NAKIVO Backup & Replication Reviews

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.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a cost-effective solution without compromising on features and functionality. I selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication to benefit from its cost-effectiveness, user-friendly interface, versatile platform support, performance optimization, advanced features, and storage efficiency. 

The setup process is very quick and I am able to install it on a Windows machine in less than five minutes. The app for a QNAP NAS system has proven to be very useful, quick to deploy, and reliable.

I found Nakivo valuable for the following aspects: 

• ease of use
• quick to deploy
• great value for pricing 
• professional and quick support

The VM Backup Verification is one of the features I appreciate the most. Other than that, the possibility to have remote (off-site) repositories has been a feature we really love, since it helps us to provide our customers with remote backups, storing the data with encryption and deduplication to allow safe and reduced storage usage. 

The notification process helps us to be aware of each backup result.

I would love to see compatibility with KVM Backup. We would appreciate seeing Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) supported to provide reliable backup to this virtualization host. 

Another feature that we would find helpful would be the possibility to update automatically all the transporter (local and remote) when updating the director. This will make the system update process faster and easier to deploy in more complicated infrastructures with multiple repositories and transporters. 

I've been using the product for seven years.

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.

Our customers moved to VMs on VMWare and Hyper-V and due to this, a new backup solution was needed. 

I have tested most of the brands on the market and looked at Nakivo. From the start, this was an easy-to-use no-nonsense tool that just worked. The price was low, and it was flexible to install, both on Windows servers and as a Linux VM.

Recently I have started to use the Linux appliance from Nakivo and they work great. I like the idea of having the backup software on a different platform disconnected from the production system.

The management of NAKIVO works great. They make it simple to get an overview of the status, backup progress, and the used disk space in the repository.

It is very useful for all types of backup and a copy function to external media works smoothly.

It is the first time I have been able to set up backup systems that work and is easy for the customer to access and check the status of the system.

It can be used on many systems, like VMs, physical machines, and Office 365, from the same installation - depending on the license.

The easy management and a good overview are the most important aspects.

The compression function optimizes the use of disk space and the error reporting that sends emails if anything goes wrong.

And the great service from the support, I have never experienced that they couldn’t help and if I forgot to answer, then they reminded me, to keep tracking the error until it was solved.

Since I have started to use NAKIVO backup I have not got a complaint from my customers about the backup system.

It is easy to create new users by giving the customer access to the management system and they do not have to install anything.

Right now, nothing is wrong.

The product fits my needs 100%. I use it for the backup of VMs. Some customers only have two VMs and others have more than 30.

The only thing I can think of is better options for adjusting the text in the mails that the system sends, both for reporting and for errors. When you review these emails from different customers, then it can be hard to identify from what system they have been sent.

The process for getting unused diskspace back from the data repository is slow. This could need an update to improve the speed.

I've used the solution for five years.

The system is very stable. Most problems have been from other systems.

The scalability is really good.

They offer super professional technical service.

Positive

We used Symantec Backup Exec and tried Veeam.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The setup is easy and they have really good guides. The price is also good, specialy for systems with many VMs.

We looked into Veeam, Symantec, and some other backup systems for host systems.

We are using Nakivo Backup & Replication to back up ten virtual machines from our Nutanix cluster with some 80 virtual machines. Our goal is to replace the existing backup solution completely with Nakivo Backup and Replication and to have an offsite backup of all important servers to one of our branch offices with a Synology NAS with Nakivo Transporter installed. Offices are connected with a 500 MB VPN; the Nakivo appliance is running on our Nutanix cluster. Currently, we are using an Enterprise Essentials license.

Veeam Backup and Replication is the main backup solution at our customer's site, but it stopped working while backing up our now 5TB file server - and after some weeks of investigating the whole issue with Veeam support, I had to decide to search for an alternative solution. Nakivo offered a free trial which was very easy to set up and immediately worked. To be totally honest, it has an affordable price. 

The bandwidth-optimized deduplicated offsite backup to a Synology NAS was another must-have, which would have been possible with Veeam, too, but we would have had to build a Windows-based server for that.

The first really good thing about Nakivo Backup and Replication was the fact that I could install and configure the trial version in maybe half an hour and had a successful backup of our file server on the same night. I used different repositories to test - a Synology NAS with Nakivo Transporter and a CIFS share on a Windows bases server. Both worked without any problems. Then there was another point, that was really important to me: having an offsite backup to a Synology NAS at an office branch. I had to take a look at some options to optimize data flow, but the backup copy job works like a charm.

At the moment, there are actually not many features I am missing. It would be good if I could have a remote upgrade of our Synology Transporters, but the manual upgrade is easy and no problem at all. 

Some SNMP features to configure our monitor software would be great since emails sent to me sometimes could be lost in all those other mails. 

Some customers from Germany might have a problem when contacting English speaking sales and support team, but that has never been a problem to me, although my English hasn't been used much in the last couple of years.

I've been using Nakivo Backup & Replication for Nutanix since 2020.

There have been no crashes and no unfixable errors (there is a good knowledge base, and self-explaining error messages).

Since I'm using Nakivo to backup only ten virtual machines at the moment, I will have to wait until I backup my whole Nutanix cluster to find out about the scalability.

The sales representatives are nice; we didn't need technical support.

I'm still using Veeam Backup and Replication, but since this solution had huge problems backing up our file server (5 TB), I switched to Nakivo for some servers and will be completely replacing replacing Veeam by the end of its maintenance.

Yes, if you just follow the steps outlined in the setup assistant, you get it going in less than half an hour.

I implemented the solution by myself.

After weeks of working with Veeam support without any success, I can say it was worth every Euro spent since I have a working solution and can sleep better.

Nakivo has way lower licensing costs than Veeam - at least in our environment, with Nutanix as the protected cluster. Talk to your sales representative; they sold me the right license.

I am using Veeam and tested only Nakivo as a possible replacement.

I do not have any other comments at this time. 

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.

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 use the product for the backup of our VMs (Virtual Machines) which are located in a remote location. 

We have scheduled the backups for every day which is very convenient as it runs automatically. 

We can also run backup whenever we want according to our convenient time. The user interface is very easy to use and you can set it up in sometime without any issues. 

They also have cloud integration option for the backup to be stored on cloud platform such as Amazon and Wasabi.                               

We first used Nakivo Backup and Replication for our own HyperV Cluster. Then, we added a physical server.

Having used it for some time, we discovered all of its functionalities and have seen the power of the product.

The web interface is clear and simple to use and learning to use it is very quick.

The email reports are clear.

The support is quick and efficient.

Nakivo Backup and Replication has become an important part of our disaster and recovery strategy.

Our company, being a VAR, has decided to become a reseller of this product to help more and more customers discover it.

I appreciate the management. They really do respond quickly. They reply immediately to any query raised from us as a technician or consultant and they know the pulse of the market and keep updating the features in such a big way. Kudos to the team.

I appreciate the motivation and confidence. It helps to sell Nakivo products when outstanding support is provided and its well-performing software easily beats competitors.

The product license and support delivery have been great.

Updating VM tools on a replicated VM could be better. 

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. 

Any version update should include the ESXi Host as well as the Center - 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.