No One Else is Even Close
Especially in a virtualized environment where consolidation and increased efficiency help your organization respond more quickly to business opportunities.
- 3x faster to install
- 3x faster to start backup
- 15% faster to restore
Focus
Get the most benefits from VMware vSphere™ by using a solution that is specifically designed for it. Agentless backup with VADP, Changed Block Tracking (CBT), hot-plug and direct SAN access – all this make VMware backup and recovery fast and efficient.
Agility
Choose the deployment option that best suits your needs: use simple safe-contained Virtual Appliance or install on a Windows machine to offload processing from ESX(i) servers. Unlimited P2V migrations at no additional cost make your journey towards virtual environment safe and pleasant.
Speed
Thanks to Acronis' award-winning imaging and bare-metal restore technology, vmProtect 6 is the fastest way to backup VMware virtual machines, always-incremental, with nearly zero impact on ESX(i) servers. You can instantly boot a VM and recover it in seconds.
Performance
Featuring an intuitive web-based interface, Acronis vmProtect 6 provides the easiest way to install, configure and deploy backup and recovery helping you to cut down operational and maintenance costs. In addition, built-in backup validation verifies that backups are not corrupted to guarantee successful recovery.
vmProtect 6 Against Competition
| Features | Acronis vmProtect 6 | Veeam Backup & Replication 5 Standard | Veeam Backup & Replication 5 Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | |||
| Agent-less backup of virtual machines | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Install app on Windows server / laptop / PC | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deploy app as ESX(i) Virtual Appliance | Yes | ||
| Management | |||
| GUI to perform backup/recovery tasks remotely | Yes | ||
| Dashboard | Yes | Yes | |
| Email Notifications and alerting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Storage | |||
| Disk, Network Share, or NAS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| FTP and SFTP | Yes | ||
| Cloud-based storage | Yes | ||
| Backup | |||
| Always incremental backup (after first full backup) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Change Block Tracking support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| LAN-Free Backup | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Excluding unused blocks from VM backup | Yes | ||
| Excluding files, folders and volumes from VM backup | Yes | ||
| How often backups can be scheduled | 1 min | Near-CDP | Near-CDP |
| Automated backup verification without VM | Yes | ||
| Automated recovery verification by running a VM | Yes | ||
| Deduplication between backup sessions | Yes | ||
| 256-bit Encryption (AES 256) in transmission and at target | Yes | ||
| Recovery | |||
| Restore entire VM | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| File-level recovery from VM backup | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Instant VM recovery by running VM from backup image | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Save changes back to archive after instant VM recovery | Yes | ||
| Recover application-specific objects | Yes | ||
| Additional features | |||
| Replication | Yes | Yes | |
| Physical to Virtual (P2V) and Virtual to Virtual (V2V) Migration | Yes | ||
| Licensing | |||
| Per-socket license with unlimited VMs | $499.00 | $599 | $899 |
How It Works
Leveraging almost a decade of experience in image backup, we designed Acronis® vmProtect™ 6 specifically for VMware® virtual servers to be the easiest to deploy, simplest to use backup and recovery solution.
Acronis vmProtect 6 uses VMware's vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP) to allow agentless backup and recovery of virtual machines at one or several ESX(i) hosts remotely. No agents need to be installed in your virtual machines.
Acronis vmProtect 6 provides multiple recovery options:
- Recover an entire virtual machine over existing VM or as new VM to any ESX/ESXi host
- Recover individual files or folders for supported guest's file systems
- Mount backup storage to ESX/ESXi host as NFS share and run virtual machine directly from the backup providing nearly instantaneous recovery.
Flexible
Acronis vmProtect 6 offers unprecedented ease and flexibility of deployment, and provides you two options for where you install the application:
- vmProtect 6 Virtual Appliance runs on ESX or ESXi host and does not require any addition hardware or Windows license.
- vmProtect 6 Windows Agent installs on a dedicated Windows machine and offloads backup and recovery tasks from production ESX(i) hosts.
Intuitive
All management is performed remotely though an intuitive web-based management interface accessed from any supported web browser.
Faster and Smaller Backups
Acronis vmProtect 6 is designed to support always-incremental approach, where older incremental backups can be removed to free up space for new backups without requiring a resource-intensive consolidation, and the use of VMware Change Block Tracking (CBT) technology makes incremental backups faster than ever.
For shared storage such as SAN, vmProtect 6 reads data directly though the storage network, making the backup LAN-free.
Additionally, instead of copying entire virtual disk (.vmdk) files, Acronis vmProtect 6 looks inside disks and volumes to analyze file system and takes only blocks that are actually occupied by data. This allows vmProtect 6 to create backups much faster and smaller compared to what most competing products can, and even to exclude individual files and folders from a VM image backup.
Built-in data deduplication finds identical blocks and ensures that each of them is saved only once. Combined with compression it reduces storage requirements and traffic, especially in environments with large number of similar virtual machines.
Secure
Acronis vmProtect 6 automatically validates backups to ensure that all data is recoverable. Unlike competing products, vmProtect 6 reads and verifies every block of a backup ensuring that no data is corrupt.
All backups can be optionally encrypted with an industry-standard 256 bit AES encryption.
Additionally with Acronis vmProtect Online subscription backups can be securely stored offsite in a cloud-based storage.
Key Features and Benefits
Built specifically for VMware vSphere™, Acronis® vmProtect™ 6 provides all the features you need in an extremely easy-to-use solution that can be deployed in minutes so you can start to perform your backup and recovery tasks.
Optimized for VMware
With agentless backup, Acronis vmProtect 6 does not require agents to be installed in every VM minimizing memory consumption and management overhead, plus it reads data directly from a shared storage avoiding unnecessary load on LAN and ESX(i) hosts.
Extremely easy to deploy.
Acronis vmProtect 6 can be installed and configured in minutes. Based on your preference you may choose between installing vmProtect on a Windows machine and deploying it directly to an ESX(i) host as a self-contained Virtual Appliance.
Rapid backup and recovery
Always-incremental backup with compression and deduplication guarantees the fastest backup possible while saving on storage and traffic.
In a case of disaster, Acronis vmProtect 6 can recover a VM nearly instantly by booting it directly from a backup.
Simple web-based management interface
The Acronis vmProtect 6 intuitive web-based interface means there is practically zero learning curve – enabling you to quickly start performing backup and recovery tasks for your VMs, even from a smart phone.
Unlimited P2V migrations
Included at no additional cost unlimited physical-to-virtual migrations allow you to accelerate virtualization by using an award-winning Acronis imaging technology to move physical servers or virtual machines from other hypervisors to VMware vSphere.
Secure your data
Industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption secures data in your backups, and built-in backup validation verifies that backups are not corrupted to guarantee successful recovery.
Additionally with optional Acronis vmProtect Online subscription backup can be stored in a secure cloud-based storage.
Optimized for VMware
- Agentless backup and recovery.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 uses VMware API for Data Protection (VADP) to perform backup and recovery of virtual machines, thus requiring no agents installed in the virtual machines, saving management cost and minimizing resources' consumption.
- Change Block Tracking (CBT).
- VMware CBT technology tracks changes of a virtual machine since previous backup, making incremental backups faster than ever.
- VM Snapshot Hot-plug.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 Virtual Appliance can mount virtual machine snapshots during backup instead of transferring data over TCP/IP network which reduces resource consumption and significantly improves backup throughput.
- VMware® vMotion™/DRS Compatibility.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 is fully compatible with VMware vMotion, Storage vMotion and DRS: virtual machines can be moved between VMware hosts manually, or automatically in order to dynamically adjust resources or recover from failure.
- Virtual Application (vApp) Support:
- Virtual applications or vApps is VMware vSphere feature that allows you to group several virtual machines serving the same application in special containers with application-specific configuration such as start order or resource pool settings. Acronis vmProtect 6 can back up and recover entire vApps including their configuration.
Flexible Options for Deployment
- Virtual Appliance.
- A purpose-built Acronis vmProtect 6 Virtual Appliance can be deployed directly onto the ESX or ESXi server hardware host. This method frees you from the cost and work associated with provisioning, configuring and maintaining a dedicated machine, or having to purchase new hardware or a Windows license.
- Windows-based agent.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 can be installed to a Windows server (physical or virtual) and back up VMware vSphere virtual machines remotely. This method allows offloading processing from ESX/ESXi hosts to a dedicated machine.
- Per-CPU Licensing.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 is priced per host CPU socket and allows backup and recovery of unlimited number of VMs.
Efficient Backup Optimizes Storage Requirements and Rapid Recovery
- Boot VM directly from a backup.
- Mount backup storage to ESX/ESXi host as NFS share and run virtual machine directly from the backup without having to run a full restore process - this provides nearly instantaneous recovery. Changes made to the virtual machine are not lost and can be saved back to the backup image.
- Restore entire VM.
- Recover an entire virtual machine to replace an existing VM image that got corrupted, or recover as brand new VM to any ESX/ESXi host.
MachineNFS ShareESX(i)VMBackup
- Restore Individual File and Folders.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 can restore at the file-level from a virtual machine backup in just seconds for all major Windows and Linux file systems.
- Fastest and smallest backups.
- Unlike most competitors that simply copy virtual machine disk (.vmdk) files, Acronis vmProtect 6 uses Acronis award-winning imaging technology to dig inside virtual machine disks and analyze file system to only backup data blocks that are actually used.
- Always-incremental backup.
- Once a full backup is created, succeeding backups are always incremental, transferring and storing only those changes that have been made since the previous backup. This is achieved using a new storage format that minimizes the time required to automatically remove old backups while ensuring that all other incremental backups remain valid.
- LAN-free.
- With SAN direct access (Windows Agent) or hot-plug technology (Virtual Appliance) vmProtect 6 reads data directly from a shared storage, avoiding unnecessary load on the LAN and ESX(i) host.
Shared StorageESX(i)ESX(i)VMVMVMVMData trafficWindows
MachineStorage - Exclude files from VM backup.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 allows you to exclude files and folders/directories from a virtual machine backup to save space and shorten backup time.
- Built-in data deduplication,
- included with the base license, reduces backup size and time by backing up only unique blocks of data.
- Simultaneous Backup.
- Acronis vmProtect 6 shrinks backup windows by backing up multiple virtual machines simultaneously.
- Compression.
- Backup files can be compressed to a smaller size before copying to storage
Intuitive Interface Accessed Using Any Web Browser
- Web-based Interface.
- All configuration and management is performed remotely using a Web browser.
- Dashboard.
- Accessed using your Web browser, the Acronis vmProtect 6 dashboard view provides at-a-glance one-page overview of all backup and recovery activities and their statuses. This easy-to use interface minimizes your learning curve so you can immediately begin performing the backup and recovery tasks on your VMs.
- Alerts.
- A built-in alerting system notifies the user of any dangerous or potentially dangerous situations such as tasks failures or low disk space helping to ensure that backups always run.
- E-mail notifications.
- E-mail notifications can be configured to inform administrator on tasks success or failure or new alerts.
Accelerate Migration of Your Physical Servers to Virtual Machines
Reliable and unlimited Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migrations. Acronis vmProtect 6 includes award-winning Acronis imaging technology to reliably convert physical or virtual machines from other hypervisors to VMware vSphere virtual machines.
Your VM Backups Are Secure
- 256-bit encryption.
- Backups can be encrypted using the industry-standard 256-bit AES algorithm.
- Backup verification.
- Backup files can be verified to ensure their consistency and recoverability. Unlike verification functions found in some competing products, vmProtect 6 verification is performed by an agent and it is not necessary to run temporary virtual machines.
Seamless Integration with Acronis Cloud Storage
Local backups help protect you from hardware failure or human error. But what about a larger scale disaster, such as flood or fire, when entire site is affected, including your backups?
To avoid data loss and ensure business recoverability for this scenario, companies have traditionally utilized one or another offsite backup strategy: physically shipping tapes offsite or replicating backups to another office. However, this approach requires having another office, or investing in and managing tape hardware, a cost prohibitive scenario for SMBs and many enterprises.
Unlike other solutions on the market, Acronis® vmProtect™ 6 integrates seamlessly with Acronis Online Storage.
Acronis vmProtect Online is an optional subscription that stores your VM backups at highly secure offsite datacenter managed by Acronis. You don’t need to make any big hardware investments to get started, so regardless of the size of your organization you can quickly implement and benefit from storage in the cloud.
Acronis vmProtect 6 Online can be used separately or in combination with a vmProtect license, enabling you to use the vmProtect 6 Web-based interface to save VM backups to local, remote, or to Acronis Online Storage.
Hypervisors
Acronis® vmProtect™ 6 can back up and recover virtual machines running on:
- VMware vSphere™ 4.0 and 4.1
- VMware vSphere™ 5.0
- Both ESX and ESXi hypervisors are fully supported except a free VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi). For more information see KB Article http://kb.acronis.com/content/23892.
Web Browsers
In order to connect remotely for configuration and management one of the following web browsers is required (running on any operating system supported by the browser).
- Internet Explorer® 7 or later
- Firefox 3.5 or later
- Safari® 5
- Google Chrome™ 10 or later
- Opera™ 10 or later
Operating Systems
Virtual machines can run any guest operating system supported by VMware.
Acronis vmProtect 6 Windows Agent can be installed on the following operating systems:
- Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008/2008 R2
- Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003/2003 R2
- Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional / Ultimate
- Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business / Ultimate
- Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP2+
Both x86 (32 bit) and x64 (64 bit) versions are supported. For additional information refer to KB Article http://kb.acronis.com/content/23894. Alternatively vmProtect 6 can be deployed as Virtual Appliance directly on an ESX or ESXi host.
File Systems
Acronis vmProtect 6 can back up virtual machines independently on a file system. However, to be able to recover individual files or folders, the file system should be on the following:
- FAT16/32
- NTFS
- Ext2/Ext3/Ext4
Storage
- Hard disk drives and storage arrays (P-ATA (IDE), S-ATA, SCSI, iSCSI, FC)
- Networked storage devices, NAS (SMB and FTP)
- Acronis Online Storage
Comparison of Key Features in vmProtect and Acronis
Backup & Recovery 11 Virtual Edition
| vmProtect 6 | Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Virtual Edition | Notes | |
| Installation / Deployment | |||
| Install on Windows |  | | |
| Install as Virtual Appliance | | | |
| Virtual Machines Supported | |||
| Agent-less backup of VMware vSphere 4 or vSphere 5 VMs | | | |
| Agent-less backup of Microsoft Hyper-V VMs | | ||
| Backup of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization / KVM VMs | | ||
| Backup of Citrix XenServer VMs | | ||
| Backup of Parallels VMs | | ||
| Scalability | |||
| Scalable up to | 1 - 100 VMs | Up to several thousand VMs or physical machines | |
| Centralized management of multiple agents from a single console | | ||
| Automatic deployment of new virtual appliances when required | | ||
| Load Balancing of backup/recovery tasks between agents | | ||
| Management | |||
| Manage backup and recovery of VMware, Hyper-V, Red Hat, and other VMs from a single console | | ||
| Web-based management interface | | ||
| Reporting | Basic | | |
| Backup | |||
| Change Block Tracking | | ||
| Always incremental backup | | After first full backup | |
| Direct SAN access (LAN-free backup) | | | For agent-less backup |
| Encrypt backups | | | |
| Verify backups | | | |
| Backup individual files using agent installed on VM | | ||
| Multi-destination and staging of backups | | ||
| Recovery | |||
| Run VM from backup without having to perform full restore | | ||
| Automatically restore to a stand-by VM when backup completes | | ||
| Migrate machines from physical to virtual (P2V) and from one hypervisor to another (V2V) | | | |
| Migrate virtual machines to physical (V2P) | | ||
| Storage | |||
| Backup to disk / network share | | | |
| Backup to cloud storage | | | Requires optional subscription from Acronis |
| Backup to tape | | ||
| Licensing | Per CPU | Per Physical Host | |
Product Documentation
- Web Help
- Data Sheet (0.3 MB, PDF)
- User Guide (2.5 MB, PDF)
- Quick Start Guide (0.3 MB, PDF)
- Compare solutions with the Taneja Lab report (2.3 MB, PDF)
Acronis Inc. Backup software.