Review NAKIVO Backup & Replication

About the product for backup NAKIVO Backup &Replication I have learned in just a couple of months ago, when it appeared some articles in the Internet. This product is missing in the latest Gartner quadrant in the direction of Backup & Replication, but nevertheless, it interested me some of its features which I have and will tell you.

NAKIVO product is fairly young, it appeared on the market only in 2012 and in my opinion it is well "confess" approach of his competitor, Veeam. As originally Veeam, NAKIVO aims to back up virtual infrastructures and it does not uses agents (including the helper methods like Veeam). But NAKIVO and own "chips". NAKIVO is able to work on any platform — linux, windows, aws, comes as a ready virtual aplins and including in the form of a package for different NAS (Synology, WD, Asus, Qnap). This enables you to deploy backup system in minutes. And for small companies that might be a plus because of the possibility of using inexpensive NAS systems as backup storage and backup server.

NAKIVO consists of 3 main components:

the

the
• Director (administration and web interface)
the
• Transporter (completing quests)
the
• Backup Repository (storage)

As for the controls, NAKIVO you available the Web UI, CLI classic and a HTTP API, accordingly you have the ability to integrate this solution into your management system. In addition, there is a portal of self-healing, i.e., the use of this solution for providing BaaS is available out of the box and does not require a separate license. You can also transfer the system to the sublease.

The use of multiple transport modules allows you to flexibly scale your backup system when large volumes or with their future growth, allowing to allocate both computational and network load among multiple servers. Interesting is the inability of selecting the type of backup. NAKIVO only creates incremental backups (not the first, you certainly will in any case be full) with CBT VMware and Hyper-V RCT to determine the changed blocks of a VM (unless you include the option of No change tracking — in this case a backup will be always Full).

Storage server allows you to connect to local drives or remote drives (NFS, NAS or SAN), but does not support tape libraries (support tape libraries promise to implement towards the end of the year). It should be noted that deduplication is not in the session, a global, block-level storage. This allows extremely efficient use of disk space. Deduplication can be disabled if you use specialized storage for storing backups, but unfortunately, at the moment NAKIVO doesn't support storage API such as EMC DataDomain or HP StoreOnce.

Creating jobs is done by the wizard in 4 easy steps that anybody will not cause any difficulties. What I would like to note here? First- very high flexibility in the configuration of scheduler, including jobs several different schedules for the same task.



Also in version 7.2 beta there is a convenient calendar with all the jobs. Convenient and quick to find a spare window for a new task or view when performing the highest number of jobs that would be possible as it is to relieve the graph.



And extremely flexible retention policy, backups, tuning in a couple of clicks of the mouse.


With VSS ensures consistency of applications:

the

the
• Active Directory
the
• Exchange
the
• MS SQL
the
• SharePoint

The list of applications is not yet as extensive as the competition, but I very much hope that it will be expanded.

During backup verification Nakivo is producing transferred units and at this stage control the ability to restore this virtual machine. In addition, as a check of the backup script is used with manual start the machine from a backup auto start and create a screenshot after you run the backup task. Unfortunately, there is no extended validation of the virtual machine — the scanner of ports, or running custom scripts. Not always to ensure performance of the service deployed on a virtual machine can be a simple screenshot of the desktop.

During my acquaintance with Nakivo to me for review came from NAS company QNAP — TDS-16489U and I combined pleasant with useful — tried the Nakivo work on this device. As shown by monitoring download resources it almost does not consume, although there still 2 Xeon processor. But deployment is done in 2 clicks and takes only a couple of minutes.

As for speed of backup, in my test sandbox Nakivo showed the same result as Veeam, which I use as the main system of Kazakhstan. The difference in storage efficiency, in one Tusk between them I just did not notice.

In the end I want to mention one more key advantage of this solution is the price. Comparable to Veeam, even if not to take into account the capabilities of the portal samoobsluzhivaniya and take a simple version of Veeam Backup &Replication, it will cost 73000 rubles per CPU (list price SoftLine), while the most expensive version of Nakivo Backup & Replication with a multiplayer mode, the opportunity for branding of the portal, the HTTP API and integration with AD at the moment will cost 36,000 rubles. If multiuser functionality is not needed, the cost will drop to 24,000 rubles for a single processor. Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard Virtual Host is also more expensive, and about products such as HP DataProtector, EMC Avamar, Commvault or IBM Spectrum Protect and did not speak.

Yes, of course at the moment Nakivo inferior in their capabilities of Veeam, particularly with regard to integration issues with storage, but the product is young enough competition in the market is quite high and I think the product will evolve very quickly and grow into useful functionality. If you are looking for inexpensive backup software, and your virtual infrastructure is dominated by products from Microsoft NAKIVO Backup &Replication can be your great helper.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru