRESULT}) that will be substituted when mail is sent.

The backup view of a repository could be adjusted. In addition to the Name, Job, and Size columns, it would also be useful to see the number of recovery points for each object and the backup type for each row.

The backup view of a VM repository is necessary. If you have several protected virtual machines, you have correspondingly different pages to navigate to reach a specific VM. After entering the detail view of a backup, when you click "<" on the page, you are returned to the first page of the repository instead of being returned to the nth page you were on before. Alternatively, having a field where you set the number of rows to show would help.

Also, with the backup view of a VM repository, it would be nice to have a tooltip showing the summary data of the backup you are hovering over (or by clicking the hyperlink).

I've been using the solution for more than four months.

Previously we use MicroFocus VM Explorer (formerly Trilead VM Explorer).

Upgrading the vSphere platform makes VM Explorer no more able to support new environments. Further, we need a more comprehensive backup solution.

The setup of the software is simple and rapid.

The price is reasonable for our needs and with respect to the features offered.

We looked at Acronis Cyber Protect and Altaro VM Backup.

I use the solution for the backup and replication of VMs.

I use Nakivo to back up in-house VMs. We also use the replication features of the product. With such an option I can just switch on the second standby hardware over to a replicated server at a fraction of the time, thus taking a lot of pressure off us in the case of mission-critical operations. 

It's a good asset in our IT department. it has an easy installation deployment and an easy control panel to administer. I highly recommend it.

Nakivo backup and replication has improved our organization a lot by its deployment scenario across two bare metals running VMware, its easy configuration, and reporting.

Nakivo has improved our organization largely due to the fact that it is an extremely robust backup system too.

It comes with a replication module that is very critical to safeguard our mission-critical servers. This has been applied on several servers across our sites with great results as it becomes a Plan B in case of a hardware failure or an outage of the primary system.

We find the backup to the Synology NAS and replication features the most valuable to our environment.

We also like the comprehensive email notifications with attached reports. This reporting is very very easy to set up and is saved in PDF format, making it extremely simple to both share and organize. A complete history log can be shown with this product from inception to end of life.

We appreciate the implementation and very good cooperation with Synology NAS and application integration. This is vital to us in minimizing the cost of the extra hardware.

Sometimes, for some VMs and some Windows Server versions, specifically old versions (aka server 12 or older) fail due to the VSS writer error or locking file system. It takes a long time to finish and another job could start, so the first job may not finish, or expire unfinished. That said, that's a software-specific problem of the hosted server edition, and not Nakivo-related. A fix could be to raise the time needed to end the job or solve the VSS writers on the operating system, in order to succeed.

I have been using the solution for about three years.

The stability is very good.

The scalability is robust.

Technical support is very helpful.

Positive

I didn't have another solution previously.

The solution offers a very easy setup.

We did an in-house implementation.

The ROI has been positive.

Overall, it's worth the money.

I evaluated Veeam.

This is our backup software for our VMs. 

We recently moved from having physical machines to having virtual machines. Our traditional backup method wouldn't be useful for backup up our VMs as well as the infrastructure. We do not have a large operation so we didn't want something that was subscription-based as, in the long run, it wouldn't really be worth it. 

Nakivo lets you do a one-time purchase which for our small setup was a better value. It is not easy to find something like that nowadays.

We made the move from physical to virtual machines and Nakivo allows us to safely and quickly back up all of our VMs. 

It was also very easy to configure backups to be sent offsite to a separate repository for disaster recovery needs. This improved our organization because now we can conveniently have all of our VMs backed up onsite and offsite. This allows us to have a solid disaster recovery plan in place by having multiple copies of our backups. We can have copies on an offsite NAS, or on a portable HDD, and they can all be encrypted - which is even better.

The encrypted offsite backup is very useful. Being able to have a copy of every VM stored offsite is invaluable for disaster recovery. It was very easy to set that up and it works very fast; it is able to compress and transfer large amounts of data quickly. I was blown away by how fast it transfers offsite to another repository. 

One other thing that is often overlooked is the level of support the company offers you. Nakivo support has been great. I had some complex problems that they helped me resolve and they did it quickly. They are very helpful people.

One complaint I have is the dashboard flashing as it reloads/refreshes itself. The program was not always like that and it happened after an update at some point. When it refreshes the dashboard the whole screen flashes and all the squares that held information, like the charts that show data transfer and other things, all blink out and reload at the same time. Refreshing all those in real-time should be possible without having them behave that way. Sometimes I get confused with the retention settings versus what is actually being backed up.

I've used the solution for two years.

We use this software to back up all of our servers, databases, and log files as well as create bare metal recovery backups incase a server fails. 

When a server has failed in the past, Nakivo's been a great help as it's able to restore an entire operating system with its configuration and files basically everything. Therefore, when a server failed we simply wiped the drive and restored everything via Nakivo and haven't had a single problem. We've never had a restore operation fail on us due to a corrupted backup. 

This amazing software is highly recommended. We also use it on our Hyper-V environment and it's able to restore directly into Hyper-V and start the VM with no configuration required afterwards as it's a 1:1 replica of the server.

Nakivo improved our backup environment as it added yet another backup for us to have. 

We use multiple backup software like the Windows Server backup, EaseUS TODO Backup, and SQL SMSS DB Backup including other third-party backup software dedicated for their software. 

Nakivo's able to do everything these programs can do and is able to work with NAS shares, SMB shares, and many others. The best part about it is when we've ever tried to restore to verify the backups we've never had a problem in the four years and we regularly verify the backups every three months.

One of the most valuable features we've been using is the whole system backup. It works the best out of so many different applications without a doubt. The ease of use management server website, reliability, email notifications if the job is unsuccessful (and successful), and the performance are top-notch. It uses all the bandwidth available if not limited and backs up entire servers with all data about four times faster than Windows Server Backup and EaseUS TODO Backup.

One of the things I liked least about this software is when an update was pushed to one of the servers we had, somehow we didn't receive the update and needed some quick troubleshooting. That said, the customer service team was able to help out within the hour and was amazing and very helpful from the first reply. Like you cant go wrong with their customer support team. If you have a problem, an inquiry, or just a general question about what you can do or how else you can incorporate it they will answer your question to your satisfaction within the first two replies - unlike a lot of other support teams that just follow scripts and procedures, these guys get right down to the point from the first email.

I've used the solution for about four years.

We verify backups every 3 months and have never had a single problem with them over four years. They are highly dependable.

The product is 100% the best in terms of scaling. It offers high-speed transfers for both restores and backups and doesn't congest networks even without bandwidth throttling.

They reply with a useful answer within the first two emails from starting the case. They are very knowledgeable people and don't follow a useless script like many big companies.

Positive

We used the Windows Server Backup which was unreliable.

We also used the Easeus TODO Backup, which had lots of failed backups due to files in the network sharing in the same folder as the backup job (previous backups causing errors).

The setup is very straightforward once you figure out what needs to be done.

The solution doesn't require that many resources for the actual virtual machine/dedicated server for its software. It is very efficiently designed and has very high performance without congesting the network.

Windows Server Backup - Unreliable but came with windows so assumed it should be able to get the job done but lots of corrupted backups when trying to verify integrity.

Easeus TODO Backup - Lots of failed backups due to files in network share in the same folder as the backup job (previous backups causing errors) other than that no problems with it. lots of cool functions too but nakivo offers everything plus extra.

I recommend this software for any medium to large businesses. It offers very good integrity of backups.

We primarily use the solution for VM replication and backup. 

We replicate 6 VMs (both Windows and Linux) from one ESXi host to another ESXi host (VMware) and we make backs-up to a NAS of all 6 VMs with various types of retention. We used Nakivo also to duplicate the VMs for upgrade purposes on the server infrastructure. VMs are both servers and client machines.

Nakivo makes our backs-ups more reliable and easy to recover in case of full damage or partial retrieval of files - all at a convenient cost. Every time a user asks us for a missing file to be retrieved, we can satisfy his/her request in a few minutes. Notifications of Nakivo make us sure of the accuracy of backup jobs. 

VM replication is a great solution. Now, I can also duplicate VMs without the need for a vSphere vCenter server. It's with easier ESXi hosts. Also, for system administration purposes (tests, upgrades, etc.) it offers perfect functionality. 

I have no remarks. I need no more valuable features for backs-up. I have not yet tried the latest release, however, I have all the features that I need. The web interface is very usable and easy to understand, as is the planning of backs-up. The granular recovery is very useful for the ordinary activities of users. I have no comparison with other products, so I can't imagine other features.  No remarkable features are missing for me.

I've used the solution since 2018.

In about 3 years, we have never had stability problems and the appliance has been running 24/7/365.

We have not tested scalability, so I can't give an opinion.

Italian support of the vendor is quite good and competent. Sometimes they are slow to respond.

Positive

Our previous backup solution was a self-made server script without replication capabilities and only backed up at a file system level, not at a block level.

It's an easy setup of the appliance.

We implemented via our internal team.

Veem was more (and too) expensive for small companies. Nakivo was at the correct price point.

We also evaluated Veem.

I use the product for backing up my VMware VSphere and Microsoft HyperV Server. 

The first time I chose Nakivo was because we were facing a problem with a system that we used which was very expensive to renew. 

We found Nakivo from a website - one for VMware experts - and we tried to download the trial version.

The first time, we installed it on a physical machine that was running on a Windows Server - a 2012 Standard Edition.

At that time, we had 7 servers, including VMware ESXI and 1 VMware VCenter. Our VM at that time was around 50 VMs. After the trial, we were very interested in this product. After we tried to back up our Hyper-V VM in another system that we had, we found that all the systems were running well. That made us happy because we finally found a good product for backup that had a reasonable price.  

Basically, we were very interested in Nakivo because it was easy to install and support was able to install on devices like Synology, Windows Server, or even a client virtual or physical server. Using the web interface made it easy to configure and manage. 

It was easy to deploy a transporter to make process backup and replication faster and more reliable. Nakivo ensured our organization had good backup and replication software. 

We like the capability of Nakivo in terms of being able to restore files, folders, Active Directory objects, and so on. 

One feature that we like most is network acceleration. It also makes process backups between sites that we have more reliable. 

We like the site recovery system that Nakivo offers because it helps us with orchestration site recovery on our VM from one site to another site without having to deal with any manual processes. 

The transporter is one thing that we often use when we have installed a new server for our system. 

The chat functionality with Nakivo Support in the web interface is very unique and we love it.

In my opinion, Nakivo should consider having native abilities to be able to backup and replicate several applications. For example, an application based on a microservice such as a container app or orchestration using Kubernetes would be better if Nakivo had the ability to backup or replicate without depending on a hypervisor. 

Right now we know that Nakivo has the ability to back up as an incremental process and restore backups across several criteria. However, it would be good if we had the ability to backup a system like PostgreSQL.

I have been using Nakivo for around 5 years.

In my experience with Nakivo, we like that every backup process is successful and when we restore it, it is as is like the source material. Until now, it has been very stable and we have not had any problems.

We can add more storage as a respository very easily because it supports several systems such as NFS and CIFS.

We only have contacted customer service and support once. They were very responsive and helped us solve our problem.

We have changed from a previous system because that product was too expensive to renew and we needed a Windows license to install the backup system.

The setup is very straightforward and very easy to install, deploy, and configure.

No, we deployed the product ourselves.

Nakivo is a solution with reasonable TCO. 

After we calculated the fact that it was easy to install, easy to manage, etc., Nakivo still was the best option with a reasonable license price and renewal price year over year. 

Yes, we have tried several products such as Acronis, Commvault, and many more.

In our SMB we started using NAKIVO as our main backup solution for backing up mainly Hyper-V VMs. It's installed directly on our QNAP NAS. Only one system administrator uses it. We use features like scheduled backups, deduplication, retention, and app-aware mode for some VMs. 

Our environment has only one Hyper-V server with five Windows Servers plus one Linux VM, which runs a license server, authentification server, active directory, application servers, communication+git server, and the database server with server application for production process management.

The Nakivo solution provided us with the ability to do automatic scheduled app-aware backups with great deduplication and compression, so they don't overload our local area network and don't require a lot of storage space. 

Having reliable backups is a must for us, and Nakivo provided us with an easy-to-use solution, that offers fast implementation, initialization, and configuration. The restore function works great. Thanks to Nakivo we can do our business 24/7/365. 

The Nakivo solution was very economical, so my CEO is happy with it.

The most valuable feature for us is Nakivo's flexibility in the server platform. We use it directly on our QNAP network-attached storage, so it can run regardless of the Hyper-V server. We also like its very good deduplication and compression, so it doesn't overload our network. 

The scheduling is also very well done in Nakivo. Automatic backups are a must for us because we don't have enough time to perform manual backups. 

The updates are problem-free, so we can keep Nakivo up to date on the server and NAS too.

The only thing we have encountered that we would like to see improved in the future are error messages. They could be more detailed and helpful, without the need to send logs to support. Failing that, the part of the log related to the error could be displayed alongside the error message, so I can investigate the error without looking through all of those logs that I'm able to download. In the future, I'll be glad for implementing AI that could automatically assume what backup plan and retention do we need.

We've used the solution for one year and few days.

We looked at Veeam. However, Nakivo was more flexible and cost-effective.

I use NAKIVO backup and replication for several of my clients. I have replaced the product called Veeam Backup and Replication. We are a small IT service and repair center and we have many large clients running VMware 6, 6.5, and 7.  We use vCenter for all of our VMs. I have three different clients using this product. One client has four servers running two CPUs each and ESXi 6.7.  This client is running NAKIVO 10.2 as an appliance server and replicating the other three server's VMs.

The general cost of doing backups has been reduced. Also, the screenshot verification feature is priceless. I know right when I have an issue. At first, NAKIVO was a bit of a learning curve. It took several failures to figure of that some error messages were just canned messages and I had to dig deeper into the issue. As it turns out, the version of ESXi or vCenter with the proper version of the VM tool is very important for NAKIVO to get a good replication. The cost has been a huge issue using Veeam in the past and if you have ever tried to buy a license for Veeam, you already know it is almost impossible.

The test reboot of replicated VM and screenshot verification is great. NAKIVO is easy to use and pretty easy to set up. I use the appliance for all of my VM backups and replications. It runs as its own VM and you connect via a web browser. I have found Edge works best. The ease of purchasing a license from Nakivo has been one of the many features I have appreciated. I could not dislike purchasing a Veeam license more than anyone else in the IT industry. Having to jump through the hoops at Veeam and then after 10 plus emails, you might get an order from Techdata. It's just a joke.

Updating VM Tools on a replicated VM could be better. I think one of the most important things NAKIVO can do is stop releasing a new version several times a year. It's important to "get it right" on a version release - too many updates will cause an issue. Also, any version update should include the ESXi Host as well as the vCenter. Not taking into consideration the vCenter version is a huge mistake and no updates should be released unless they also support the current vCenter version. That came up and I had several issues before I figured out it was a vCneter update compatibility issue.

I have been using the solution for one year.

It can be a little touchy. When the IP cannot be reached there is not much you can do. You have to figure out why the IP of the appliance cannot be reached.

The solution can scale. I have it backing up and replicating 4 servers with almost no issues.

It has not been the best. I ran into some issues right away and support got on and tried to help me. I ended up working on the issue for a week and ended up figuring it out myself.  I have tried to stay away from support altogether since then.

I used Veeam previously. I switched mainly because of the problems I always encountered while trying to order Veeam. This company is the absolute worst in the business - not to mention the price of a license.

Yes, I did not have any issue installing the solution.

I handled the setup myself.

The yearly maintenance fees are okay but they could be better.

The cost is important but I think using the appliance is probably the best as it's easy to install.

I did not evaluate other options.

I do not have any additional comments.