NAKIVO Backup & Replication Reviews

I have been using the Nakivo Suite for a year, mainly for local backup of virtual machines on the ESXi 5.5 platform located on the servers of our company. I perform a daily backup on SNAP NAS with the available option. I also use the dashboard to verify that the backups are working properly.

I'm considering some additional features like Microsoft 365 cloud backup and Microsoft Outlook 365 mailbox backup. The latter feature is available for an additional fee.

Regardless, the product is very good and I think mine was the correct choice.

The main reasons for choosing and using Nakivo for business backup and recovery management are many but basically lie in the fact that the product is feature-rich and easy to manage and configure.

Backups are very easy to implement and schedule, the product is very useful, and the recovery procedure is very extensive and feature-rich.

The feature that I liked the most and that I personally found most interesting is the rapid recovery of the VM. This feature is very useful in case of disaster recovery, as in my business scenario, we want to avoid downtime and have a minimal impact on business operations.

Being able to start a virtual machine, in case of emergency, directly from the backup repository, allows me to have more time available to restore the virtual machine. This effectively eliminates the downtime that might inevitably arise.

It would be interesting if it were possible to integrate a mobile app to monitor the system in real-time.

We have been using Nakivo for one year.

Stability-wise, Nakivo is very good.

The scalability is very good, and there are many plans and upgrades available.

Technical support is very good.

We did not use another backup solution prior to Nakivo.

The initial setup is very quick.

I completed the implementation myself.

The product is quite cheap compared to other products on the market, but despite this, it is rich in features both at the level of backup and recovery as well as at the level of additional options.

We did not evaluate other options.

When I made the choice of Nakivo, I didn't have many needs in this regard. I was looking for a product that was easy to configure and easy to use, with all of the classic features of a backup and recovery system for corporate virtual machines.

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by all of the functions present within the suite, and in particular, by the fast boot from the backup repository.

I have a small environment with two hosts since most of our services are running in the cloud. We are a cautious group and we keep a copy of our files on-premise, as well as in the cloud. We are using NAKIVO for backing up our file storage and virtual machines.

The product has enabled me to concentrate on other tasks without worrying about the daily backups. Once I was past the initial setup and testing, I was confident that the product would perform reliably and as expected. So far, I have not been disappointed. 

The quick and easy setup of the ready-made virtual appliance made it simple to deploy. It was running within an hour. The interface is easy to understand and it gets the job done with a clean GUI. Perfect for someone who doesn't want to waste time.

The software is aimed at backing up VM images but it would be nice to have an option to just backup certain files/folders and not the entire disk.

NAKIVO is very stable and reliable. I am running an appliance that is just a virtual machine, and it has not given me any issues so far.

I have not tested the scalability of the product, but based on the features it should be as easy as the rest of the product is to use.

My experience with support has been good, but I really haven't needed their help much. 

I previously used VMware VDP for backing up my virtual machines. This was complex and difficult to maintain. I wanted to switch to something that would not take as much time to manage. 

The setup was simple and easy. Using the virtual appliance, all I needed to do was deploy the OVF (Open Virtualization Format) file, then set up the networking, storage, and connect the hosts. It doesn't confuse you with jargon or fancy interfaces, it's easy to use.

I implemented this by myself within an hour. I consider myself to have an intermediate level of expertise, but I believe a beginner should not have a problem with this either. 

I recognize my return on investment as the amount of time I have saved by implementing this solution. It was fast to deploy, quick to configure, and with little to no maintenance necessary, it is easy to manage. 

Setup is simple and with a ready-made virtual appliance, it makes deployment even faster. All you need is the capacity for running the appliance and storage on your existing VM host. Pricing is easy to understand and very affordable.

Two of the other options that I considered were Veeam and Vembu.

The product is a time saver and makes complex tasks easy to handle. A must-have for beginners and one-person teams.

• Good VM level backups
• File level and VM level restores
• Efficient deduplication data repositories

• Four times the reduction in the cost of our vSphere backups, which provides the base features required for our environment.
• Job copy features allows backup repositories to be replicated to a secondary data center.
• VM level replication jobs can be used to create DR strategies by replicating VMs to another datacenter.

• Lacks application brick-level restore capability, although 7.2 introduces it for the SQL Server.
• Lacks direct integration with common backup storage arrays, like Data Domain or HPE StoreOnce.

One year personally. More than two years for the company.

Some VM backup jobs hang periodically and cannot be stopped, except by restarting the Nakivo Director node.

The product scales well. Additional transporter virtual appliances or servers can be deployed to handle larger numbers of virtual machines. Additional repositories can be added to accommodate backup data with options of locally attached storage and remote storage.

Very good. It is as simple as sending an email with direct and easy questions/responses, which is received quickly. Usually, the first response is the resolution.

Extremely straightforward to set up:

1. Deploy a virtual appliance.
2. Simple configuration process.

While the feature set lags behind other vSphere backup products, Nakivo is a very inexpensive backup alternative which provides the basic features needed by many customers.

If hardware or software specific integrations are important for your business, this is probably not the best fit. The software is likely the best fit for small to medium business which does not need all the advanced features of competitors' software.

We use the product for the backup of our VMs (Virtual Machines) which are located in a remote location. 

We have scheduled the backups for every day which is very convenient as it runs automatically. 

We can also run backup whenever we want according to our convenient time. The user interface is very easy to use and you can set it up in sometime without any issues. 

They also have cloud integration option for the backup to be stored on cloud platform such as Amazon and Wasabi.                               

We first used Nakivo Backup and Replication for our own HyperV Cluster. Then, we added a physical server.

Having used it for some time, we discovered all of its functionalities and have seen the power of the product.

The web interface is clear and simple to use and learning to use it is very quick.

The email reports are clear.

The support is quick and efficient.

Nakivo Backup and Replication has become an important part of our disaster and recovery strategy.

Our company, being a VAR, has decided to become a reseller of this product to help more and more customers discover it.

I appreciate the management. They really do respond quickly. They reply immediately to any query raised from us as a technician or consultant and they know the pulse of the market and keep updating the features in such a big way. Kudos to the team.

I appreciate the motivation and confidence. It helps to sell Nakivo products when outstanding support is provided and its well-performing software easily beats competitors.

The product license and support delivery have been great.

Updating VM tools on a replicated VM could be better. 

One of the most important things Nakivo can do is stop releasing a new version several times a year. It's important to "get it right" on a version release. Too many updates will cause an issue. 

Any version update should include the ESXi Host as well as the Center - not taking into consideration the vCenter version is a huge mistake and no updates should be released unless they also support the current vCenter version. That came up and I had several issues before I figured out it was a vCneter update compatibility issue.

We use Nakivo as a great addition to our client's VMware environment for backups. We have multiple clients and were looking for an easy backup solution. We were looking for a product that is easy and simple to use. This product perfectly fit and ended up becoming a mainstay in our portfolio of products that we can't live without. We have had several instances where Nakivo has really shined and helped us to recover from potential issues very quickly. Nakivo hasn't only met those expectations, it's surpassed them!

For our portfolio management services, Nakivo is simply perfect. Our team can react in a really short time if a backup doesn't work correctly. When we need a backup or only some files, it is really easy to restore and fix the problems. It is absolutely a time win and has improved our reaction times. Our clients are very happy and it is perfect that Nakivo runs perfectly with Synology disk drives. 

Our technicians don't want to miss it anymore and if a client doesn't want to backup with Nakivo, then the backup is the client's problem. 

The fact that it works with Synology is a big valuable point. Also, that we can check the functionality of a backup so easily. Cloud integration is valuable because the ability to not only backup locally, but to the cloud, has been a great addition to the already fantastic product. We can save so much time with Nakivo and are very happy that we found it and loved to use it for our solutions. 

Last but not least the support is absololutly perfect. Every time we had a problem they helped us instantly.            

I see two things that could improve:

• The way encryption is currently working could be improved. Currently, it's not possible to encrypt the backup to an NFS share directly. It needs to have the encryption within the Transporter/VM to enable encryption, which isn't optimal. So I'm hoping that in the near future this function will be implemented.
• Sometimes there is strange UI behavior with changes not being saved without any good message as to why.

But those are only small points and they are not very painful. 

We have been using Nakivo for two years.

We use Nakivo as a backup solution in small and medium-sized virtual environments based on VMware. We are a small IT company and our customers generally have between one and five physical servers, with between one and one hundred virtual machines to protect.

We use Nakivo to backup and/or replicate those virtual machines to achieve the RTO and RPO requested by the customer. It can be deployed on a Windows machine, as a dedicated appliance, or even on a NAS (like QNAP or Synology).

When we started working with the first virtual environments, we used to make only copies of the data. Specifically, we were copying files and database dumps to external destinations. 

The most valuable feature is the support, as it is directly from Nakivo and it is possible to send a support request that contains all of the technical data on the environment, as well as the software, required for the answer. The response is very quick and most of the time, the problem is solved within the first answer.

Secondly, it is possible to install Nakivo in every environment including Windows, Linux, virtual appliances, NAS, and more.

Third, is possible to use as a backup repository many kinds of destinations. The ones we mostly use are CIFS and NFS shares, but also, amazon EC2 and tapes are supported.

The installation and configuration process is quite simple, yet rich in options to customize the solution.

From our experience, the main factor that could be improved is adding more cloud services that are supported as a backup repository. Many customers have active subscriptions with services like Dropbox or Google Drive and have asked us to use those as the backup repository. For now, those services aren't supported.

Another minor thing that could be added is the capability to granularly recover objects for more types of databases, including some open-source ones like MySQL or PostgreSQL. This could be useful in some full Linux environments, avoiding having to recover the whole virtual machine.

We have been using Nakivo Backup & Replication since 2018.

Basic support included with the standard license answers on business days. They are quite quick and precise in the answers, and we are satisfied with it.

We tried several competitors' software solutions, including Veeam Backup and Replication, but we have to say that Nakivo is the best choice when it comes to quality/cost ratio.

In fact, the licensing model gives the opportunity to offer a good price to the customer while maintaining, as a partner, a good margin.

Other than that, the functions that this software offers are comparable or even better to the competitors. For example, Nakivo can use an NFS share as a repository natively, without relying on other servers, which is a plus in a full linux environment.

The initial setup is quite simple and well documented.

The licensing model is very affordable compared to competitors, with a good quality-to-cost ratio, and the software is quite simple and fast to setup.

We didn't evaluate other options.

Our primary use case is to back up our virtual machines.

We have a hyper-converged infrastructure with Nutanix, made up of three servers with VMware ESXi and a virtual machine with a VMware vCenter appliance.

We have a QNAP NAS with Nakivo Backup & Replication installed. Every day, we create a backup of all the virtual machines. The entire infrastructure is connected with two switches in the stack, in high availability. Every link is 10GBase-LX4 and is redundant.

Nakivo is easy to configure because there are only a few basic configurations to complete before it starts working. I use it with VMware and Hyper-V. When you start the initial configuration, it asks you essential questions to reach your goal.

After that, you can schedule backups, and the dashboard shows if there are any problems during the previous backups, also suggesting the solution.

The process of restoring the virtual machine is very simple. You select what you want to recover and how you want it done, then click to run. The dashboard shows you the speed of the process and alerts you when is it done.

Nakivo has a lot of features that are very interesting.

For my purpose, I find VM Backup to be the most useful, as it gives me the ability to create image-based, incremental backups of VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV VMs.

Instant Backup Verification permits me to instantly verify VMware and Hyper-V VM backups and to get a report with screenshots of test-recovered machines.

Backup Encryption protects my data in flight and at rest with AES 256 encryption.

Instant VM Recovery is useful because I can boot VMware and Hyper-V VMs directly from deduplicated backups.

Instant File Recovery to Source is helpful because I can browse, search, and instantly restore files and folders back to the source.

In the future, it would be nice to have support for Zimbra email, Collabora Office, and the NextCloud content collaboration platform.

We have been using Nakivo for three years.

Stability-wise, Nakivo is good.

I have a good impression of the scalability.

I have not used their technical support.

Yes, we used Commvault, but it is very complicate and not practical for our use. So we choose Nakivo for is semplicity and the pricing.

The initial setup is straightforward because it guides you with a few questions.

I implemented it through a vendor team and their level of expertise is good.

Yes Veeam Backup and Replication, but it very expensive.

The last version of Nakivo introduced the support to protect Microsoft Office 365 data with backup and recovery for OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online. It sends source-side deduplicated backups to HPE StoreOnce backup appliances with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst integration.

Unfortunately, we don't use that technology because we have Zimbra as our mail server and Collabora Office as our Office application. Also, we use NextCloud, a content collaboration platform.

Overall, Nakivo works fine and we don't have any problems for now.

We have a new VMware vSphere Cluster with several Virtual Machines (Windows-based and Linux-based). We needed a new backup solution for those new workloads. I deployed in a second site, a new backup server with a storage SAN directly attached. I deploy NAKIVO B&R in a virtual appliance and with it, I protect all of the inventory of the VMs and save the backups and data in a backup repository with an immutability feature.

At the moment, we don't use Replication, however, I studied this feature. Maybe I will deploy this feature in the future on some new vSphere hosts in a DRP site.

Nakivo's replication feature can permit configuration replicas in a different hardware platform with VMware vSphere. We protect all of our virtual machines in VMware vSphere and secure our data with the immutability feature; our virtual machines are Windows-based and Linux-based. We have SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory Instances, PACS, and File Servers.

The virtual appliance for VMware vSphere is easy to deploy, easy to manage, and we have no need for additional Windows licenses. NAKIVO has an immutability feature that protects our backup data. Nakivo is a backup solution good for the first steps in backup and replication uses cases. It offers low license costs and is very easy to deploy. 

I recommend the Virtual Machine Appliance for all VMware vSphere Infrastructures.

I deployed it to a second site with a new backup server with a storage SAN directly attached. I deploy edNAKIVO B&R in a virtual appliance and with it, I protect all the inventory of the VMs.

They need a better knowledge base with more information about support issues. 

I would like new recovery methods for my VM and live full VM restore overwriting and the ability to restore individual files on the VM (like VMDK, VMX).

I would like it if Nakivo could protect virtual machines with WSFC deployed on VMware (usually SQL Server clusters virtualized). 

I would like to restore my data on a cloud site. I would like a new replication method with zero RTO (better than snapshot replication). 

I would like new features for the backup agent for physical machines.

I've used the solution for one year.

We did previously use a different solution.

Nakivo is good for the first steps in backup and replication. If comes at a low license cost and is very easy to deploy.

We did evaluate other options.