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Azure Backup vs Bacula Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Azure Backup is 3.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Terry Tull - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward to set up and manage and allows us to monitor all backups in one place
I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. Setting up Azure Backup was pretty straightforward, especially if you follow the steps in the right order. It might seem a bit complex at first, but with experience, subsequent setups become easier. Planning is key to optimizing its effectiveness. Deploying Azure Backup typically takes around half an hour to an hour to set up one VM, involving creating a recovery services vault, defining a backup policy, and configuring storage options. For a more comprehensive setup including proper recovery planning, it might take a few hours. The key steps involve creating a resource group, and a recovery services vault, selecting a storage type, and defining backup policies. I deployed the solution myself.
GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Solid backup tool with good scalability
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Azure Backup is its simplicity."
"I like that it's a stable solution and their support is good. I think Microsoft's commercial force is superior."
"Azure Backup is easy to configure and restore."
"I have no issues with the stability at all. So I don't necessarily care about the stability of the product. I look more at whether or not can I recover. And I haven't had a failed recovery yet. I've got no failed recoveries of all my years."
"Azure Backup is good because it is entirely cloud-based, which means that you can be 99.9% sure that your backup is safe."
"It's easy to deploy."
"The compression features save us money and speed up the backup and restore process."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
 

Cons

"We faced some issues synchronizing the information in Azure when the storage was changed."
"Azure Backup could improve the backup data copies because they are not immutable."
"On-prem can be complex to set up but the cloud is simple."
"In Avamar, the file-based restores are very quick and fast, whereas, in Azure Backup, VM restore is super easy, but if I have to do a file or a folder restore, I have to mount the entire VM image. I have to wait for some time for it to be mounted, and then I have to go inside and then check the file and copy it somewhere. It's a bit of a manual process, whereas in Avamar, you can directly select a file and folder, and it'll recover with whatever permissions you want."
"Azure lacks sufficient solutions for a particular scenario, we may need to resort to using third-party applications. In such cases, these applications can be employed to facilitate backup, replication, and the efficient utilization of internet connectivity and bandwidth. They enable us to effectively manage and transfer data while ensuring optimal utilization of network resources. However, it would be a benefit if we did not have to use third-party applications for these operations."
"The Azure Backup support for on-premises service is limited."
"I once tried restoring a Linux environment, and the size of the Linux VM or the data disk was really huge. It took a really long time to restore the environment and send the data from the storage to the disk. It took around 25 to 30 minutes, which was much longer than I anticipated. They can improve the duration of such restore operations. In the next release, it would also be good if they could reduce the duration for transferring the data from their storage to the actual storage while creating a virtual machine. They can reduce the duration or increase the data transfer rate."
"Azure Backup is limited to certain workloads. It would be helpful if Microsoft focused on enabling backups for Oracle and other unsupported databases."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Backup can be expensive if you are not vigilant about your storage steering."
"The product's pricing is a three or four out of ten, where one is inexpensive, and ten is costly."
"It's around $10 to $15 per month per virtual machine, along with something extra based on the size of the data."
"Considering the fact that our company's enterprise-sized customers use the solution, the product's price is fine and is not on the higher side of the spectrum."
"Azure Backup is a moderately priced solution."
"It is incredibly cost-effective and offers fixed pricing, with no additional fees for the licensing."
"The product is not expensive."
"Price-wise, it's similar to AWS."
"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Backup differ from Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam has a version for Azure but there are organizations, like ours, that are considering moving to an Azure environment and wonder if Azure Backup is better than Veeam Backup and Replication (Vee...
What do you like most about Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is easy to configure and restore.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is expensive relative to the value we get from it. I do not have specific details about the licensing cost as it falls under another department.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Russell Reynolds Associates, Somerset County Council, Kardem, PCL Construction
NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Backup vs. Bacula Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.