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Datto vs Veeam vs Bacula Enterprise

Updated 23rd February 2023, Rob Morrison

While it is true that data security solutions have always been important, the last few years have clearly demonstrated how important it is to keep your data correctly backed up. Two of the biggest reasons for that are the growing and evolving threat of cybercriminals, and the risk of accidental data loss as a result of human error or a natural disaster.

Backing up data and applications is one of the most basic ways to prevent your data from being lost forever – and there are many different backup solutions on the market that can do that. However, the current landscape creates demand for data security solutions that are much more than just backup and replication appliances – which is why the backup solution market is so competitive at this point.

Unfortunately, the sheer competitiveness of this market makes it rather problematic for end users – both companies and individuals – to figure out what solution fits their needs the most. When you try to compare Datto vs Veeam or some other combination of backup solutions, it is always important to go over as many details as possible to be able to understand the scope of each solution and which one suits your specific use case the best.

Datto, Veeam, and Bacula Enterprise are three examples of a backup and recovery solution with a variety of features available. Identifying what each of these solutions is capable of is the goal of this article – and we will also look at what kind of company each of these solutions would be most suitable for.

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Datto

Datto is a prominent data security software development company that was established in 2007 and managed to grow tremendously ever since. It offers a number of different solutions focused on protecting from cybersecurity threats and safeguarding customers’ data, with over 1 million clients accumulated in the year 2022.

Datto’s flagship solution has the name “Unified Continuity”, presenting a combination of cloud storage software and backup hardware as a single centralized solution. Other features of Datto include enterprise file sync and share, network infrastructure, and SaaS data backup. There are three different data backup solutions that Datto provides – Datto NAS, Datto ALTO, and Datto SIRIS, each with its own use case and advantages. It is worth noting that we are going to be describing Datto SIRIS most of the time since it is the company’s flagship data security solution.

datto siris landing page

Datto Main Features

Integration. Datto is a fully integrated solution that performs backups and disaster recovery operations, it consists of its own appliances that handle every step of the process without a third-party influence. While this kind of approach is somewhat more limited in terms of cloud storage price, for example – it also helps the solution itself to be that much more “in control” over every single detail in the backup and recovery process.

Feature set. Datto offers a variety of data protection features, including both common ones and some that are not as popular within the industry. Instant virtualization, bare metal recovery, and automated backup testing are just a few examples of how Datto helps its users when it comes to keeping their data safe and sound.

Versatility. Datto has three different products in the field of data protection – SIRIS, ALTO, and NAS. Datto SIRIS is what the company is referring to as “Disaster Recovery as a Service” – an integrated backup solution for either virtual or local environments within a single platform. Datto ALTO offers a hybrid cloud model as a continuity solution for small businesses that focuses on image-based backups. Datto NAS is, as its name suggests, a network-attached storage platform built with extremely large datasets in mind, while also giving its users abilities such as file sharing and file synchronization with adequate file security.

Datto Technical Details

Datto has the capability to be deployed as a software-only appliance or as an actual hardware backup appliance.
Datto supports Windows, Mac, and Linux devices, as well as an assortment of virtual machine types.
Datto does not offer a dedicated mobile application for its backup-related services.

Datto Benefits

Since Datto’s solution is fully integrated, it can provide complete backup and recovery services with little to no initial setup, which is a great option for users that are not as well-versed when it comes to different backup features and solution types as others.
The ability to separate cloud and on-premise retention policies give users more granular control over their backups as a whole, and backup insights are extremely useful when you need to learn the differences between specific backups.
Datto is one of the few solutions on the market that can offer its customers an entire backup chain – including disaster recovery services, applications, cloud files, and so on.

Datto Shortcomings

Datto does not offer backup compression for the encrypting process, which results in said backups growing up to three times more in size.
Datto’s file restoration efforts are not capable of restoring permissions for these files, so the end user would have to set up those manually.
Image-based backups with Datto are more focused on being able to create a backup of the entire storage unit, which means that there is not as much granularity as there could be.

Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam Backup & Replication is a data protection platform that has been on the market for over fifteen years, delivering an extensive set of data security features with a lot of focus on working with virtual machines. Reliability and speed are two of the most prominent advantages of Veeam – with one exception that would be discussed below. It is also one of the few data protection solutions of this scale that have a free version, as limited as it is.

Veeam’s main approach to VM backups uses a combination of Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology and snapshot technology. This allows for a live disk file to be created at the beginning of a backup cycle – a combination of the aforementioned snapshot and the redo file that allows for all subsequent backups to be incremental, not full. At the same time, this kind of approach is known to slow down active production environments and has the unfortunate side effect in the form of long RPOs, with at least several hours of data loss in case of restoration.

Veeam front page

Veeam Main Features

Infrastructure. Veeam ensures that its clients are not vendor-locked with a specific cloud service provider by offering a multitude of cloud storage providers to choose from. Additionally, it is also possible to mix and match different storage provider offerings for easier scalability and efficiency.

Restoration. Veeam’s data recovery capabilities are rather impressive, with its infrastructure-agnostic software-defined structure that allows data recovery from different cloud storage providers with no issues. It also has notably short recovery times, replication encryption for data migration, and more.

Security. Veeam also has multiple features designed to keep all of its data secure – including end-to-end data immutability, automated backup consistency verification, and automatic malware scan capability.

Efficiency. Veeam was built from the ground up to provide high performance when working with the giants of the cloud storage market, be it Google Cloud, Azure, or AWS. Veeam’s API-driven core structure is a good part of that efficiency, and there are also many other features included in the package for the overall seamless backup and recovery experience – a variety of security options and native snapshot capabilities are just a few examples of that.

Veeam Technical Details

Veeam Backup & Replication has the capability to be deployed on a physical or a virtual device if that device meets the system’s requirements.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports Windows, Mac, and Linux devices.
Veeam Backup & Replication does not offer a dedicated mobile application.

Veeam Benefits

A combination of data transmission capabilities from remote or portable workstations and the ability to create multiple different restore points leads to a highly convenient granular restoration process for the client’s data.
The existence of a centralized dashboard greatly improves the overall convenience of using Veeam’s solution – since you can have access to a multitude of features and options from a single page, be it analytical information, backup operation control, restoration settings, etc.
A variation of customizable alerts is an incredibly useful way of notifying end users about all kinds of events, from the successful backup/restore processes to some sort of error during said processes.

Veeam Shortcomings

Veeam’s lack of a mobile app is a rather unfortunate limitation to the overall versatility of the solution. Additionally, Veeam’s Linux support is somewhat limited, and there are quite a lot of popular distributives that are not supported by the solution at all. As such, double-checking a list of compatible OS versions and general system requirements is always highly recommended.
Businesses that cannot afford hours-long RPOs may not find Veeam appealing due to its well-known issue with said RPOs. At the same time, it depends a lot on the business itself, so it would not be a problem for companies that are not as vulnerable to Recovery Point Objectives being longer.
While Veeam does have a free version, it is rather limited in its capabilities, only capable of covering a few VM instances at once, and lacking any kind of customer support aside from the official forums. At the same time, Veeam’s pricing as a whole is rather high, and may even be higher than the average industry standard.

Bacula Enterprise

If your business is medium-sized or larger, then Bacula Enterprise may be a great solution for you. It is an especially highly-secure software that can work with physical and virtual and cloud environments, as well as cloud storage locations, containers, and more. It is also versatile enough to keep up with all of the demands that a system as complex as a data center may have.

Bacula Enterprise’s pricing policy is not dependent on data volumes, and it can also boast its fast recovery times and little to no downtime. Some of Bacula Enterprise’s more prominent features are granular recovery, advanced deduplication, and a variation of backup approaches for different types of storage environments. It can work with Exchange clusters, NDMP devices, NAS/SAN storage devices, and even directory servers.

bacula enterprise landing page

Bacula Enterprise Main Features

Versatility. Bacula Enterprise boasts a large variety of different backup storage locations, such as disk, cloud, tape, robotic media libraries, and so on. As such, it can adapt to a lot of different companies’ needs and priorities, being capable of accommodating both short-term storage needs and long-term offsite storage. Bacula can be used to create multiple “volumes” of data within the same disk, making it easier to perform short-term storage operations. Bacula also works well with long-term storage devices such as tape – which is rarely used as a primary backup location but is great as a data backup option for storing sensitive information off-site and for air gapping.

Security. Security is an important part of Bacula Enterprise’s solution, with several file encryption strategies, data corruption detection capabilities, FIPS 140-2 compliance, many air-gapping options and functionalities, many immutability options, multi-factor authentication, anti-virus scanning tools, corruption detection tools, and so on. One of the overriding reasons for Bacula’s especially high levels of security is its fundamental architecture and design. Bacula’s security capabilities are so effective that the solution itself has been used by a number of government and military-related organizations.

Fast recovery. Data recovery speed is an important factor for every company, which is why Bacula Enterprise also puts a lot of emphasis on this particular factor. Bacula’s solution uses many techniques to ensure super-fast data recovery. One of many examples is its own tool called bextract, which performs quick data recovery operations of variable sizes – from granular file-level recovery to restoring entire relational databases and systems.

Bacula Enterprise Technical Details

Bacula Enterprise works with regular Windows and Mac systems, while also supporting Linux, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, OpenSuse, Suse, AIX, etc. In total it supports over 34 operating system versions.
Bacula Enterprise offers a dedicated Android mobile all for its users.

Bacula Enterprise Benefits

Bacula Enterprise’s security measures are one of its stronger points, with the solution itself proving to be especially robust, FIPS 140-2 compliant and offering data attack and corruption detection capabilities, tripwire-like internal security systems, advanced and customizable data encryption, and much more.
Customer support can also be considered one of Bacula Enterprise’s stronger points, with an entire team of senior experts that are always ready to help the clients in any way they can.
Bacula Enterprise is also one of the most versatile backup and recovery solutions on the market thanks to its system of modules. These modules are used to add support for many different storage systems and backup locations for the backup solution itself – including VMs, OS types, applications, databases, containers, cloud locations, etc.
There are also many different management-related features available, including point-in-time backup capabilities, controllable backup routines, various automatization capabilities, and more.

Bacula Enterprise Shortcomings

Bacula Enterprise software gets frequent updates, which may mean the possibility of update-related issues, including new features implementation, etc.
Bacula Enterprise is a deep and versatile backup solution that targets large companies first and foremost, which is why there can be some issues with users that have little or no Linux experience, especially when it comes to some of the more advanced features. The platform in question does have two different approaches to controlling the interface – a web-based GUI and a command line – but still requires some learning for inexperienced users.
There are a few very specific modules of Bacula Enterprise that have their own higher price tag.

Datto vs Veeam vs Bacula Enterprise

Now that we have an overview of what each of these solutions is capable of, we are going to look more closely at why you might choose one of these solutions for your company.

Why Datto?

Datto is a disaster recovery platform that offers a fully integrated backup appliance for its users – which is an advantage for companies that are looking for a simple but completely controllable backup solution with little to no additional customization after setting it up. Datto’s Inverse Chain technology claims to have completely solved the ever-present issue of incremental backup chains being broken – an issue that some believe to be one of the biggest reasons for data loss outside of cyber attacks.

Datto is capable of impressive speeds, with claims that the entire infrastructure of a company can be loaded in about 6 seconds, as well as the fact that their RPOs and RTOs are lower than the average on the market, with some users reporting less than an hour of RPO.

Datto is a comprehensive disaster recovery platform that offers fully integrated backup with impressive performance parameters, and it is also flexible enough to be able to accommodate even small businesses with its flexible pricing policy.

Why Veeam?

Veeam’s pricing model may not be particularly straightforward, but it does offer a separate page on its website that lets you calculate the amount that you would have to pay for your specific number of VMs, servers, workstations, and M365 users that needs to be covered with this solution. It is not the best pricing on the market, but it does have its uses; for example you can input how many locations you want to be secured with this backup solution.

Veeam also offers some degree of data security, offering immutable native backups – a combination of Amazon S3 Object Lock and Hardened Linux Repository. These backups are constantly tested and verified at all times to ensure that there is no corrupted data, malware, or other unusual data in what you’re restoring.

Aside from the aforementioned RPO issue, Veeam is a solid solution for backup and data replication operations, especially if you need a lot of different monitoring features in your backup platform.

Why Bacula Enterprise?

Bacula Enterprise’s pricing is something that can be a great advantage to users, and for a good reason – it acts in contrast with most solutions on the market, offering a simple pricing model on a subscription basis. The solution itself does have different levels of subscription, but the only difference between them is how many devices can be backed up with Bacula. Additionally, Bacula does not charge its users based on how much data is to be backed up or restored. This absence of capacity-based licensing potentially means great benefits for users with large, complicated IT departments and lots of data.

The ability to mix and match two completely different user interfaces (web-based GUI and Command Line Interface), combined with the overall ease of deployment and reliability of the solution as a whole, makes Bacula a rather flexible backup solution. It is also nothing short of impressive how many different technologies and storage types Bacula can accommodate with its flexible system of modules.

All in all, Bacula is a great choice when you’re a middle-sized or large enterprise that needs a comprehensive solution with as many features as you can get in a single unified platform for all of your backup and recovery needs.

Which is better: Datto, Veeam, or Bacula Enterprise?

Datto is an integrated disaster recovery solution with an emphasis on simplicity and efficiency that offers several different solutions for specific use cases and an assortment of useful features, such as the ability to separate retention policies for on-premise and cloud deployments for better overall control. At the same time, it lacks granular restore capabilities, does not have backup compression, and cannot restore user permissions.

Veeam as a backup solution puts a lot of emphasis on virtual machines and has over a hundred different cloud storage providers for end users to choose from. At the same time, its pricing is not particularly customer-friendly, despite the existence of a free version, and the biggest issue of Veeam in the form of long RPOs may be a issue for a lot of companies.

Bacula Enterprise is a highly versatile, especially secure backup and recovery platform with an impressive number of different storage locations and technologies supported. However, it can also take a little more time to get to know compared to some less flexible or broad solutions. For people that have no linux knowledge, it would definitely require learning time. That being said, it is a great option for middle-sized and large enterprises that need to have varied and diverse IT environments to protected, while also not having to pay for their (often growing!) amount of data that needs to be backed up.

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About the author

Rob Morrison is the marketing director at Bacula Systems. He started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat and Pentaho ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours Digital Media and Communications degree, and completed an Overseas Studies Program.