The risk of permanent data loss is a reality for most businesses so protecting their mission-critical data has become vital for ensuring business continuity and preventing costly operational and reputational damages.
As an MSP your clients will be looking to you to be their data protection expert to help mitigate that risk for them. This will likely include advising on the best data protection solution to adopt.
Acronis is a popular legacy provider with a comprehensive set of data protection solutions. However, the data protection needs of many SMBs across the world are rapidly evolving, and the truth is, Acronis may fail to meet all of them.
If you’re looking for an alternative, Probax MSP Backup powered by technology from Veeam and Wasabi can fill the gaps in your data protection service catalogue and provide you with a more complete backup and recovery solution.
But, how do you compare Probax MSP Backup and Acronis? How can you evaluate the differences between the two solutions and decide what’s best for your business and your clients peace of mind? That’s the purpose of this guide.
We’ll explores the differences between Veeam-powered Probax MSP Backup and Acronis in a feature-by-feature comparison, so you can make a more informed decision if you are considering a switch from Acronis.
What Is Acronis?
Acronis is a software vendor and data protection solution provider that originated as a spin-off from Parallels in Singapore, eventually establishing itself as an independent company in 2003.
They offer a range of backup, disaster recovery (DR), and file sync-and-share products for virtual, physical, cloud, and mobile environments.
Acronis's core strengths lie in their on-premises and cloud recovery and backup software products, which have earned a reputation for being user-friendly and stable.
Over the years, Acronis has expanded through strategic acquisitions. In 2012, the company acquired GroupLogic, a file-sharing software company known for its mobile file-sharing, syncing, and collaboration solutions. This enabled Acronis to offer file sync-and-share products.
In 2014, Acronis also acquired nScales to offer their Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions. The nScaled platform included replication management, failback initiation, and facilitated failover operations to maintain robust data protection and business continuity for its client organizations.
Acronis’ offering today is a mix of their core product, features from their acquisitions and some other services such as antivirus. This means that managing Acronis can be complex and resource intensive for MSPs to manage.
What Services Does Acronis Offer?
Acronis offers a range of products based on their Acronis AnyData Engine. It’s designed to address the requirements of both virtual and physical server protection.
The Acronis AnyData Engine is compatible with many forms of data, making it suitable for multiple server environments and different operating systems.
Acronis doesn't offer a free version for any of its products, but you can request a demo or sign up for a free trial.
Putting that aside, here’s a quick overview of the products that Acronis offers:
- Acronis Cyber Protect: This solution provides data protection against possible threats, acting as a unified solution for safeguarding critical data and systems. It is a combination of on-premises and cloud incremental and differential backups, cybersecurity, and AI-based technologies into one product.
- Acronis Cloud Security: Security for Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure via a unified, hybrid cloud security platform. It leverages the power of the cloud to improve the organization’s data protection measures and manage its security posture across diverse virtualized environments.
- Acronis Cloud Manager: Acronis Cloud Manager controls the organization’s Microsoft Cloud and provides monitoring, management, migration, and recovery capabilities.
- Acronis Cloud Migration: This product aims to manage virtual machine migrations with migrations to Hyper-V, AWS, and Azure without the need for agents.
- Acronis Snap Deploy: Snap Deploy facilitates system deployments by enabling organizations to deploy a master image of an operating system to multiple machines at the same time.
- Acronis CyberFit Score: With this scoring service, organizations can evaluate the security posture of their endpoints, devices, and overall IT environment.
- Acronis DeviceLock DLP: This service provides Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to prevent data leaks and unauthorized access to critical information.
- Acronis Detection and Response: This service adds a layer of security by detecting, stopping, and analyzing threats.
Probax MSP Backup vs Acronis: An In-Depth Comparison
Now, let’s compare the features and capabilities of Probax MSP Backup with Acronis in the backup, disaster recovery, and replication compartments.
Comparing Recovery and Backup
Agentless Application Item Recovery
Probax MSP Backup enables the recovery of individual items from backups with powerful search functions.
With Acronis, on the other hand, agentless recovery is not supported. The user must install agents on the target recovery VM to be able to recover data on an item level, and not all applications are supported.
Restore to Public Cloud and Object Storage
MSP Backup enables the recovery of backups to the public cloud provider of the organizations choice, like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack, and Google Compute Engine.
Acronis, on the flip side, doesn't recover VM backups to the public cloud automatically. Instead, admins need to deploy a new VM in the cloud and perform a file-based restore, adding unnecessary complexity to the process.
Instant Database Recovery
MSP Backup helps minimize downtime by allowing recovery of Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases into production environments almost instantly, with advanced switchover options to maintain a smooth transition back to production once recovery is finalized.
In contrast, Acronis can’t instantly recover databases, limiting available options to resource-intensive agent-based recovery.
Staged Restore
MSP Backup allows custom scripts to be injected into VMs within an isolated sandbox during the recovery process, drastically making compliance management and data removal and masking smoother.
Acronis lacks this functionality, limiting how VMs can be modified before they’re restored to the production site.
Backups to Object Storage
MSP Backup allows organizations to benefit from direct-to-object storage with Wasabi hot cloud storage for storing backups. Immutability is supported, which helps ensure data safety and comply with data protection requirements.
Conversely, Acronis is limited to using Acronis Storage Cloud exclusively, with no option to target a hot cloud storage provider for backups.
Multi-VM, Cross-Platform Instant Recovery of Any Workload
MSP Backup makes it easy to instantly recover and run workloads directly from backups to VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V, including physical servers, cloud-based instances and multiple VMs.
Acronis offers similar functionality, but only for physical servers and VMs.
Back up from Storage Snapshots
MSP Backup allows the creation of image-based backups from primary and secondary storage snapshots with little to no impact on the production site’s performance.
Acronis can also perform backups via hardware snapshots. However, only NetApp arrays are supported.
Agentless, Application-Aware, Image-Based Backups
MSP Backup supports creating application-consistent, image-level VM backups with application-aware processing, eliminating the need for a persistent OS agent.
Acronis can also create app-aware backups for specific applications. However, it can’t recover application data from them directly. To achieve application data recovery from backups, users need to add more agents on a machine and enable access to the backup target.
Replication and Disaster Recovery
Continuous Data Protection for VM Replication
Utilizing Veeam's Continuous Data Replication (CDP) based on VAIO technology, MSP Backup makes very low RPOs achievable, providing the best possible protection against data loss for critical VMs.
It’s also possible to adjust the replication frequency based on target RPOs. Additionally, with virtually unlimited restore points, data can be recovered to any desired point in time.
Acronis lacks integration with VAIO for CDP-based replication and provides only snapshot-based replication, which doesn’t offer similar granularity and flexibility in RPOs.
Assisted Failover and Failback
Veeam-powered MSP Backup utilizes built-in assisted failover and failback capabilities to facilitate data center migrations, planned failovers, and failover testing with zero data loss.
Users can also benefit from Veeam’s native DR orchestration capabilities with the Veeam Recovery Orchestrator.
On the other hand, Acronis only supports assisted failover and failback for VMware, so it’s necessary to intervene manually whenever disaster strikes.
Comparing Advanced Features
Deduplication and Storage Integration
MSP Backup comes with built-in data reduction features, including deduplication and multiple compression options. This reduces backup storage requirements and network traffic. Additionally, the solution doesn’t rely on a dedupe database, making backup files portable.
Acronis, however, offers three compression levels and requires separate disks for each database when using deduplication. Not to mention, the lack of support for third-party backup targets limits storage options to local storage, NFS, SFTP, and their own Acronis Storage server.
Integrated Test/Dev Sandbox
MSP Backup offers a robust test and development sandbox that allows VMs to run in an isolated environment that’s considered a copy of the production environment, which can be useful in troubleshooting, testing, and training. Veeam also allows third-party applications and scripts to access the content of any backup.
Acronis also provides an on-demand sandbox, but it’s limited to a single VM at a time. Moreover, administrators need to manually create instant restore operations, making it less convenient. Confusingly, the API for the sandbox is only available in the cloud version designed for service providers, which adds to the complexity of the solution.
Self-Service and Service Provider Support
MSP Backup facilitates self-service recovery for application owners and help desk operators. This feature enables specific users, such as local IT staff and application owners, to handle recoveries independently.
Acronis lacks a self-service recovery portal for application owners and help-desk operators. Instead, they offer Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to delegate control.
vCloud Director Support
MSP Backup supports backup and recovery of vApps, VM metadata, and provides full support for fast-provisioned VMs in vCloud Director.
In contrast, Acronis does not support backup or recovery of vApps/VCD VMs, limiting its capabilities in vCloud Director environments.
Comparing Cyber Resiliency
Immutability
With direct-to-object storage capabilities and Wasabi hot cloud storage, MSP Backup provides immutability for ransomware protection, ensuring that backup data is isolated and can’t be altered or deleted by ransomware attacks.
Acronis relies on "Acronis Active Protection" to observe patterns in data file changes and compare them against malicious behavior patterns. While this offers some protection, it doesn’t come close to the added security of immutability.
Secure Access Control
MSP Backup supports multi-factor authentication (MFA) via HOTP or TOTP for the primary Veeam Backup & Replication console and the Veeam Service Provider Console.
Acronis doesn’t support MFA via TOTP in most of their backup products.
End-to-End Encryption and Secure Restore
MSP Backup ensures secure backup and replica data with AES 256-bit encryption at-source, in-flight, and at-rest. It also allows data recovery even when passwords are lost.
On the other hand, Acronis provides AES 128-256 encryption but lacks a way to recover lost passwords.
Security Best Practices Analyzer
MSP Backup has a built-in analyzer that checks the backup server and product configuration, recommending changes to follow security best practices.
In contrast, Acronis doesn't provide any guidance on how to improve security posture for maximum data protection.
Why Probax MSP Backup is the Best Acronis Alternative
If you’re considering an alternative to Acronis, there are many reasons why Probax MSP Backup is the right choice.
Apart from the differences discussed earlier, here are the core reasons why more and more MSPs choose Probax MSP Backup as their backup management platform:
1. Simplicity
Designed for simplicity - managing data protection with MSP Backup is just much more straightforward than Acronis. It requires fewer resources and avoids the need for multiple-point products to match its core capabilities.
Acronis often requires additional agents for basic functionality such as backup and granular recovery operations, resulting in longer deployment times and a higher administrative workload.
2. Functionality
MSP Backup provides robust functionality for data protection in modern IT environments, such as backup from storage snapshots (not restricted to NetApp), VM-based replication (not limited to VMware), and on-demand sandbox capabilities.
Acronis, on the other hand, offers limited capabilities that have not kept pace with the features MSPs now view as standard.
3. Scalability
As data protection needs grow, MSP Backup lets MSPs scale their solution effortlessly, eliminating unnecessary complexities and the time delays associated with traditional data protection solutions like Acronis.
And because MSP Backup doesn’t rely on all-in-one architectures, dealing with larger data volumes or multiple sites is never a problem.
MSP Backup also enables continuous monitoring regardless of the client’s size or environment complexity.
4. Customer Services
With Probax, take advantage of extensive customer support and educational resources that cover in-depth learning materials and troubleshooting resources, freeing time to focus on more important tasks instead of unnecessarily complicating the initial setup process.
5. Investment Assurance
Opting for MSP Backup guarantees MSPs ability to address evolving data protection needs as their client’s IT infrastructure modernizes over the next few years.
Conversely Acronis has shown a lack of innovation and progress in introducing modern capabilities. MSP Backup regularly releases significant improvements and new capabilities to its backup management software.
6. The Power of Veeam, Without the Footprint
MSP Backup unifies Veeam’s best in class data protection and enterprise strength with Wasabi’s cloud efficiency.
Developed for MSPs serving Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs), Probax MSP Backup simplifies the enterprise-grade power of the Veeam Data Platform and seamlessly integrates it with the performance, scalability and value of Wasabi hot cloud storage.
This is the “easy button” for SMB MSPs.
With MSP Backup, Veeam partners can easily safeguard physical, virtual, public cloud and Microsoft 365 workloads with comprehensive multi-client visibility, granular control and time-saving automation.
Probax MSP Backup with Veeam vs Acronis: The Final Verdict
With nearly two decades of experience, Veeam has earned the trust of more than 450,000 customers worldwide. Combine that with the experience Probax has accumulated providing data protection services for MSPs for over 15 years, guaranteeing a state-of-the-art solution that takes the data protection needs of MSPs seriously.
Probax MSP Backup offers a comprehensive backup solution that surpasses Acronis’s outdated capabilities for full data protection and management. The solution provides powerful capabilities to safeguard MSP clients against the risk of data loss.
Looking for an Acronis Alternative for Your MSP?
Explore the simplicity and true power of Probax MSP Backup for yourself! No complicated setup or additional products are required for you to start protecting your data.
