NAKIVO Backup & Replication Reviews

We use Nakivo as a backup solution in small and medium-sized virtual environments based on VMware. We are a small IT company and our customers generally have between one and five physical servers, with between one and one hundred virtual machines to protect.

We use Nakivo to backup and/or replicate those virtual machines to achieve the RTO and RPO requested by the customer. It can be deployed on a Windows machine, as a dedicated appliance, or even on a NAS (like QNAP or Synology).

When we started working with the first virtual environments, we used to make only copies of the data. Specifically, we were copying files and database dumps to external destinations. 

The most valuable feature is the support, as it is directly from Nakivo and it is possible to send a support request that contains all of the technical data on the environment, as well as the software, required for the answer. The response is very quick and most of the time, the problem is solved within the first answer.

Secondly, it is possible to install Nakivo in every environment including Windows, Linux, virtual appliances, NAS, and more.

Third, is possible to use as a backup repository many kinds of destinations. The ones we mostly use are CIFS and NFS shares, but also, amazon EC2 and tapes are supported.

The installation and configuration process is quite simple, yet rich in options to customize the solution.

From our experience, the main factor that could be improved is adding more cloud services that are supported as a backup repository. Many customers have active subscriptions with services like Dropbox or Google Drive and have asked us to use those as the backup repository. For now, those services aren't supported.

Another minor thing that could be added is the capability to granularly recover objects for more types of databases, including some open-source ones like MySQL or PostgreSQL. This could be useful in some full Linux environments, avoiding having to recover the whole virtual machine.

We have been using Nakivo Backup & Replication since 2018.

Basic support included with the standard license answers on business days. They are quite quick and precise in the answers, and we are satisfied with it.

We tried several competitors' software solutions, including Veeam Backup and Replication, but we have to say that Nakivo is the best choice when it comes to quality/cost ratio.

In fact, the licensing model gives the opportunity to offer a good price to the customer while maintaining, as a partner, a good margin.

Other than that, the functions that this software offers are comparable or even better to the competitors. For example, Nakivo can use an NFS share as a repository natively, without relying on other servers, which is a plus in a full linux environment.

The initial setup is quite simple and well documented.

The licensing model is very affordable compared to competitors, with a good quality-to-cost ratio, and the software is quite simple and fast to setup.

We didn't evaluate other options.

Our primary use case is to back up our virtual machines.

We have a hyper-converged infrastructure with Nutanix, made up of three servers with VMware ESXi and a virtual machine with a VMware vCenter appliance.

We have a QNAP NAS with Nakivo Backup & Replication installed. Every day, we create a backup of all the virtual machines. The entire infrastructure is connected with two switches in the stack, in high availability. Every link is 10GBase-LX4 and is redundant.

Nakivo is easy to configure because there are only a few basic configurations to complete before it starts working. I use it with VMware and Hyper-V. When you start the initial configuration, it asks you essential questions to reach your goal.

After that, you can schedule backups, and the dashboard shows if there are any problems during the previous backups, also suggesting the solution.

The process of restoring the virtual machine is very simple. You select what you want to recover and how you want it done, then click to run. The dashboard shows you the speed of the process and alerts you when is it done.

Nakivo has a lot of features that are very interesting.

For my purpose, I find VM Backup to be the most useful, as it gives me the ability to create image-based, incremental backups of VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV VMs.

Instant Backup Verification permits me to instantly verify VMware and Hyper-V VM backups and to get a report with screenshots of test-recovered machines.

Backup Encryption protects my data in flight and at rest with AES 256 encryption.

Instant VM Recovery is useful because I can boot VMware and Hyper-V VMs directly from deduplicated backups.

Instant File Recovery to Source is helpful because I can browse, search, and instantly restore files and folders back to the source.

In the future, it would be nice to have support for Zimbra email, Collabora Office, and the NextCloud content collaboration platform.

We have been using Nakivo for three years.

Stability-wise, Nakivo is good.

I have a good impression of the scalability.

I have not used their technical support.

Yes, we used Commvault, but it is very complicate and not practical for our use. So we choose Nakivo for is semplicity and the pricing.

The initial setup is straightforward because it guides you with a few questions.

I implemented it through a vendor team and their level of expertise is good.

Yes Veeam Backup and Replication, but it very expensive.

The last version of Nakivo introduced the support to protect Microsoft Office 365 data with backup and recovery for OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online. It sends source-side deduplicated backups to HPE StoreOnce backup appliances with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst integration.

Unfortunately, we don't use that technology because we have Zimbra as our mail server and Collabora Office as our Office application. Also, we use NextCloud, a content collaboration platform.

Overall, Nakivo works fine and we don't have any problems for now.

The primary use case for Nakivo backup is to have all of our data secured, and easily accessible if there is any data loss. 

It backs up our SQL databases, web servers, and application servers.

Using this solution has organized the data structure. Prior to using it, we could only back up three or four machines, manually to external storage, and it was impossible to keep consistent or to manage for a long time.

This software has the ability to centralize, organize, and manage all of our data. When something is changed or missing, you know where to look for it.

It has improved our backup speed, reducing the time we spend on performing backups every week. This gives us more time to improve other areas at the company. File recovery from a virtual machine is also great.

It is easy to manage all of the individual backup jobs, check the status every day, and it can even send an email to keep us informed. If there any problem, we can fix it before the next backup.

There is centralized storage, where the compressed backup data is reduced by almost half of the size, compared to the actual data. This means that we save a lot of space.

Another great feature is the VM backup. The job creation is clear and only needs a few steps. Once it up and running, it keeps data safe for a long time without any interaction from us.

I would like to have a built-in SNMP client, which is important if we want to monitor it using Zabbix, Nagios, or another monitoring solution.The snmp protocol can be used for monitoring systems,to ask the statuses of all process.If the software has some problem,freezes etc,it cant send an email of its status,but snmp can discovers problems.The snmp client can be installed manually.So altough its not a big loss,but nice if we have it built in.

It would be helpful if there were more cloud services supported as a backup repository.Now only amazon services is available,but there is other smaller cloud providers too.

We have been using Nakivo for maybe a month.

The stability has been great.

Scalability-wise, this product is great.

Technical support is great they want to help.

We did not use another solution prior to Nakivo.

The initial setup was not complex at all.

One of the valuable features is that it can be easily deployed as an OVF template. It can also be installed on network-attached storage.

Time-wise, it will be up and running in under five minutes.

We used an in-house team.

This product is cheaper than other big rivals.

It has a demo version that you can try and it has almost all the features. Moreover, when you buy it, you just activate it rather than having to reinstall it.

We evaluated Veeam before selecting this product.

Overall, this is a good solution. I can only think of a few cons, there are a lot more pros.

The next release should only include little tweaks or bug fixes if there are any of them. In our daily use of this program, we have no experienced any issues. It performs all of the commands that we give it, and there have been no errors yet.

I have a small environment with two hosts since most of our services are running in the cloud. We are a cautious group and we keep a copy of our files on-premise, as well as in the cloud. We are using NAKIVO for backing up our file storage and virtual machines.

The product has enabled me to concentrate on other tasks without worrying about the daily backups. Once I was past the initial setup and testing, I was confident that the product would perform reliably and as expected. So far, I have not been disappointed. 

The quick and easy setup of the ready-made virtual appliance made it simple to deploy. It was running within an hour. The interface is easy to understand and it gets the job done with a clean GUI. Perfect for someone who doesn't want to waste time.

The software is aimed at backing up VM images but it would be nice to have an option to just backup certain files/folders and not the entire disk.

NAKIVO is very stable and reliable. I am running an appliance that is just a virtual machine, and it has not given me any issues so far.

I have not tested the scalability of the product, but based on the features it should be as easy as the rest of the product is to use.

My experience with support has been good, but I really haven't needed their help much. 

I previously used VMware VDP for backing up my virtual machines. This was complex and difficult to maintain. I wanted to switch to something that would not take as much time to manage. 

The setup was simple and easy. Using the virtual appliance, all I needed to do was deploy the OVF (Open Virtualization Format) file, then set up the networking, storage, and connect the hosts. It doesn't confuse you with jargon or fancy interfaces, it's easy to use.

I implemented this by myself within an hour. I consider myself to have an intermediate level of expertise, but I believe a beginner should not have a problem with this either. 

I recognize my return on investment as the amount of time I have saved by implementing this solution. It was fast to deploy, quick to configure, and with little to no maintenance necessary, it is easy to manage. 

Setup is simple and with a ready-made virtual appliance, it makes deployment even faster. All you need is the capacity for running the appliance and storage on your existing VM host. Pricing is easy to understand and very affordable.

Two of the other options that I considered were Veeam and Vembu.

The product is a time saver and makes complex tasks easy to handle. A must-have for beginners and one-person teams.

• Good VM level backups
• File level and VM level restores
• Efficient deduplication data repositories

• Four times the reduction in the cost of our vSphere backups, which provides the base features required for our environment.
• Job copy features allows backup repositories to be replicated to a secondary data center.
• VM level replication jobs can be used to create DR strategies by replicating VMs to another datacenter.

• Lacks application brick-level restore capability, although 7.2 introduces it for the SQL Server.
• Lacks direct integration with common backup storage arrays, like Data Domain or HPE StoreOnce.

One year personally. More than two years for the company.

Some VM backup jobs hang periodically and cannot be stopped, except by restarting the Nakivo Director node.

The product scales well. Additional transporter virtual appliances or servers can be deployed to handle larger numbers of virtual machines. Additional repositories can be added to accommodate backup data with options of locally attached storage and remote storage.

Very good. It is as simple as sending an email with direct and easy questions/responses, which is received quickly. Usually, the first response is the resolution.

Extremely straightforward to set up:

1. Deploy a virtual appliance.
2. Simple configuration process.

While the feature set lags behind other vSphere backup products, Nakivo is a very inexpensive backup alternative which provides the basic features needed by many customers.

If hardware or software specific integrations are important for your business, this is probably not the best fit. The software is likely the best fit for small to medium business which does not need all the advanced features of competitors' software.

We have a VMware environment that needed backup and replication. We run Nakvio on a QNAP NAS and replicate it to another VMware Server.                      

The speed and security of backups have improved my organization.     

The ability to restore in the case of a catastrophic event is priceless since every company must use a backup solution of some sort.

• Instantly recovers entire VMs, individual files, or application objects (Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Active Directory)
• Deployable in one minute.                                                                       

In the next release, I would like for them to add restore in physical machines.

They should also improve the speed of "Reclaim unused space" in the repository.  

I have been using Nakvio for two years. 

The stability is good. 

It is good for small or medium businesses, we use it for 2 VMware hosts with about 15 virtual machines.

Support is always very available for any request.

Positive

There are plenty of options these days, but Nakivo is a strong contender.

It is easy for basic configuration, it is of medium difficulty for more advanced configuration.

We implemented in-house.

They have competitive prices.

Our primary use case is backing up a vSphere environment in our data center.

Our company supports local and national manufacturers, accountants, retail services, and other sectors of the economy. Further details would violate security protocols, so that is all I will say about the environment that we support, in a public forum.

Our company maintains partnerships with major technology providers and designs custom solutions for our tenants.

Nakivo is a simple-to-use alternative to other more costly vSphere backup alternatives. It is easy to set up using the included virtual appliance and also includes agents for most NAS systems.

Nakivo is easy to use but includes many advanced features like crash-consistent backups for MS SQL, etc.

We are satisfied with Nakivo, but if anything could be improved, I think it would be more real-time as opposed to email support availability.

We have been using Nakivo for two years.

We did not use another similar product prior to Nakivo.

The licensing currently allows for host-based licensing, which is advantageous if you have a lot of data on a few hosts.

We evaluated Veeam before choosing Nakivo.