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Oracle Data Guard vs Retrospect Backup comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Oracle Data Guard
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
34th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Retrospect Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
80th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (65th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Oracle Data Guard is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retrospect Backup is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Data Guard0.8%
Retrospect Backup0.5%
Other98.7%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

AdnanNaseem - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal DB A at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Active data protection has ensured high availability and supports seamless reporting workloads
In my opinion, Active Data Guard is the most valuable feature. We use the secondary side for reporting purposes, which reduces the load on the primary side. Oracle Data Guard includes functions such as automatic failover, but we use manual managed failover. After some months, we converted our primary to secondary and secondary to primary. Oracle Data Guard is effective in minimizing data loss and provides a good solution for that. The main benefits of Oracle Data Guard include minimizing data loss during a production failure. It is used for maximum availability when paired with Oracle RAC, so if any disruption occurs, we have an alternative Data Guard to convert our load to the disaster recovery site. Oracle Data Guard maintains a high level of data integrity by using archive logs. When a transaction happens, redo logs create archive logs, which are then applied on the disaster recovery side, ensuring that both databases are synchronized.
Sujeet Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Lighthouse Solutions
Can be used to back up servers and desktops, but needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model
Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops. The solution supports tape and cloud since certain customers are still on tape. The solution provides a dissimilar hardware restore feature. If you have a complete machine burnout, you can restore it on new dissimilar hardware. Retrospect Backup is used to protect file data and SQL databases. Streamlining data backup processes with Retrospect Backup is automated and does not need any human intervention. The solution doesn't take up much time and does the backups automatically. Policy creation is very easy with Retrospect Backup. Once it's done, you don't have to bother about it because it keeps working on its own. A disaster recovery (DR) solution has been built into Retrospect Backup. You can restore the whole machine on a fresh setup with ISO images. Retrospect Backup is very easy to use and not very complicated. Creating policies and adding clients is very easy in the solution. The solution doesn't take up much LAN bandwidth except for the first full backup. The solution is efficient and does the backups really fast. It takes backups in batches of 14 machines at a time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Active Data Guard has helped us a lot in achieving the real time reporting by offloading our heavy reports from Production to Standby database."
"Snapshot and Data Guard Manager are awesome features."
"Provides an active data guard."
"The most valuable feature is the application or promotional code used in the production protocol to transfer data to the secondary database, situated on the DR site."
"I think for our company, the way we use it, we are very happy with it and the end customer is very happy with it."
"Developers can test their code thoroughly before installing it into production and know precisely how it will perform."
"Technical support is very good. If at any time we write a ticket, we get the appropriate answer on time."
"It's a very good solution if you want to protect your data across two data centers, or you have a middle man or many administrators who use these solutions for protecting their data. It's very reliable compared to other solutions that are most often not storage-based."
"Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops."
 

Cons

"One thing that can be improved is the GUI. It would be good to have a very nice GUI to easily configure and administer, providing different presentations to the database administrator. The feature that can be included is the integration with third-party monitoring systems, that is, monitoring systems from other vendors, not only from Oracle."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The implementation is complex for anyone who's jumping into it without any experience. It's all command-line driven implementations. For some, that's a turn-off."
"A significant improvement for Oracle Data Guard would be enabling the disaster recovery site to handle read and write operations, not just data storage."
"We would like to be able to see the date time stamp when you execute DGMGRL commands."
"For Italian medium-sized companies, the main challenge lies in the cost associated with licenses."
"It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs."
"The usage of block storage devices in the cloud or migration of a type of storage from one site to another site can be improved. Currently, we have to use multi-node to single node because of the lack of storage support on the Azure side. It did not really work. Our DBA had to spend a lot of time tweaking the Data Guard tools, or the underlying Oracle VMs, to make sure that Data Guard would run on top of different types of storage. So, if it can support transporting or getting from one type of storage to another type of storage in a different site or a different technology, it would be very helpful."
"Retrospect Backup needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Oracle Data Guard is a feature available only in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and is available for extra cost."
"It's a cost-effective solution."
"The cost is expensive."
"It is not a cheap product, but if you look at the price, features, availability, scalability, and maturity, it is a very good product."
"This is the best solution if you want something similar that's less expensive than Oracle Grid."
"The licensing cost is significantly high."
"If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
"The cost of the Oracle license will depend on the negotiations with Oracle."
"Retrospect Backup is more cost-effective compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
22%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs. I strongly recommend Data Guard. I've been using it for eight years and I would strongly recommend it. I'd rate Oracle Data Guard a se...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
We're Oracle partners. We've worked with databases 11G and 12C. If a company is planning to implement Oracle solutions, I would suggest they also implement Data Guard. I'd rate the solution nine ou...
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Also Known As

Active Data Guard
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Athenahealth, Discover Financial Services
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.