Asigra Reviews

The most valuable features our Technical Administrators talk about are the Incremental Forever Backups and DS-NOC. The Incremental Forever Backups gives confidence that after an initial backup, we are able to meet most customer’s backup requirements within respectable time frames. The DS-NOC allows us the ability to manage and monitor our customers easily from any internet enabled devices. This is extremely useful in cases where customers manage their own Backup Appliances and it can be time consuming trying to gain access to the server to make simple updates.

In the Parent Organization where we have replaced Tape backup with Asigra, we have managed to free up approximately 30 minutes per day which was previously used to check backup status and change tapes. The distance between the office, server room and tape storage areas is quite vast and it would be a daily task of the IT Team to collect the new tapes from storage, travel to the server room, swap the tapes and take the old tapes back to storage. The IT Team now simply look at a status report and action items as required, all from their desk. This allows them to be available to support users and provide a better service all around.

The Asigra product on the whole is a fantastic solution and I would highly recommend this as it delivers everything our business and our subsequent customers required.

From my knowledge of the technical roadmap I can safely say Asigra listens to their partners feedback and are working hard to deliver on ongoing market leading solution. Below are two of the suggestions we recently made to Asigra from our experience.

Firstly, the introduction of a ‘DS-Updates’ system similar to Microsoft’s WSUS would be a much welcomed addition to the Asigra family. This system would automatically check Asigra for updates and hot fixes and download them to a DS-System. Administrators would then be able to approve the changes and distribute them accordingly and selectively from within the DS-NOC. At present, downloading the relevant files and placing them into a directory on the DS-System is a little cumbersome and open to error/malicious use. The system could also be used to get updates from upstream, rather than from Asigra, meaning that MSPs that go through a Partner for a private cloud can only get the updates that the partner wish to provide them.

Another area that could enhance the offering is within the DS-NOC. This is a very useful tool in its current state, but I believe it could be improved further with the introduction of a simple help desk function and an in depth knowledge base linked to the error codes received. The help desk would be useful to allow customers to log issues with Asigra from within the NOC environment, rather than having to connect to another system to do so. It would only need to capture basic info, and buttons could be placed against certain areas such as Backup Activities so these can be quickly raised by a customer as required. The knowledge base could be built and centralized at Asigra, but allow the ‘community’ to update it, similar to how Wikipedia works. This would allow the vast network of Asigra Engineers to help one another and help build a community of expertise across the world.

I am personally a fan of Exchange email level and MS SQL db level backups. On top of that, having multiple retention copies always helps when trying to restore from a virus/spyware attack. The ability of being able to backup Linux has also been helpful to ours/client servers, as its multi-tenancy scalability.

Customers know they can depend on us for retrieval/storage of their files.

I think the product needs more diversity in Hyper-V. I know it is coming in 13.1, but I have yet to see the exclusiveness as VMware has. When I went to the Asigra Partner Summit this year, a new, not yet in place, feature for Hyper-V was in the works. Right now, the product is more VMware centric when it comes to replication and ability to backup images.

• Versatility
• It supports multiple OS's
• Physical & virtual
• Application aware
• Short & long-term retention

We can provide a reliable service to our customers.

Cloud-to-Cloud backups.

I've used it for 10 years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's very good.

It's very good.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house.

80%.

Always keep an eye on the competitions’ price.

Veeam, which we also use.

Take the training courses to get the most out of it.

Retention and data life cycle management, along with deduplication at a global level.

Asigra allows for backup set creation using template files, this allows us to deploy backup sets extremely quickly and efficiently with no error.

The user interface is a bit outdated, but Asigra has acknowledged this and is working on a new interface.

My company has used this product since 2006, I have been using the product since 2011.

If you do not attend their training or use their support then you will have trouble. As long as you complete the training and utilize your support portal, you will have very few issues.

None, its extremely stable. If an event arose that caused a stability issue, a hotfix would be released within a week or less.

None, the product scales and tiers very well.

Customer services would be a 3 out of 5, simply due high turnover and lack of communication.

Technical support is great, Asigra is working on ways to make it ever better by creating new case portals which help reduce the time to resolution.

Prior to Asigra we used the Zenith BDR in parallel. Sagiss wanted a product that worked and was reliable and Asigra was that product.

The Asigra setup can and is going to always be complex due to the functionality of the backup product. Oddly enough, the complexity of the product allows for great flexibility and scalability in the long run.

We have always implemented Asigra in-house.

I was not the one the initially implement the product, but I do know it was a steep price. Since I have come onboard I have automated a vast majority of the Asigra system so the overhead and work we do is very basic maintenance and remediation.

We evaluated Zenith BDR, CommVault and Asigra.

You need to make the investment in training and certification to get the most out of this product. Once you have Asigra, you are set, it’s a rock solid platform that works every time.

Asigra's client-less approach is one of the best in the industry. Ensuring the backup/management of any system on the network through one single portal is extremely helpful. Asigra's message level restore is an exceptional feature for retrieval of deleted emails. The quality of the backup can always be trusted as there are numerous background services running to constantly check data integrity. Although not tested as of yet, version 13 offers backup of Microsoft Online Exchange backup (Google Apps was available for Version 12). Backup of ESXi (including the free version) as well as Hyper-V and Hyper-V cluster is nice as well.

Although a fantastic backup system, it is very complex. Installation can take anywhere from 35 - 95 min (depending on the system resources) - prior to setting up any backup sets. Disaster Recovery is one area where Asigra requires some re-thinking. At this time the procedures for Disaster Recovery are even more complex then the initial installation. The DR set up must be the same as the original Backup Setup - naming conventions, unless well documented could increase the recovery time significantly. The constant checks and re-checks, although great for data integrity, affects recovery times - once installation of the recovery system is completed a database recovery must be started and then a synchronization of data files (which can take countless hours - depend on amount of data and available bandwidth). Only after all this is done the data recovery can begin. Bare Metal backup is great and works well, although recovery of systems to dissimilar hardware is difficult IF possible. Physical to virtual (only available to VMWare) is complex and requires VMWare tools be installed and configured...configuration can be difficult. For businesses that have Bandwidth issues Recoveries are difficult as interruptions or disruptions may require restarting the recovery of all files again and again until there are no network issues. Test recoveries on secondary systems are difficult - require stoppage of backup systems. Setting up a recovery server can be difficult as at times it may require stopping backup for a day or more depending on the tests run (for Disaster Recovery). For general test recoveries run of the original setup no extra setup is required.

Over 1 year

MS SQL can sometimes cause some headaches during installation, but generally no issues with installation.

Service can stop at times with no real explanation and require a manual restart (only of the service not entire server). Automatic upgrades can fail at times requiring manual intervention.

No. Very scalable.

Very good.

Support staff is knowledgeable and will work with hard to ensure all is done to resolve the issue.

Asigra is one of the solutions offered at this time to support clients - depending on needs. cost of implementation, bandwidth and RTO/RPO objectives are considered prior to selection of system.

Initial setup very complex - although wizards to help. Ensuring all information is document is critical for a positive experience in case of disaster. Planning for this is key.

In-house.

ROI can depend on client - as low as 3 months and as high as 18+ months. Cloud storage must be considered in ROI as this can add anywhere from $0.01 to $0.10 per GB or more.

Asigra's implementation and day-to-day costs are very high. Necessary features can significantly increase the cost of implementation.

Aside from Asigra we also use other solutions to ensure client needs are met. Other solutions currently used are:

1) Veeam
2) Backup Exec - to disk only
3) IASO
4) Azure
5) AhSay

Asigra does many things well, however it is not as robust in areas that are becoming more mainstream.

Excellent Backup System - backup of cloud (Google Apps, Salesforce, Online Exchange), backup of data (files and folders), backup of SQL, Oracle, Exchange and MLR etc., backup of VMs (VDR available for VMWare only - complex but works well)

Requires improvement - Disaster Recovery for Physical systems, no ability for DR testing,

Costly to keep numerous revisions or deleted files. I would question the sometimes advertised 90% compression rate as Selected to Stored will usually between 0.5:1 to 3:1 (depending on the setup of the backup set).

Backing up to the cloud

Replaced an ageing tape backup product and reduced administration.

Data encryption due to the speed of restoring multiple files

6 months

Limited issues around configuration and backup client on different platforms

Product would occasionally encounter issues when it impacted other software

None encountered.

Very good indeed.

Again, very good technical support

Used a tape solution, cloud backup is easier to manage to and administer.

Complex especially around testing.

Through a vendor with a very high level of expertise.

2-3 years of reduced administration costs.

£2k per month plus £5k setup.

No, this was the market leader and a proven technology.

For large numbers of file restores it is advisable to also have an onsite NAS device for faster restore times.

Simplicity, very easy to restore user data. Means that we don't have to request off site tapes to be delivered to the office, can easily access the cloud data and restore most data within minutes.

As above, vastly improved user down time on important data that has been deleted. Tapes could often take hours if not over a day to retrieve, now that issue has been eradicated.

For me it does what it needs to.

2 years.

No issues with deployment.

No issues with stability.

No, have easily scaled up as we've increased the amount of data we now hold.

From the limited contact I've had it's been very good.

Excellent, always at the other end of the phone with a solution to most of the few issues we've had.

Just tape storage with a local firm.

I wasn't involved in this but from the sounds of it it was very simple. Most of our servers are virtualised so we just needed to set them up and our supplier did the rest.

Through a vender, they knew what they were doing and there was very little if any down time.

Symantec cloud was the only other product and it came down to cost, you had to install the client on all the servers which was done with a fee, with Asigra there's no such problem which makes it very cost effective.

Worthwhile, possible the initial setup of the hardware is costly but once you're going the costs are relatively cheap, it's the data costs that can rack up.

Agentless framework, simple implementation & configuration.

Smooth integration into customer's environment, interactive UI.

Personally speaking, I think the reporting should be more interactive.

2.5 years.

No issues with deployment.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

None.

I would rate the customer service a 3/5.

I would rate the technical support a 3/5.

No.

Straightforward.

In-house implementation.

No.

Asigra’s multi-tenancy feature is most valuable as it allows the company to on-sell a private cloud backup and recovery solution to existing customers. I like the fact that agents are not required to be installed on any servers to be backed up, so no downtimes due to the backup solution.

For an IT Managed Services Provider, this product was selected due to its reliability and it’s flexible business model that it offered. The organization uses Asigra to offer/on-sell a reliable backup and recovery solution to customers. The organization built a private cloud for their customers to house their data and charged based on how much data is used. An in-house built Asigra appliance with considerable amount of disk space is provided to customers without charge, to store backups locally and transmit incremental backups to a private cloud.

The setup and configuration of this product is quite complex. There are too many adjustable parameters available. The options that must be configured and tweaked is also the reasons why this product is so powerful. However, I still think they should make their product easier to use.

I have worked with this solution in a managed services company for less than a year, 11 months to be exact. The resident Asigra expert had left the company and I was tasked to take over the deployment, maintenance and support for customers who purchased our Asigra cloud backup solution.

Yes, the initial backups and its transportation to the data centre can be painful when issues are encountered. The first backup for each customers must be transported to the data centre and imported before incremental backups can be run. Some customers are located hundreds of miles away and getting the initial backup to the data centre before the incremental backup grows too large for the internet connection to handle the upload can be an issue.

The customer’s internet connection speed can also be a problem because when the internet connection is slow enough, there are issues with timeouts which leads to failed backups. At times, failed backups or other issues can cause the whole backup set to be unrecoverable so the whole process must be started again by creating a new initial backup.

Another issue is that the firewall on all servers to be backed up must be turned off for Asigra to work.

Yes, slow internet connection speed can cause headaches with backup stability. The slow speed causes timeouts in the backup process which will fail afterwards if the retries are also not successful.

This product is highly scalable. It can be configured to suit the smallest customer to a large organisation. A few limitation that affects this product is the customer’s internet connection and how much backed up data they are willing to keep in the private cloud, which is the cost factor.

My company selected Xilocore to purchase Asigra from due to their willingness to provide training and support for us across the different time zone. Other companies approached were not so accommodating to our requirements.

We paid highly for the support agreement and we were very happy with what was provided. The support person assigned to us was extremely knowledgeable and flexible. His services and assistance to us were second to none.

As I was relatively new to the company, I’m not sure of the reasons for the switch to the current solution but my guess would be to provide a state of the arts cloud backup and recovery solution for our customers. The older solutions did not cater for offsite backup to the cloud. Asigra was considered to be the best product based on its features.

As a new user, I think the setup for this product can be tricky, however, as we had many customers taking up our private cloud backup solution, the process became easier. We provided each customers with an Asigra appliance built with a virtual windows 7 Asigra client on VMware with enough disk space to hold local backups of all servers as well as be able to restore and run most servers as virtual machines should it be necessary. Customer setups are created within the cloud portal first by selecting the New DS-client wizard on the DS-Operator program then a Registration file is exported. On the customer end, SQL Server Express is installed on a windows box then the Asigra client is installed before the Registration file is imported and a connection made to the DS-Operator program in the cloud, then necessary configurations are entered. An initial backup set is then organised.

Our vendor is based in USA and we are on the other side of the world so we implemented everything ourselves.

I’m unable to answer this as I wasn’t privy to the financial details, being a new member of the team at the time. However I was told that the licensing for Asigra was quite high.

I’m also unable to answer this as I did not have access to the financial details. With regards to day to day costs, the troubleshooting and maintenance of failed backups can be time consuming.

I’m unable to comment as I was not with this company when they were evaluating other options. However, we began to look into Iaso to see if it was easier to use. I was not around to find out the result.

The internet connection speed can make or break this product. Without good bandwidth there would be no point in considering any cloud backup solution. As with everything in IT, the more disk space you can afford in licensing costs, the better. Hopefully there are some cheat sheet or best practices out there for guidance. The Asigra forum has many helpful members as well.

Agentless backup, Desktop and laptop backup, BMR.

Since we have implemented Asigra we don’t have an administrator to do manual backup to tapes and external HDD. Everything is automated and no hassles for the administrator.

Backup of databases like Oracle and SAP.

3 years

No issues with deployment.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

8/10.

5/10, Due to different timezones it would always be difficult to get hold of a tech. Need to have more people on board for support which covers all timezones and should be an expert in the product.

We did not have a backup solution in place, ease of management is one key factor to use Asigra.

Since I work on backup and storage for more than 6 years it looked pretty straightforward.

In-house team.

80%.

Don’t recollect since it was handled by the procurement team.

Ease of use and management, one time setup is what all it requires to get going.