Veeam Alternative for Hyper-V Backup

Are you considering purchasing or renewing Veeam Backup? It’s really expensive, and is it really a good deal for your company? As an affordable alternative to Veeam, BackupChain offers dozens of backup tools for IT professionals and SMBs. BackupChain makes a great Veeam alternative, not only because of its integrated Hyper-V backup and lower license costs, but also because of the range of features it offers at no additional cost, summarized below.

Fact is, BackupChain has a proven 14 year track record (2023) and many of our customers have been quitting their Veeam renewal subscriptions and switch to a perpetual, life-time BackupChain license. But savings do not stop there. If you need to back up many virtual hosts, or you are an IT service provider, consider the savings of a volume license pack, for example, which comes with substantial, additional discounts.

Also consider that BackupChain runs without any data volume or vitual machine limits. You can back up an unlimited number of VMs running on the host and there is no TB limit for local or network storage you need backed up.

BackupChain Includes Unlimited Hyper-V Backup and Granular Backup Features

Unmatched overall value

BackupChain has been the backup product of choice for IT professionals and BackupChain’s automatic Hyper-V backup feature has been growing rapidly since 2009, and has a world-wide user base (See customer list). BackupChain Server Enterprise Edition offers Granular Backup, Granular Restore, Cluster Shared Volume support, and fully automatic recovery, on top of state-of-the-art deduplication and data compression.

Agentless Backup

All Backups Are Managed from the Host

Backup software agents are a thing of the past. There is no need to install agents when you use BackupChain. Using BackupChain not only saves you time and money, it also allows you to get direct access to VM files from the host, using Granular Backup.

See also:

Granual Backup

How to Configure Granular Backup

VSS Integrated, Application-aware, Image-based Backup

BackupChain Ensure application and crash-consistent backups

BackupChain utilizes Windows VSS and the Hyper-V VSS Writer to take virtual machine, database, and Microsoft Exchange backups. This method ensures you get crash-consistent and application-consistent backups. Application consistency means each VSS-aware application inside the VM receives a signal to prepare for live backup; hence, the application’s data will be placed in a consistent state before the backup is taken.

See also:

Crash and Application Consistency

Cluster Shared Volume Backups

CSV Backups at No Additional Cost

If you use cluster shared volumes, you can deploy BackupChain Server Edition or Server Enterprise Edition, which both fully integrate with CSVs to take live backups.

This feature is available at no additional cost and there is no limit to the number of VMs backed up with one single license.

Compression and Deduplication Included in License

Cut bandwidth and storage usage: Save money!

Not only does BackupChain ship with several kinds of compression algorithms and state-of-the-art data deduplication, it also lets you configure how you want to use them. Each file type within a single backup task may be configured differently. This optimizes your backups even more and saves you even more time and money.

Simple Licensing: Everything is Included, Everything is Unlimited

No per-socket licensing; each host installation needs one license

One license of BackupChain Server or Server Enterprise Edition is sufficient to back up all files and virtual machines on the machine. There are no limits on usage.

Cut Down Storage Space Usage

Save on storage budget

You may set up different compression, deduplication, and retention periods depending on file types. Most users prefer to set up several backup tasks: one for local, one on NAS/LAN, and one for the cloud, all with different retention and archival settings.

By fine-tuning how the data is processed, you can significantly reduce storage and bandwidth usage. At the same time you may increase overall retention periods and keep a longer backup history.

 Ease of Use

BackupChain is used by IT professionals, Get Started in a few Minutes!

Installation and setup may be completed within a couple of minutes. A great User Guide with plenty of screen shots and walk-throughs installs with BackupChain and illustrates how to set up several backup strategies.

BackupChain is Storage Agnostic

You own the data. You determine what to do with it. It’s in Your control.

Unlike other backup tools, BackupChain doesn’t patronize users or force them into proprietary ways of doing things. If you prefer you may set up backups to use standardized open file formats.

All you need to provide is a folder, either NTFS, LAN, or FTP. That’s it. Deduplication and compression, replication, and all other features work transparently, no matter what storage provider you are using.

Multiple Hypervisors Are Supported

If it runs on Windows, BackupChain can back it up!

BackupChain backs up Hyper-V, VMware, Virtual PC, VirtualBox, and other hosts based on Windows.

Microsoft Hyper-V

Support from Windows Server 2008 up to the latest version of Windows Server is provided, such as Windows 8 Hyper-V, Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, as well as core installs of Windows.

BackupChain ships with built-in deduplication, compression, and offers incremental and differential backups, and backs up huge 64TB VHDX with ease.

Configurable Retention Settings

Efficient and effective file archiving

Retention setting flexibility is unique in BackupChain: configure retention in time frames (days, years, etc.) or number of backup cycles. Setup each file type the way you want and cut down on storage and bandwidth costs, or increase the backup history available to your users.

WAN Acceleration for Efficient Offsite Cloud Backups

Backup over the wire in shorter time frames

Because time and bandwidth cost money, it’s important to finish cloud backups quickly and efficiently.

Using BackupChain’s Remote Backup features you can set up your own private and secure cloud service for your IT infrastructure. Or you could let BackupChain professionals do the cloud service for you for just $225/TB/year or less, using the BackupChain cloud backup service.

Moving Backups to the Cloud

Provide Geographic Diversification for Your Backups Without Breaking the Bank

Unlike any other backup tool on the market, you can choose to use a basic FTP host for your backups without giving up data deduplication. If your infrastructure already provides FTP servers, all you need to send your VMs and other critical data to the other site is BackupChain. Files are sent over incrementally, you won’t need to send them over and over again as with other tools.

Use Backup and Replication for Maximum Protection

VM and Data Replicas Don’t Require Lengthy Restore Operations

By replicating your VMs and other important databases and files to a recovery server you basically cut down the time required to get started again after disaster strikes.

Because replicated files are already in their native format, there is no delay when you need access to these files. Simply boot up the VM and continue work as usual!

Offsite Backups and Replication

Data transmission optimized at source and over the wire

BackupChain uses high-level compression and source-side deduplication to reduce the amount of data you need to send over to the cloud or to another site you own.

Bandwidth usage may be controlled at the sender by throttling and you may set up multiple download and upload links to speed up transmission as necessary.

Since no duplicate chunks need to be send over when deduplication is used, this process is quite efficient. This entire strategy also works for in-house LAN / NAS backups, too.

Boot VMs from the Backup Folder Instantaneously

Without using any additional device drivers or other magic

By backing up VMs to a replica folder, either local or on a recovery file server, it is possible to boot directly from the VHDX file when necessary and without a performance penalty.

Many BackupChain users set up a hybrid backup set of tasks where one task is a simple copy job to another folder, USB drive, LAN destination or FTP site. By copying instead of archiving, the data is available for immediate usage.

Immediate Granular (File-Level) Recovery of Files and Folders

Restore, open, and extract files directly from a backup

Imaging backing up a 1 TB VHDX file and having dozens of incremental backups over it. Instead of waiting for hours for the entire VM to restore, you can simply open the deduplicated backup chain using Granular Restore, a feature included in BackupChain Server Enterprise Edition. It also works on VHD, VMDK, VHDX, and VDI virtual disks.

See also:

How to Use Granular Restore

The same feature in reverse is also available, called: Granular Backup

Granular Backup basically means being able to back up files and folders from the host that reside inside a VM, without the use of agents. This feature allows backups of large VMs to occur more often, since only a fraction of the VM needs to be backed up.

Quick Restore

VM and file recovery is simple through the Restore Screen

After only a couple of clicks you can locate and recover entire VMs, databases, or documents and their entire backup history if needed.

Flexibility and Control

Speed up backups as needed

Source-side deduplication and compression provide great means to reduce the backup load. You can fine-tune deduplication settings to either favor speed or storage usage efficiency.

Change block tracking is critical for differential and incremental backups and dramatically cuts down the daily backup load of a VM or databases. A typical daily backup is just 5% of the size of a full backup.

BackupChain also offers parallel processing: deduplication level, file backup level, as well as entire backup tasks may be run in parallel. You can assign and restrict CPU core usage as needed.

100% Made in the USA – Technical Support, R&D, and Management

There are many characteristics in a product that can’t be compared. Getting responsive and qualified tech support when you need it, for example, may also influence your decision to look for a Veeam alternative.

BackupChain guarantees world-class, personalized, qualified, and responsive tech. support, based in Baltimore, Maryland (ET). 24 hour tech support is available as a premium option.