The virtual machine backup software shown in this post aims to protect data via backup and recovery, data security, and privacy methodologies‚— all qualities of a data security-centric solution. We will focus on the ten best virtual machine backup software.

The intention behind data protection software is to backup and restore data scattered across different environments (cloud, on-prem, edge, mobile, etc). In addition, these solutions also provide a solid defense against threats, cyberattacks, and especially Ransomware.

Here's our list of the best VM Backup software:

Vembu BDR Suite – EDITOR’S CHOICE This on-premises backup and recovery service has an edition for protecting Hyper-V VMds and another for VMWare. Installs on Windows Server or Linux. Get a 30-day free trial.
Acronis Cyber Protect – FREE TRIAL A solution with a strong focus on data protection across different environments. It supports most of the VM hypervisors. Start a 30-day free trial.
Veeam Backup and Replication A global leader and the most popular in backup, recovery, and data protection and management solutions.
N-able Cove Data Protection A backup and data protection solution with a cloud-first approach. N-able performs VM backups and automated recovery tests.
Altaro VM Backup A developer of backup and recovery solutions for MSPs. Altaro focuses on virtual machine backup/recovery solutions.
Cohesity Backup and Recovery It is complete data protection and management solution that backs up VM data on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments.
Rubrik A cloud-based data management and protection solution based on a zero-trust data security model.
Commvault Backup & Recovery It is an enterprise-grade backup and recovery solution that allows full backup of any virtual machine environment.
Unitrends Backup An all-in-one backup and restore solution integrated with appliances, DraaS, cloud backup, threat monitoring, and compliance management.
Veritas NetBackup A leader in data management and protection solutions. They provide a reliable backup and recovery solution for VMs.
Dell EMC Data Protect A comprehensive suite of products (appliance and software) designed to protect data in MSPs and enterprises.

The best Virtual Machine Backup Software

In this post, we’ll describe these backup/restore solutions, how their virtual machine backup solution is implemented, a few highlights, their licensing and pricing (if listed on their official site), and how to start using their products.

1. Vembu BDR Suite – FREE TRIAL

Vembu BDR Suite is an on-premises system that includes two editions for backing up and recovering virtualization – one for Hyper-V and one for VMWare. There is a SaaS version of Vembu, called Vembu Cloud BDR Suite, but that doesn’t have VM backup editions.

Highlights

Free to operate protection or up to 10 VMs
Takes all application data as well as VMs
Compresses and encrypts backup files
Creates a local store and copies that to a remote location

Vembu BDR Suite for Hyper-V and Vemb u BDR Suite for VMWare are both free to use for up to 10 VMs. The system installs on Windows Server and Linux. You get a local backup repository for a fast recovery and a duplication of that store on a remote service for insurance. The Vembu BDR Suite package doesn’t include cloud storage space. However, you can subscribe to space on Vembu Cloud for an extra fee.

Pros:

Offers a full suite of BDR tools
Supports full and incremental backups
Leverages agentless technology to perform backups with minimal performance impact
Supports offsite backups

Cons:

Better suited for small to medium-sized networks

Licensing and Pricing

The price list for Vembu BDR Suite for VMWare and also the version for Hyper-V is very complicated. In each case, the prices are the same. For both, there are three plans, two buying schemes, and two charging structures.

The Free tier for both virtualization systems operates for up to 10 VMs. Above the Free plan, there is a Standard and an Enterprise plan.

You can pay for the virtualization backup system per socket or per VM. For an annual subscription, the prices for those plans are:

Standard: $216 per socket per year or $36 per VM per year
Enterprise: $360 per socket per year or $60 per VM per year

For a perpetual license, the prices are:

Standard: $540 per socket per year or $90 per VM per year
Enterprise: $900 per socket per year or $150 per VM per year

How to start?

You can get a demo of any edition of Vembu BDR Suite and Vembu also offers a 30-day free trial of the backup system.

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Vembu BDR Suite is our top pick for a virtual machine backup software package because it is offered in editions for Hyper-V and VMWare and if you have up to 10 VMs on your system, you don’t have to pay anything. Vembu gives you a choice of a subscription price or a perpetual license, so you get a great deal of flexibility on how you spend your money. This tool creates a local backup store for fast recovery and also a remote backup for insurance.

Download: Access 30-day FREE Trial!

Official Site: https://www.vembu.com/vembu-vmbackup/

OS: 64-bit Windows Server 2012 R2 and up. 64-bit Linux Ubuntu Ubuntu 20.04 LTS & 18.04 LTS

2. Acronis Cyber Protect – FREE TRIAL

Acronis Cyber Protect is one of the ten best virtual machine backup software for many good reasons. Their data protection software is an all-in-one Cyber Protection platform designed to unify all data protection across apps and systems. Acronis is built for MSPs and enterprises but can also be used by smaller IT businesses.

Highlights

Protect from cyberthreats that target backup files and their processes.
Streamline protection of VMs with complete disk-image backup.
Validate and protect backups to ensure successful VM recoveries.
Run VM backups with low RTO in case of disaster.

Acronis Cyber Protect can safeguard (backup/restore) individual files, applications, or full systems deployed on physical, virtual, cloud, mobile, or endpoints. When it comes to virtual machine software, Acronis supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Scale Computing HC3, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Virtualization, Linux KVM, and Oracle VM Server.

Pros:

Can clone via scripts and automated scheduling
Ideal for enterprise environments
Is easy to use without sacrificing advanced features
Available for Windows and Mac, a great cross-platform solution

Cons:

Advanced features may take time to fully learn and utilize

Licensing and Pricing

Acronis Cyber Protect is available with perpetual and subscription licenses. It provides different product editions for virtual backups: Standard (from $639.00), Advanced ($1069.00), and Backup Advanced ($929.00). The license is based on the number of operating environments and devices running on-premises or in the cloud.

How to start?

Start a 30-day Free Trial!

3. Veeam Backup and Replication

The company (Veeam) is a global leader in backup, recovery, and data management and protection solutions. Veeam is hands down one of the best and most popular virtual machine software out there. It provides a single and central platform for any cloud, virtual, physical, SaaS and Kubernetes environments.

Highlights

Use it in conjunction with Synology NAS.
Cloud-native backup and recovery for AWS, Azure, and Google.
Virtual machine software integrations (VMware vSphere, MS Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
Robust protection from Ransomware.
Integrations with MS VSS, Oracle, SAP Backint, RMAN, and Kubernetes API.

With the Veeam Backup and Replication v11 (the foundation of the Veeam Platform), you can easily backup to image-based, single-pass, hardware, and OS snapshots and instantly restore virtual machines. In addition, Veeam comes with native functionality to offload backups to multiple and different clouds. With Veam, you can protect virtual workloads from the most popular virtual machine software.

Pros:

Easy to use for both technical and non-technical users
Supports system-level recovery and backups
Can run on Windows or Linux operating systems
Ideal for small businesses and home users

Cons:

Would like more integrations into more hardware storage and NAS solutions
Would benefit from FTP backup integration

Licensing and Pricing

You can obtain the Veeam Backup & Replication (within the Veeam Platform) via a subscription or perpetual license. For a one-year subscription of the Veeam Backup Essentials for up to 50 workloads, the price starts at $6.67/month (or $80/year/license). The minimum purchase is a five license bundle.

How to start?

Download a free Veeam Backup and Replication 30-day trial. Veeam Backup and Replication software are not only one of the best VM backup premium solutions, but their free virtual machine software “community-edition” is also quite good.

4. N-able Cove Data Protection

N-able (former SolarWinds MSP) is one of today’s most reputed IT service management solutions focusing on empowering MSPs, IT departments, or enterprises with RMM, security, and data protection tools. Their backup tool, N-able Cove Data Protection, delivers the data protection capabilities with a cloud-first backup approach for virtual, physical apps, docs, or MS 365.

Highlights

Backup VMware or Hyper-V virtual machine environments.
Hybrid environment, Combine on-premises and cloud backups.
Back up changes rather than entire files with TrueDelta technology.
Encrypt data (on-premises and in the cloud) with AES 256 or 448-bit Blowfish.

N-able Cove Data Protection is one of the best VM backup software, as it performs full virtual machine backups and automated recovery testing. You can restore to an existing or alternative virtual environment. Aside from backup & restore, N-able can also (with RMM capabilities) automatically update a virtual machine after each backup.

Pros:

Cloud-based backup solution
Can backup the individual VMs, or the entire server
A simple console helps highlight important issues
Supports multiple vendors and backup locations

Cons:

Designed for larger networks and system administrators

Licensing and Pricing

Obtain N-able via RMM or Backup and Data Protection. For more information on its licensing and pricing, contact N-able sales.

How to start?

5. Altaro VM Backup

Altaro is a fast-growing backup and recovery solutions developer for MSPs, IT departments, and enterprises. They specialize in virtual machine software, including robust backup solutions for VMware VM and Microsoft Hyper-V, but also provide backup solutions for physical servers or cloud environments like MS O365.

Highlights

Centralize backups/restores and replication tasks.
Manage and monitor all your virtual machine hosts.
Multiple offsite backup locations.
Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving (GFS).
Augmented Inline Deduplication.

Altaro is one of the best Virtual machine software, thanks to their flagship solution: Altaro VM Backup. This solution has gained popularity, especially for its high performance on Hyper-V and VMware backup and replication. With Altaro VM Backup, you can control all your backups and access popular award-winning support from a single central console.

Pros:

Great interface, easy to see key backup metrics
Supports virtualization recovery
Has a version for MSPs and resellers
Can detect changes in data and replace files, acting as a DLP tool

Cons:

Would like to see more database recovery options, specifically recovering single databases rather than the entire VM
Large datastores can corrupt if not carefully monitored

Licensing and Pricing

There are four types of licenses paid on a subscription or perpetual basis: Free (VM backup for 2 VMs/host, forever), Standard (perpetual license), Unlimited (perpetual license), or Unlimited Plus Edition ($115.80/VM/year, subscription-based pricing for a minimum of 5 VMs).

How to start?

Download Altaro’s free virtual machine software, or get a fully functional 30-day trial of Altaro VM Backup (Unlimited Plus Edition).

6. Cohesity Backup and Recovery

Cohesity develops data protection and management solutions that allow sysadmins to backup, restore, manage, and get insights from data scattered across multiple environments. Their solution provides a unified view and central access to all backups and analytics data. Cohesity was named a leader in Gartner 2021’s MQ for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Solution.

Highlights

Search any VM and instantly restore from full backup snapshots.
Supports VMware vSphere, vSAN, Cloud Foundation, and VMware Cloud on AWS.
Support for Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
Simplify backup/recovery of Nutanix AHV, AOS, and Prism.
Natively integrates with Kubernetes.

Cohesity Backup and Recovery is one of the best VM backup software because it focuses on data protection. The software allows backup and recovery on-premises, in the public cloud, at the edge, and in a SaaS. In addition, it also offers the Backup as a Service (BasS) model, which allows users to switch from an on-premise-based backup to a cloud-based backup.

Pros:

Complete BDR platform
Supports on-site, cloud, and hybrid cloud backup configurations
Supports a variety of virtual environments – great for larger companies

Cons:

Many features cater to larger networks – not ideal for smaller businesses

Licensing and Pricing

Cohesity offers perpetual and consumption-based subscription licenses. Subscriptions are limited to the number of nodes contained in a Cohesity cluster

How to start?

7. Rubrik

Rubrik is a cloud-based data management and backup solutions developer. They use the zero-trust data security model on their software, which helps protect your VM backups from being easily discovered or encrypted. Rubrik was named Leader in 2021 Gartner MQ for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions.

Highlights

Supports VMware vSphere (ESXi), Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
Natively integrated continuous data protection for VM environments.
Instant recovery with a near-zero Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
Intelligent policy engine to generate and automate compliance.
Robust protection from Ransomware.

Rubrik allows you to consolidate all your backup and recovery data regardless of where it comes from (hardware, software, cloud, or virtual) into a central management console. In addition, you can also set up the policies for data backup, archival, DR, analytics, or replication from the same single console.

Pros:

Offers unified cloud backups – a great BDR alternative
Supports physical, virtual, and hybrid environments
Offers image-based and incremental backup/recovery
Supports the full lifecycle of data management

Cons:

Must contact sales for pricing

Licensing and Pricing

You can buy Rubrick from a subscription-based license (SaaS). Rubrik Go comes with different plans: Foundation, Business, and Enterprise. For information on pricing, contact sales.

How to start?

8. Commvault Backup & Recovery

Commvault provides an enterprise-grade data services platform for data that resides on-premises, in the cloud, in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, SaaS-delivered, or in an integrated appliance. Its intelligent data services include data protection, a solution that lets you back up and quickly recover data at any scale and from/to the cloud.

Highlights

Backup and recovery plans support your existing policies and VM tags.
Use copy data management to repurpose backup data.
Robust snapshot management framework.
Quickly backup, recover, and move your VM data between clouds.
Built-in Ransomware protection.

Commvault Backup and Recovery provides complete workload portability across all your virtual machine environments (regardless of location). You can also get full visibility into your virtual workloads from the Commvault command center, a centralized and intuitive web-based management console.

Pros:

Provides a streamlined and centralized backup solution
Ideal for companies with multiple sites, or MSPs
Supports multiple data sources
Can backup to and from cloud services

Cons:

Better suited for larger environments

Licensing and Pricing

Comvault is known to be on the enterprise-range pricing. For more information, contact Commvault sales.

How to start?

9. Unitrends Backup

Unitrends (by Kaseya) is an all-in-one backup and restore solution designed for the enterprise, MSPs, and IT departments. It integrates backup appliances (+ software), cloud backup (+ DRaaS), threat monitoring, and compliance (HIPAA and GDRP) management. Unitrends Backup is known for its virtual backup appliances for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Citrix XenServer.

Highlights

VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, and XenServer Hypervisor-Level Protection.
Instant, full, or file-level VM Recovery.
Robust Ransomware defense.
Granular backup and recovery control via an intuitive UI.
Integration with Unitrends Cloud for archiving and DR.

Unitrends Backup can run as a virtual backup appliance on any hardware deployed on-premises or cloud. It protects your virtual machines and integrates with Unitrends Cloud for archiving and DR. You can run the virtual appliances on vSphere, Hyper-V, or Citrix XenServer for the on-premises backup solution. But when it comes to cloud environments, Unitrends Backup is supported on Microsoft Azure and AWS S3 public clouds.

Pros:

Offers a simple dashboard to monitor backup status across an organization
Can detect rouge encryption from ransomware
Features automated testing of backups
Supports ESXi VMs

Cons:

Not the best option for larger enterprise environments

Licensing and Pricing

Software editions: Unitrends Essentials and Standard. Software+Hardware Editions: Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. Unitrends prices are based on a subscription-based OPEX model (except hardware). Use the Unitrends Backup price calculator.

How to start?

Try Unitrends Backup Software free for 30 days.

10. Veritas NetBackup

Veritas is one of the oldest data management companies, founded in 1983. The company has maintained leadership in enterprise data protection and management solutions. Their modern software lets you manage and protect all your data and apps from the on-premises to the cloud at any scale. Veritas has been named 15x a leader in Gartner’s MQ for Enterprise Information Archiving.

Highlights

Supports VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and Red Hat OpenShift.
Recovery from individual files or folders to VMs (or VMDKs).
Boot from backup disk storage to instantly recover VMs.
Granular restore for single files and folders without requiring the entire VM.

Veritas NetBackup is one of the best VM backup and recovery solutions for the enterprise. The solution delivers a reliable backup and granular data recovery capable of scaling with any virtual machine environment. It combines automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and an elastic architecture to secure data anywhere at any scale.

Pros:

Designed with enterprises in mind
A solid option for those looking for an on-premise solution
Can mirror cloud-storage environments locally
Ample 60-day trial period

Cons:

The interface feels outdated, making it tougher to navigate

Licensing and Pricing

Veritas is known to be on the enterprise-range pricing. Contact the Veritas sales team.

How to start?

NetBackup is designed for the enterprise (no free trial available). But you can download a free 60-day trial of Veritas Backup Exec, a VM backup software designed for SMBs.

11. Dell EMC Data Protection

Dell EMC Data Protection is a leading data protection solution (appliance and software) designed for MSPs, enterprises, or IT departments. It works using cloud data backup automation and robust data protection from cyberattacks and ransomware to safeguard workloads in on-premises, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. Dell EMC has been recognized 16x as a Leader in Gartner’s MQ for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software.

Highlights

Automated data backups for VMware hybrid cloud environments.
Protect VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.
Generate transparent snapshots to ensure VM availability.
Protect VMware virtual machines with granular recovery.
Replicate VMs (VMDK and RDM) locally or remotely.

The Dell EMC Data Protection Suite offers next-generation data management and backup tools to meet the demands of any business size. The Data Protection Suite provides comprehensive backup/recovery, replication, cloud-based DR, and a solid VMware integration solution. For instance, the suite includes Dell EMC RecoverPoint, a virtual machine data protection software that provides continuous data protection for operational recovery and disaster recovery.

Pros:

Highly enterprise-focused platform
Includes both manual BDR and automated backups
Offers replication for both VMDK and RDM
Includes a suite of BDR tools for practically any configuration
Generous 60-day trial period

Cons:

Specifically caters to enterprises – not ideal for smaller networks

Licensing and Pricing

Contact a Dell EMC’s sales representative.

How to start?

Start with a free 60-days trial of Dell EMC Data Protection Advisor, and learn insights into your data protection environment.

Final Verdict

The ten best virtual machine backup software shown in this post will provide you with reliable backup and restore. Solutions targeting MSPs and enterprises tend to be much pricier than those with SMB licenses. In addition, free virtual machine software such as Veeam’s Community Edition can be all you need if you intend to protect a couple of VMs.

Our top choices are Vembu BDR Suite, Altaro VM Backup, Veeam Backup and Replication, and N-able Cove Data Protection. They all have a free trial, so there is no excuse to start protecting your VMs today!