A highly modular approach makes Commvault’s Cloud an attractive choice for businesses that want a hybrid backup solution they can tailor precisely to their needs. Originally launched a few years ago as Metallic and now integrated into Commvault’s cyber resiliency and recovery cloud platform, it comprises 16 distinct components so looks to have every data protection requirement covered.

For essential off-site backup, you can use Commvault’s cloud storage as a backup destination or choose from 26 third-party providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google. Commvault gives ransomware attacks a hard time, as its Azure-based cloud storage is air-gapped and immutable, with modules now provided for risk analysis and backup content malware scans.

The Security IQ feature presents a security posture rating plus options to enforce extra authorization for restores and deletions. The unusual file activity service alerts you if it detects ransomware attacks and presents the last good recovery point for swift data recovery.

The cloud portal presents a service catalogue list, and selecting a module takes you to a dedicated configuration page. Plenty of help is at hand as each one provides details of all prerequisites and clear setup instructions.

After assigning the systems, applications or services the module is to protect, you choose your storage locations; for hybrid backup, Commvault supports local storage or network shares as the primary location and a cloud repository as the secondary stage. Next, you assign a backup plan that defines your recovery point objective (RPO), backup window and data retention periods.

We wanted to protect the lab’s Hyper-V and VMware hosts, which required the Commvault gateway component installed on a Windows Server host on the same network. Downloaded from the portal, this manages communications between sources and destinations and handles all caching, deduplication and hash tables. For Hyper-V backups, you’ll also need Commvault’s VSA package installed on each host server.

We declared a Synology NAS for our primary backup location, used Commvault’s cloud for secondary storage, and each plan started by backing up selected virtual machines (VMs) to our NAS appliance. On completion, they ran an auxiliary job to replicate the local store to the cloud, and the transfer process is speeded up by only sending deduplicated data.

VMware recovery services are outstanding: we could browse and restore guest files, the entire VM or its VMDK files. The live recovery and live mount services can quickly reinstate a failed VM, with the latter loading them directly from a backup on primary storage.

A fine choice of cloud-to-cloud backup modules are available, and we found the MS365 option a cinch to deploy. You do need to authenticate separately with Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, but the entire process is handled very smoothly and we had our entire MS365 account backed up in 15 minutes. For item recovery, you select the required MS365 component, choose a recovery point, view all available versions and restore it to the original location or another MS365 user.

The Endpoint module supports Windows, macOS and Linux clients. Once users have installed Commvault’s Edge Monitor app and logged in to their account, it applies your predefined plan. This backs up their system to the cloud, creates a local drive letter for drag-and-drop restores and provides access to a personal self-service web portal.

Pricing could be more transparent, but Commvault Cloud is a great choice for businesses that want a highly customizable cloud backup solution. It offers an impressive range of easily deployed modules so you only pay for what you need, and it has a keen focus on data security and ransomware protection.

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Businesses worried about managing a hybrid data protection strategy may want to consider Barracuda’s Backup appliances, as they do everything for you. These all-in-one physical and virtual solutions provide on-site backup, cloud replication and full data restoration services, as well as optional site-to-site replication, all managed from one cloud portal.

Barracuda offers a wide choice of hardware appliances, with the entry-level Backup 290 on review presented as a low-profile 1U rack appliance fitted with a single 2TB SATA hard disk. This may not sound like very much, but the appliance’s variable block-level deduplication is very efficient; during testing we backed up 1.7TB of data, which Barracuda squashed down to 331GB for an 82% reduction.

Prices for the Backup 290 start at £2,000, with unlimited cloud storage costing £996 per year. Barracuda’s Energize Update service costs £335 per year, with an Instant Replacement subscription adding a further yearly cost of £480.

To install the appliance, you initially connect a local monitor and keyboard and link it to your Cloud Control account. Barracuda provides agents for Windows, macOS and Linux in the portal, and it’s good value as the price includes support for unlimited clients as well as a number of common business apps.

You use the same agent for all Windows workstations and servers. Once installed, we declared each system as a backup source. The beauty of this solution is that during job creation, you tick one extra box so local backup jobs are automatically replicated to the cloud.

The agent identifies all hosted applications and offered us options to select SQL Server databases and virtual machines (VMs) on our Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V server. An agent isn’t required for VMware hosts as we declared our vCenter server using its IP address and were presented with all VMs on our managed ESXi servers for selection as backup sources.

Once systems are registered, you can assign them to the default backup schedule, which automatically backs up everything on them once a day. It’s easy enough to create custom schedules, assign specific systems and items, and repeat jobs as often as every 15 minutes.

Barracuda employs an “incremental forever” system, which runs one full backup for each host followed by regular incrementals. Ransomware protection is provided as you can use the default retention policy for all hosts or apply custom ones that define the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly periods you want data kept for.

For file recovery, we selected systems from the portal, chose files and folders and restored them to their original location or to another system. The same window provides access to the cloud repository, where the Download option copies the data back to the system running the Cloud Control portal.

We could restore selected Hyper-V and VMware VMs directly from the appliance to their respective hosts or to alternative locations, and if the appliance isn’t available you can download their virtual disks from your cloud repository. An Energize Update subscription enables the LiveBoot feature so you can swiftly restore VMs directly to the appliance if the hypervisor is down.

The Cloud LiveBoot feature has an Instant Replacement subscription and allows VMs to be hosted in Barracuda’s cloud for up to seven days for testing, backup validation and file recovery. Internet outages are covered, too, as the appliance has a local web console that provides restore browser and Live Boot management tools.

Barracuda’s Backup 290 makes light work of managing a hybrid data protection strategy and is an attractive option for time-poor SMBs. It’s simple to deploy and manage, the block level deduplication can make big storage savings, and it offers an impressive range of data recovery features.

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Acronis’ Cyber Protect teams up hybrid backup services with full-strength cybersecurity and endpoint protection. One subscription takes care of everything, and it’s all managed from a single cloud portal.

Cyber Protect 16 Advanced takes the Standard edition and adds features such as Windows patch management, backup malware scans and an endpoint detection and remediation (EDR) service that provides event correlation, threat containment, incident investigation, kill chain analysis and endpoint rollback recovery. Ransomware protection comes with tamper-proof immutable backups and a compliance mode that stops malicious actors from changing account settings and deleting backups.

There are a lot of activities to keep track of, but the cloud portal helps by presenting a customizable dashboard. You have lots of widgets to choose from, including ones for protected system overviews, backup storage usage, vulnerable systems, alerts, detected malware, patch remediation status and blocked website categories.

Platform support is outstanding and includes Windows, macOS and Linux systems, iOS and Android mobiles, many popular business apps, ten virtualization hosts, and cloud apps such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Agent deployment for workstations and servers is a lengthy affair, though, as they must be downloaded from the portal and manually installed, after which they generate a unique registration code and appear in the portal’s devices page.

Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) backups require a dedicated agent installed on the host, and you now have two choices for VMware systems. You can install an agent VM directly on the host and register it with your cloud account or use the new Windows remote agent.

Applying settings is much simpler. You place similar systems in groups and assign protection plans that include your backup settings, encryption passwords, schedules and all cybersecurity settings. For hybrid backups, primary and secondary storage locations can be assigned. We used local Synology NAS shares for fast local backups and the Acronis cloud repository for off-site storage.

Synology NAS appliances can now be protected by a DSM agent app. It temporarily needed root access to register with our Acronis account, and we could then access the appliance from the cloud portal, create a protection plan and choose the shares we wanted backed up to the cloud.

Along with swift file and folder recovery services for remote servers and workstations, the portal provides an impressive range of restore features for Hyper-V and VMware. You can recover an entire VM back to its original location, as a new VM on the same host or another one. For even faster recovery, a temporary VM can be created on the host from a local backup.

Within workstation and server plans, you can enable real-time malware scanning, apply URL filtering using up to 44 categories, schedule vulnerability assessments, run patch management remediation tasks and enforce removable device controls. When EDR is activated, you can view all incoming alerts from the portal, see lists of all incidents filtered by severity and mitigation status and browse a threat investigation page which provides a kill chain diagram, details of how the attack developed and the processes it interacted with.

Businesses that want all their data backup and cybersecurity in one place will love Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Advanced. Its flexible subscriptions keep costs under control, the EDR service stays one step ahead of cybercriminals and it’s easy to manage.

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