In recent times, virtual machines (VMs) have become a vital part of modern enterprise IT infrastructure.

Many organizations now rely on virtualization and VMs to run their business applications, databases, and even containerized workloads. The applications generate huge amounts of data that need to be protected. Because of the uniqueness of this kind of environment, the traditional data protection and backup solution are no longer enough. This is where VM backup software comes into play.

Here is our list of the best virtual machine backup software: 

  • Vembu BDR Suite EDITOR’S CHOICE Offers a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution designed to protect the data across diverse IT environments that include virtual machines, physical, cloud workloads and SaaS applications. Start a 30-day free trial.
  • Veeam Backup & Replication One of the leading developers of backup, recovery, and data management solutions.
  • Altaro VM Backup Designed to provide backup, recovery, and replication of Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines (VMs).
  • Nakivo Backup and Replication A backup solution designed to protect modern virtual environments such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV VMs.
  • Veritas NetBackup An enterprise backup and recovery software built to protect the data center environments.
  • Uranium Backup Pro Virtual A backup solution that is specifically designed for backing up virtual machines (VMs).
  • IBM Spectrum Protect An enterprise data protection platform that provides a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery.
  • Iperius Backup A backup solution for Windows desktop and servers, cloud storage, databases, and virtual machines.
  • Unitrends Backup A virtual appliance that provides backup, replication, deduplication, archive, and instant recovery services.
  • MSP360 Managed Backup Comes with centralized management, monitoring, reporting, and integration support for AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, and Microsoft Azure.

VMs usually run as guests on hypervisors that emulate a computer system and allow multiple VMs to share a physical host hardware system. The most popular hypervisors are VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, and others including cloud-based virtual machines. Virtual machine backups can be performed in many ways, either through a backup agent installed in the guest operating system or by way of integration from the hypervisor that allows for agentless backups.

By ensuring regular VM backups, an organization can achieve full VM protection and business resilience even in the aftermath of a disaster. With many organizations virtualizing more and more of their enterprise workloads, supporting and protecting these workloads, especially in multi-cloud and geographically diverse environments can be challenging for most organizations. In this article, we present the ten best VM backup software out there. We hope this will help you figure out the right one for your business.

The Best Virtual Machine Backup Software

1. Vembu BDR Suite (FREE TRIAL)

Our methodology for selecting VM backup systems

We reviewed the market for virtual machine backup solutions and analyzed the options based on the following criteria:

  • A system that can copy VM data while the system is running
  • A backup solution for Hyper-V and VMware
  • Encryption to protect transfers and storage
  • Optional use for cross-platform migration
  • Manage backups for multiple sites
  • A free trial or a guided demonstration for a pre-purchase assessment
  • Value for money from an automated backup system that provides strong data protection for a fair price

Vembu is one of the leading players in the backup and disaster recovery market. Their flagship product—Vembu BDR Suite, offers a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution designed to protect the data across diverse IT environments that include virtual machines (VMware and Hyper-V), physical (Windows, Linux, Mac), cloud workloads (AWS, Azure) and SaaS applications (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace).

Key Features:

  • Back up VMware and Hyper-V
  • Back up cloud services
  • Constant copying
  • V2V migration possible
  • Instant VM restore

The Vembu system is agentless and provides image-level VM backup and replication for Hyper-V standalone hosts and cluster servers. Data transfers are protected and optimized by encryption, compression, and deduplication Each repository update triggers a verification process to scan for corruption.

This package provides application-aware backups with log truncation and repositories can be used for cross-platform migration (V2V). A restore is completed in minutes.

The Vembu BDR Suite is priced per CPU-Socket or VM or server basis and there is a free version that is limited to backing up 10 VMs. The system is available for installation on-premise, offsite, or on a private cloud.

You can automate and test your backup and restoration strategies, including restoring in a full VM state or more granularly for added control.

Vembu provides flexible licensing options that cater to the needs of businesses of all sizes and types. The Vembu BDR Suite is available for a full-featured 30-day free trial to enable you to test drive the product before making a financial commitment.

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

2. Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam is one of the leading developers of backup, recovery, and data management solutions. Veeam Platform is available in two packages: Veeam Availability Suite (monitoring and backup capabilities) and Veeam Backup & Replication. The Veeam Backup & Replication is a commercial backup application that provides backup, restore, and replication functionality for virtual machines, physical servers, and workstations as well as cloud-based workload. It was designed to provide VM backup for VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, and Microsoft Hyper-V.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Vembu BDR Suite is our top pick for a virtual machine backup software package because it manages the protection of both Hyper-V and VMware, which are the two most widely implemented virtualization platforms. The service saves space and time by deduplication and compressing VM data before entering it in the backup repository. All data transfers and the repository itself are protected by encryption. You can use a VM backup to migrate to an incompatible platform, converting the virtualization to a different hypervisor system. Best of all, you can use Vembu BDR Suite for free to protect up to 10 VMs.

Download: Get a 30-day free trial

Official Site: https://www.vembu.com/vembu-bdr-suite-download/

OS: Cloud, Windows Server, and Linux

  • Back up VMware, Hyper-V, Red Hat, and Nutanix
  • Back up cloud and physical servers
  • Instant VM recovery
  • Use for replication and migration

The software manages backups and image-based VM replication for both the virtualization layer and the physical machine. It backs up VMs at the image level using a hypervisor’s snapshots to retrieve VM data. Backups can be full or incremental. The available backup methods include forward incremental-forever backup, forward incremental backup, and reverse incremental backup. Additionally, there is an option to perform active full and synthetic full backups.

Veeam provides flexible licensing options that support both perpetual and subscription-based licensing models. A free custom demo and a 30-day free trial are available on request.

  • 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

  • Would like more integrations into more hardware storage and NAS solutions

  • Would benefit from FTP backup integration

3. Altaro VM Backup

Altaro is a company that develops backup solutions. Their flagship solution—Altaro VM Backup, was designed to provide backup, recovery, and replication of Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup prides itself as a fast, affordable, high-performance backup and replication solution, which can be installed in less than 15 minutes, without the need for complex configurations, software dependencies, or steep learning curves.

  • Continuous Data Protection
  • Multiple simultaneous VM backup
  • Live backups

With Altaro, you can perform daily backups of your VMs and replicate them to multiple backup locations simultaneously. You can back up numerous VMs at once, and you can back up live VMs and specify backup retention policies for individual VMs. Altaro also provides solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)  to offer Hyper-V, VMware, and physical Windows server backup services.

Altaro offers both perpetual and subscription-based licensing. Altaro VM Backup is available for a free 30-day trial to enable you to test drive the product before taking the plunge.

  • 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

  • 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

4. Nakivo Backup and Replication

Nakivo is a company that develops data protection and site recovery software for SMB and enterprise markets. The NAKIVO Backup & Replication software is a backup solution designed to protect modern virtual environments such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV VMs.

  • Back up VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix
  • Application aware
  • Repository verification

NAKIVO Backup & Replication comes in several editions from Basic to Enterprise Plus to meet the data protection needs of organizations of any size. The license is perpetual and based on per CPU socket with one year of Standard Support. A free 30 minutes live demo and a 30-day free trial are available on request.

  • Supports Hyper-V as well as VMWare

  • Can detect and protect data from ransomware attacks

  • Supports a wide range of backup options including incremental backups

  • Has a simple yet intuitive interface

  • Does not include cloud storage – better suited for on-prem backup solutions

  • Could use a longer trial period

5. Veritas NetBackup

Veritas is a well-known enterprise data and storage management software company. Veritas offers a range of advanced capabilities to handle data management across VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and Red Hat Virtualization environments.

  • Back up VMware, Hyper-V, Red Hat, and Nutanix
  • Data deduplication
  • Use for migration and replication

The Veritas NetBackup is an enterprise backup and recovery software built to protect the data center environments. The product backs up data to disk, tape, and public clouds, and protects VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. Key features offered by NetBackup include data deduplication, replication, and snapshot services.

NetBackup supports a vast array of environments and the infrastructure stack including cloud platforms, databases, storage, and virtual systems to unify your entire data protection strategy. NetBackup is also available as part of an integrated backup appliance known as NetBackup appliance, which performs source and target deduplication. NetBackup appliances come preinstalled with all necessary hardware and software components and can be set up within minutes. Various recovery and disaster recovery (DR) options are available to help you recover from backups and unavoidable disasters.

  • 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

  • The interface feels outdated, making it tougher to navigate

6. Uranium Backup Pro Virtual

Uranium Backup is a product of Nanosystems—an Italian-based software development company. Uranium Backup Pro Virtual is the backup solution that is specifically designed for backing up virtual machines (VMs).

  • Back up VMware and Hyper-V
  • Incremental and parallel
  • Backup locked and open files

Uranium Backup Pro Virtual is targeted at SMBs and can use it to back up, replicate, and recover VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines.

Uranium Backup provides flexible licensing options from Basic edition to Gold edition to cater to the needs of businesses of all sizes and types. A single license will allow you to perform an unlimited number of backups. A free 21-day trial of the Gold edition is available for download.

  • Extremely simple backup tool for administrators

  • Supports thin provisioning as well as full and incremental backups

  • Offers offsite replications as well as to cloud-based sources

  • Exports as VHDX (making manual recovery an option)

  • Best for smaller environments

  • Could use a longer trial

7. IBM Spectrum Protect

IBM Spectrum Protect is an enterprise data protection platform that provides a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. IBM Spectrum Protect provides scalable data protection for physical file servers, applications, and virtual environments. It enables backups and recovery for virtual, physical, and cloud environments of all sizes. Backups can be managed by IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center, VMware vSphere Client, or third-party software.

  • Back up VMware
  • Also offers file, physical server, and cloud account backup
  • Use for migration

IBM provides a perpetual or subscription-based licensing model. A free online demo and a 30-day free trial are available on request.

  • Uses agentless technology for performance-based backups

  • Can backup at the VM level, or the entire server

  • Offers cloud integration for offsite backups

  • Supports incremental as well as full backups

  • Designed specifically for enterprise environments

8. Iperius Backup

Iperius Backup is a backup solution for Windows desktop and servers, cloud storage, databases, and virtual machines. It allows automatic scheduled backups and replication of VMware ESXi, vCenter, Hyper-V, MySQL/SQL Server, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, S3, and more. With a single installation, you can back up any Hyper-V or ESXi server in your network, without having to install any software agents. It can perform incremental, differential, and hot backups of VMware virtual machines.

  • Back up VMware and Hyper-V
  • Full, incremental, or differential
  • Backup live systems

With its perpetual license model which can be purchased online, and centralized management through Iperius Console, you can easily monitor server and VM backups. Iperius Backup is also available as freeware.

  • Could use an updated interface

9. Unitrends Backup

Unitrends is an American company that develops backup and disaster recovery appliances and related products. Unitrends products include several physical appliances ranging from small desktop backup appliances to large rack-mounted backup appliances, and virtual appliances for VMware and Hyper-V marketed as Unitrends Backup.

  • Back up VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix
  • Hardware or virtual appliance
  • Run on AWS or Azure

Unitrends also offers a multi-tenant public cloud-based service that offers off-premises disaster recovery in a single-tenant private cloud deployment methodology. A free online demo and a 30-day free trial are available on request.

  • 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

  • Not the best option for larger enterprise environments

10. MSP360 Managed Backup

MSP360 Managed Backup prides itself as a “powerful cross-platform backup and disaster recovery that leverages the public cloud to enable a comprehensive data protection strategy”.

  • Back up VMware and Hyper-V
  • Back up cloud SaaS systems
  • Designed for managed service providers

MSP360 Managed Backup comes with centralized management, monitoring, reporting, and integration support for AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, and Microsoft Azure. With MSP360 Managed Backup, you can easily backup your VMware and Hyper-V virtual machine workloads, as well as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Windows, Linux, macOS, among others.

The MSP360 Managed Backup solution was designed with the MSP needs in mind. Once signed up for the service, you can access the control panel, where you are free to use your cloud storage or free trial storage from MSP360 AWS or Wasabi service. A free trial is available on request.

  • Highly scalable – great for fast-growing MSP and enterprise companies

  • Features various multi-tenant options

  • Integrates well with Azure and other cloud providers

  • Can combine with other offsite backups for full BDR coverage

  • Better suited for MSPs