|
Feature |
PHD Virtual Backup & Replication |
Veeam Backup & Replication |
|
URL |
PHDVirtual.com |
Veeam.com |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHDVirtual vs Veeam |
Both companies have backup/replication solutions for virtual
infrastructures as their main focus. Both of them are award winners in
many different occasions including VMworld and worth considering. |
|
Compatibility
vSphere 4
vSphere 4.1
vSphere 5
Free ESXi
Citrix Xen Server
Hyper-V
Thin Provisioned disk |
Supported
Supported
Supported
Not Supported
Supported
Not Supported
Supported |
Supported
Supported
Supported
Not Supported
Not
Supported
Supported
Supported |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHD Virtual vs Veeam |
If you are an only VMware
workshop, then both PHD Virtual Backup & Replication v6 as well Veeam
Backup & Replicaiton v6.1 have done quite well on supporting the latest
versions of vSphere(4/4.1/5). You could not go wrong on either, if all
you care for is vSphere support. Though if you have Hyper-V or Citrix
Xen Servers in your environment then your choice will be limited by
which product support your environment, as Veeam does not support Citrix
Xen & PHD Virtual does not support Hyper-V. That's might be something to
consider if you are planning to introduce Hyper-V or Citrix into your
environment.
Neither Veeam Backup &
Replicaiton nor PHD Virtual Backup & replication support the free VMware ESXi
due to restriction imposed by VMware. This was mentioned to ensure if
that all you are running, then you might have to consider upgrading your vSphere license before benefiting of either solution.
Both products work pretty
well with Thin Provisioned disks in vSphere which can save you a ton on
backup disk space as well speed up your backup and restore time. |
|
Installation Easiness |
Great+ |
Great |
|
Usage Easiness |
Great |
Great |
|
VSS Integration |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHD Virtual vs Veeam |
All of us were able to install
each product with ease and get it up and running within 10 minutes. .
We give PHDVirtual an extra point for deploying their software as a
virtual appliance, unlike Veeam who kept up
with the traditional install. We believe installing such
applications as an appliance is more future looking, than traditional
method as it easy installation & management as well cut on the OS
licensing cost.
Both products were quite
easy to use and have a slick interface where you can guess most of it
without the need to revert back to the manual.
Both products support
application consistent backup with the help of VSS, and quite good at
it. Further, both allow you to instant restore a particular MS SQL table
or MS Exchange item, without the need to restore your backup. Though the
way they do it is a bit different. While PHDVirtual let you assign the
VM as an iSCSI drive on your production VM and use that to restore the
required item, Veeam has done more on the integration and came up with a
full restore wizard which does not involve your production VM at all. We
believe the way Veeam has done it is quite neat for the applications
they support, though the way its done in PHD Virtual will allow you to
use the same trick with all kind of applications. |
|
VADP Integration |
Yes |
Yes |
|
File level restore |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Instant VM Recovery |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Backup Verification |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHDVirtual v6 vs Veeam v6.1 |
Both products offer a unique
features that distinguish them from other backup solutions in the
market. The first one is Instant VM Recovery which allow them to run VMs
from backup without restoring it, & Backup verification which help you
ensure having a verified working backup without having to restore it.
Further, both products allow
you to move that VM from backup to production with zero downtime using
Storage VMotion if included within your vSphere backup, else you can use
the built in migration feature that come with each product, but that
require few seconds of downtime while doing the final switching which
you can control when to be done.
One advantage Veeam
Backup & replication has in this area that it allow you to use instant
restore with incremental backups. On the other hand PHD Virtual support
it on any "virtual full" backup, but not on Full / Incremental mode. |
|
Data Encryption in transit |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Data Encryption at backup destination |
Yes |
No |
|
Secure Replication |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments Veeam
Backup vs PHD Virtual Backup |
For those environments where security is
top priority and backup data must be encrypted at all stages, PHD
Virtual Backup & Replication is the battle winner. Although both
products offer data encryption for the data while in transit for both
backup & replication, only PHD Virtual Backup & Replication offer backup
data encryption at the final destination. |
|
Backup Speed
Full Backup
Incremental Backup |
Fast
A bit Faster |
A bit Faster
Fast |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Veeam Replication vs PHD
Virtual Replicaiton |
Although most of us were surprised by the
results at the first glance after repeating it a couple of time and
sharing our lab results across the team, the results were consistent
that Veeam were able to do the full initial backup about 10% faster than
PHD Virtual where PHD Virtual were as well about 10-15% faster when
doing additional incremental. Though both products were adequately
fast and the transfer rate was almost as fast as the network wire its
transferring over. |
|
Deduplication |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments Veeam
Backup & Replicaiton vs PHD Virtual Backup & Replication |
Both products included dedupe capability
and deliver great backup disk space saving. We were able to obtain a
dedupe ratio as high of 1:15. Our testing was done with several Windows
2003/2008 VMs 50GB in size and about 20GB of data in them. Though your
mileage could vary depending on how unique is the data between your vms.
Further PHD Virtual dedupe across all the
VMs on a target, where Veeam dedupes across VMs only within a job. This
get PHD Virtual dedupes to be more efficient when duplicate data exist
across multiple jobs. |
|
Integrated Replication Solution. |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Veeam & PHD Virtual have replication
capabilities integrated within in the same product, which make them a
2-in-1 type of product where you get replication and backup for a single
price in a single integrated package which is very handy. |
|
Replication Speed
Initial Replication
Increment Replication |
Fast
bit
faster |
bit faster
fast
|
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHDVirtual vs Veeam |
Testing the replication speed
we had a very similar results to the backup speed test, where Veeam did
a bit better on the initial replication run and PHD Virtual did a bit
better on the increment replications. |
|
Notification by e-mail, GUI,Event Log |
Yes |
Yes |
|
File level restore from replica |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Replica rollback |
Yes |
Yes |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Veeam vs PHD |
If one replication feature
that we like about both products over other replication solutions out
there, replica rollback must be it. As this will
even protect you against major virus attack & data corruption in the
main site. If you can't roll back to an earlier copy of your replication
then if your last replica is corrupt you are out of luck. The good news
both products support this feature. |
|
SnapShot support |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Backup while replicating. |
Supported |
Supported |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Backing up VMs while a snapshot exist or
backing up while replicating used to be one of the most common
challenges with earlier vSphere backup/replication solutions, though
both PHDVirtual & Veeam have passed the tests in our lab. |
|
Cost |
~$1000 per host |
~$599-899
per Socket |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
PHDVirtual vs Veeam |
It seems PHD Virtual backup and replication
is the winner on cost with a lower price for hosts equipped with 2 CPUs
or more. Further, being priced per
host, can save you when trying to backup those larger ESXi hosts in your
environment (4CPUs/8CPUs) hosts. If you have those enterprise
environment hosts in
your environment, then PHDVirtual might be a much more cost effective in
your case. |