DATA SHEET:
UNITRENDS ENTERPRISE BACKUP VS. APPASSURE
Competitive Analysis: Unitrends Enterprise Backup vs. Dell AppAssure
Find the best fit for your business needs—read on to see how Unitrends Enterprise Backup compares
to Dell AppAssure.
Primary Advantages of AppAssure:
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•
AppAssure’s Replay software is best suited for storage specialists who want to focus on high touch backup and who also want to integrate
multiple storage, networking, and software components in order to stitch together a solution that meets their needs. This approach is the
opposite of Unitrends’ appliance-based value proposition which wants you to focus on your business instead of on your backup.
AppAssure has a low software only entry price if the protected environment has just a few servers in a homogeneous Windows and Linux
environment.
Primary Disadvantages of AppAssure:
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•
AppAssure’s licensing fees tend to be expensive for growing
businesses due to the licensing model - charging on a perfeature, per-client, per-operating system, application and the like
basis.
AppAssure tends to have a lower ROI (Return on Investment)
and higher TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) due to the higher
operational expenses of putting together, managing, and
monitoring servers, storage, networks, operating systems,
and data protection (backup, archiving, and disaster recovery)
software.
The non-integrated nature of AppAssure leads to finger-pointing
among the server, storage, networks, operating systems, and
data protection software vendors when a problem occurs.
AppAssure protects homogenous Windows environments. The
lack of heteregenous environment protection limits AppAssure’s
efficacy in enterprise deployments.
Limited support for integrated fixed/rotational archiving.
AppAssure only provides a software offering and requires
the customer to build out what is needed to protect the
environment.
Products and
Licensing
AppAssure
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•
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AppAssure is not a heterogeneous solution
Limited efficacy in enterprise deployments (no NAS, Unix
support)
Limited support of integrated fixed/rotational archiving to tapes
and SANs
Limited options for long term retention of data
Requires an additional licensed product to offer recovery to
dissimilar hardware
Does not leverage VMware VADP requiring management
overhead for agent per virtual machine
Limited to virtual machines running Windows for instant
recovery
Requires scheduling of backup targets independently
Limited reporting
Limited support and flexibility for inclusion and exclusion of data
being protected.
AppAssure is now part of Dell, which makes it an insignificant
part of their portfolio
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Non-restrictive licensing No
Yes
Standard licensing does not include restrictions on features, platforms supported, or per-client fees.
Integrated appliance
No
No
Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance - not just
software.
Available as physical
appliance
No
No
Available as an integrated server, storage, networking, operating system,
backup software, archiving software, replication software, and so forth.
Available as virtual
appliance
No
Yes
Available as an integrated operating system, backup software, archiving
software, replication software, and so forth as a virtual appliance.
Available as software
only
Yes
No
Available as a non-integrated software. AppAssure is primarily sold in this
manner. Unitrends does not offer non-integrated software at this time.
Support
AppAssure
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Supports hardware and
software
No
Yes
Support handles a vertically integrated data protection appliance - not just
software. AppAssure doesn't do this with their software product. However,
Unitrends does this with their physical appliance.
Proactive hardware
monitoring
No
Yes
Standard support includes proactive hardware monitoring.
Remote diagnostics
Yes
Yes
Remote diagnostics are available from support.
Self-installable
Yes
Yes
The product may be installed by a customer.
On-site support
No
Yes
On-site support is available.
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DATA SHEET:
UNITRENDS ENTERPRISE BACKUP VS APPASSURE
Phone support
Yes
Yes
Telephone support is available.
E-mail support
Yes
Yes
E-mail support is available.
Online interactive chat
support
No
Yes
Online interactive chat support is available.
Online support form
Yes
Yes
An online support form (or portal) is available.
Knowledgebase
Yes
Yes
A knowledgebase is available.
User forums
No
Yes
Support monitored and managed user forums are available.
Video tutorials
Yes
Yes
Video tutorials are offered by the backup vendor.
Monitoring and
Management
AppAssure
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Appliance-based moni- No
toring and management
Yes
Monitoring and management of data protection software, operating system,
storage, server, and other solution components.
Single pane of glass
Yes
Yes
Monitoring and management of multiple Replay Cores (in the case of
AppAssure) or appliances (in the case of Unitrends) from a single web-based
user interface.
Web-based
management
Yes
Yes
Monitoring and management can be performed via the web.
SNMP/SMTP/alert-based Limited
notifications
Yes
Notifications are available via SNMP traps, SMTP e-mail, and alerts. AppAssure
only supports SMTP and does not support SNMP trap notifications.
Recovery and Restore AppAssure
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Instant recovery for
Windows
Yes
Yes
Recovery from a failed Windows server in less than 5 minutes.
Instant recovery for
VMware
Limited
Yes
Recovery from a failed VMware server in less than 5 minutes. Since AppAssure does not leverage VADP, instant recovery is limited to virtual machines
running the Windows operating system.
Dissimilar bare metal
restore
Yes
Yes
This includes P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V. Unitrends has integrated dissimilar bare
metal restore support. AppAssure requires an additional licensed product to
offer this capability.
Heterogeneous bare
metal restore
No
Yes
This includes not only Windows but also VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, Linux,
Solaris, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. AppAssure only supports
Windows environments whereas Unitrends has integrated bare metal restore
support for Windows, Linux, Mac and many other operating systems.
Heterogeneous backup
No
Yes
AppAssure supports Windows and Linux environments, while Unitrends supports a variety of operating systems, applications, and hypervisors.
Backup
AppAssure
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Virtual and physical
backup
Limited
Yes
Supports virtual and physical environments. AppAssure has limited support
for physical environments, largely due to the lack of protection for heterogeneous environments.
Heterogeneous backup
No
Yes
AppAssure only supports Windows environments, while Unitrends supports
a variety of operating systems, applications, and hypervisors.
Heterogeneous storage
protection
Limited
Yes
Support for protecting NAS and SAN volumes. AppAssure only supports SAN
and DAS configurations. NAS is not supported by AppAssure. Unitrends supports SANs, NASs and DAS configurations.
Integrated fixed/rotational archiving
Limited
Yes
Integrated disk-to-disk-to-disk, -tape, -SAN, and -NAS for both long-term
retention and disaster recovery.
www.unitrends.com
sales@unitrends.com
1.866.359.5411
Copyright © 2013 Unitrends All rights reserved
DS-UEBvsAPPASSURE-20130513-1
DATA SHEET:
UNITRENDS ENTERPRISE BACKUP VS APPASSURE
Continuous incrementals supported
Yes
Yes
Continuous-based incremental backup is available (includes near-CDP
snapshot).
VMware CBT (Change
Block Tracking)
No
Yes
Support for VMware CBT is available. AppAssure does not leverage the vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP) and relies on the "Smart Agents" to be
installed in the guest virtual machines.
Support for Hyper-V
Cluster Shared Volumes
(CSV)
No
Yes
Protect virtual machines configured in a Clustered Shared Volume configuration.
Hyper-V CBT (Change
Block Tracking)
No
Yes
Support for Hyper-V CBT (which Microsoft does not support) is available.
AppAssure seems to protect the entire host volumes rather than tracking the
changes on the virtual machine hard disks.
Application-level
backups
Yes
Yes
Application-level backup is available.
Differential backups
supported
Yes
Yes
Differential backup is available.
Direct backup to tape
No
No
Direct backup to tape (also called D2T) is available.
Maximum concurrent
backups
Limited
No
The number of concurrent backups.
Technology
AppAssure
Unitrends
More Detail
Enterprise Backup
Supports agents
Yes
Yes
Supports client-level, agent-based protection where necessary.
Supports agentless
No
Yes
Supports agentless-based protection where necessary; Unitrends supports agentless-based protection for VMware, NAS storage, and iSeries
(AS400) environments.
Deduplication
Yes
Yes
Supports deduplication; Unitrends supports target-based, byte-level
(content-aware) deduplication. AppAssure supports target level, block
deduplication.
Retention control policies
Yes
Yes
Supports minimum and maximum retention settings.
Encryption
Yes
Yes
At least AES-256 level encryption. AppAssure does not support encryption
of data. Unitrends encrypts data at rest as well as in-flight to the off-premise appliance.
Failover virtualization
Yes
Yes
Supports Windows and VMware instant recovery.
Grid-based scalability
No
Yes
Backup servers (AppAssure Replay Cores or Unitrends appliances) are
configured in a grid for interoperability, monitoring, and management.
Integrated symmetric and
asymmetric replication
Yes
Yes
AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both
private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery.
Hub-spoke replication
Yes
Yes
AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both
private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery.
Integrated peer-to-peer
replication
Yes
Yes
AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both
private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery.
Integrated private cloud
replication
Yes
Yes
AppAssure supports replication to a private cloud; Unitrends offers both
private and public cloud protection for disaster recovery.
Integrated public cloud
replication
No
Yes
AppAssure does not seem to support public cloud disaster recovery;
Unitrends offers Vault2Cloud, which is a multi-tenant public cloud disaster
recovery solution.
Want to know more, or have questions about the best data protection solution for your environment? Click to contact
Unitrends or, request a quote.
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represent, warrant or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up-to-date, nor does Unitrends offer any certification or guarantee with respect to the opinions
expressed herein. Changing circumstances may change the accuracy of the content herein. Opinions presented in this reflect judgment at the time of publication
and are subject to change. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, Unitrends assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions,
or damages resulting from the use of the information herein.
www.unitrends.com
sales@unitrends.com
1.866.359.5411
Copyright © 2013 Unitrends All rights reserved
DS-UEBvsAPPASSURE-20130513-1