Let’s be honest, your virtual machines are the unsung heroes of your business. But without proper virtual machine backup solutions, they’re just digital dominoes waiting for a gentle nudge. One bad update, one ransomware surprise, and poof! It’s all gone. Panic sets in, followed by frantic calls and the slow, horrifying realization that ‘someone else’ wasn’t handling it. The very existence of these VMs, born from the concept of server virtualisation, has created a critical dependency that requires robust protection. This is where the right virtual machine backup solutions come in.
This isn’t just about ticking a compliance box; it’s about survival. Choosing the right virtual machine backup solutions is one of the most critical infrastructure decisions you’ll make. A great solution is a time machine, a get-out-of-jail-free card, and a full night’s sleep all rolled into one. Poor virtual machine backup solutions, on the other hand, are just expensive placebos.
🔔 This is a decision that is often made too quickly with too many clever marketing websites and charismatic salesman. I have over a decade of systems engineering under my belt and I have seen some true clumsy decisions.
In this guide, we’re cutting through the marketing fluff to dissect the top virtual machine backup solutions of 2025. We’ll explore enterprise titans, nimble challengers, and the native cloud tools that promise simplicity but hide complexity.
Forget feature lists you can copy from a brochure; we’re diving into the real-world gotchas, implementation details, and practical lifesavers.
Veeam has become a dominant force in the IT world, often considered the mainstream/popular kid on the block when discussing comprehensive virtual machine backup solutions. Its platform supports an extensive range of hypervisors, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV, making it a versatile choice for heterogeneous environments. The platform is engineered for rapid recovery, allowing administrators to restore entire VMs, individual files, or application items in minutes, a critical feature for minimizing downtime.
What sets Veeam apart is its robust feature set aimed at modern threats. It provides end-to-end immutability to protect backups from being altered or deleted by ransomware. This focus on security and its broad ecosystem integration justify its position as a top-tier virtual machine backup solution.
🔔 It’s the first and most logical choice, but be mindful of all non-native backup solutions.
By that I mean many tools on the market just vacuum up the data from AWS, Azure, VMware and store it in their servers. Sounds ok, but that introduces delays (I have seen it take literally days to restore a datacenter) and you will always have to wait longer for the service to support the rapid changes to cloud.
Example: Microsoft released App Services years ago, but 3rd party tools are still not an option. Even if they did offer this functionality, do you really want to wait for an app and all it’s data to copy from one cloud to another while you loose thousands of dollars per hour?
While its enterprise-grade capabilities are powerful, the pricing structure can be complex, and accessing advanced features like the Threat Center requires higher-tier editions.
Website: https://www.veeam.com/vm-backup-recovery-replication-software.html
Commvault has long standing data protection tool (all techies know about it), offering a unified platform for complex, hybrid environments. Commvault Cloud solution extends their legacy, providing robust virtual machine backup solutions for VMware, Hyper-V, and major cloud providers. Yes, this old horse can still move when it needs to, pivoting to cloud in a better way than NetBackup which is the caveman of this article.
I have not personally used it, but heard enough annoying stories about it that it has never interested me. It’s normally priced more affordably than the rest (depends of course), but you get what you pay for. Annoying database issues are called out a lot on online forums and they are based in India and Egypt (unless you invest all the Christmas party funds into Tier 2 support and get US help when you need it).
Some argue it can do legacy stuff better and that may well be true, if you have old annoying on-prem work horses like Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM/FIM) or a legacy finance app no one has ever heard of, it may be worth looking at their support matrix before ignoring them.
What distinguishes Commvault is its emphasis on proactive threat detection and secure recovery. Features like AI-assisted risk analysis and “Cleanroom” recovery allow organizations to not only restore data but also ensure it’s free from malware before bringing systems back online.
This security-first approach is pretty impressive, combined with its proven scalability, makes it an ok choice for enterprises seeking a resilient virtual machine backup solution.
Website: https://www.commvault.com/platform/backup-and-recovery
Let me start by saying I am not a fan of NetBackup, it has been a sore spot for me and many engineers, but I will do my best to be unbiased.
Veritas NetBackup is a bit of a heavyweight in the enterprise data protection arena, offering one of the most robust and scalable virtual machine backup solutions for large, complex IT environments.
It provides deep integrations for VMware and other hypervisors, but its strength lies in managing vast VM estates across hybrid-cloud infrastructures. Environments with thousands of servers are realistically the only ones who should be considering NetBackup.
What distinguishes NetBackup is its emphasis on enterprise-grade security and governance at large scale. This focus on securing data in massive, distributed environments solidifies its place as a top-tier virtual machine backup solution for the enterprise sector, where compliance and risk management are paramount.
While its mature toolset is powerful for large enterprises, NetBackup’s is almost always around because it’s too expensive and difficult to replace. You will likely find NetBackup for many years to come, but the people in charge of the solution are not typically 20 year old engineers, so they (like me) are unlikely to be unbiased and will always gravitate to something they know over something modern and fancy like Rubrik.
🔔 I have replaced NetBackup once for a small organization and even that wasn’t easy. It is normally an on-prem solution no one had the balls to remove and is now trying to backup cloud stuff in the same way that gym bros in their 50’s wear Converse to fit in – you’re old, deal with it.
Website: https://www.veritas.com/protection/netbackup
Dell Technologies offers a powerful, software based virtual machine backup solution with its PowerProtect Data Manager. It is designed with deep integration into the VMware ecosystem, featuring capabilities like transparent snapshots that reduce the performance impact on production VMs. This coupling makes it an ideal choice for organizations already heavily invested in Dell and VMware infrastructure, creating a streamlined and efficient data protection environment.
It can be used with an appliance (added cost) or just using a virtual appliance (you build a VM to run this software). As a result it is more or less an enterprise grade tool only and not suitable for SMB’s.
What makes PowerProtect Data Manager stand out is its synergy with Dell’s hardware portfolio. When paired with PowerProtect DD series appliances or integrated with storage arrays like PowerStore, it delivers impressive performance and deduplication.
In my personal experience, this is a common solution for anyone still on-prem and needing a reliable recovery tool.
🔔 Like all things on-prem/Dell there is a steep support component. I have raised plenty of tickets with their engineers when the solution was offline and needed complex troubleshooting. This would frustrate me to death sometimes, in my opinion backing up a VM in 2025 should not be difficult.
If this is deployed in a less managed environment, you run the risk of one day needing a backup only to find the core software failed 3 months ago and you didn’t know. With the recent acquisition of VMWare by Broadcom, the general consensus in IT is Broadcom are just going to milk it for every last penny before VMware becomes a thing of the past. This might make advanced on-prem backup solutions less important and all the issues that come along with legacy solutions.
The solution’s greatest strength is its performance within the Dell ecosystem; however, organizations not using Dell hardware might not experience the same level of benefits. Deployment via the AWS Marketplace is on a Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) basis, requiring a separate license purchase.
Website: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/storage-servers-and-networking-for-business/sf/powerprotect-data-manager
NAKIVO Backup & Replication has carved out a significant niche by offering one of the most cost-effective and flexible virtual machine backup solutions on the market. It provides comprehensive support for VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and AWS EC2, making it an ok choice for SMBs. Its lightweight architecture and broad deployment options are key differentiators.
🔔 In a small environment you will be ok, larger/more complex environments you will be taring your hair out every morning with overnight failed backups and no real support to help you.
What does make NAKIVO appealing is its deployment versatility; it can be installed on Windows, Linux, as a virtual appliance, or directly onto a NAS device. This NAS integration turns a standard storage device into a high-performance backup appliance, optimizing resource usage and simplifying management for smaller IT teams looking for efficient virtual machine backup solutions.
While its pricing is highly competitive, some advanced integrations found in top-tier enterprises would struggle with this. Additionally, certain critical features like advanced monitoring are reserved for higher editions.
Website: https://www.nakivo.com
Rubrik approaches data protection with a security-first mindset, positioning its Security Cloud as one of the most resilient virtual machine backup solutions against modern threats like ransomware. Its architecture is built on a zero-trust model, ensuring backups are immutable and air-gapped by design.
The platform unifies protection for on-premises VMware and Hyper-V environments alongside major cloud providers, offering a single point of control for complex hybrid infrastructures.
🔔 While the IT geek inside me is very intrigued by Rubrik, I can’t help but think they are overcooking their solution. They are pushing the “one platform” idea, but in reality devices like domain controllers, switches, routers, radius servers, certificate servers, on-prem exchange servers (and others) can not be backed up using this. If you backup a domain controller with virtual machine backup solutions like Rubrik, it breaks and you click the “restore” button – all hell will break loose.
What distinguishes Rubrik is its deep integration of security and data protection. It actively monitors for threats, allows for rapid ransomware investigation by analyzing snapshots for signs of encryption, and enables surgical recovery of clean data. This focus on cyber-resilience makes it a compelling choice for enterprises where data security is the top priority for their virtual machine backup solutions.
While its security capabilities are top-tier, Rubrik is a premium offering with quote-based pricing. This requires careful capacity planning to manage the total cost of ownership effectively.
Website: https://www.rubrik.com/products/data-protection
Cohesity offers a modern approach to data management with its DataProtect platform, available as either self-managed software or a fully managed Backup as a Service (BaaS) offering. It consolidates protection for a wide array of workloads, including VMware and Hyper-V, making it an interesting choice among virtual machine backup solutions.
🔔 Like others we have covered, it’s a smaller ecosystem and not something to trust in larger enterprises. For a happy go lucky backup solution you will be ok. If you have 50+ servers and require critical support and 100% uptime, I personally wouldn’t.
Cohesity mentions its flexibility and focus on large-scale, rapid recovery is what sets it apart. The platform’s global, searchable index allows administrators to find and restore anything from a single file to thousands of VMs almost instantly. This combination of robust security and high-performance recovery solidifies its place as a leading virtual machine backup solution for enterprises managing complex, hybrid environments.
While the dual deployment options offer great flexibility, they can make the initial evaluation process more complex. Pricing is quote-based and dependent on capacity and the chosen consumption model.
Comments online also point to poor support and if they are targeting large scale environments, these two things need to work closely. I would not recommend this to any of my enterprise customers if there is mentions of “60 days to resolve a P1 outage”.
Website: https://www.cohesity.com/platform/dataprotect/
Druva offers a distinct, 100% SaaS-based approach to data protection, positioning its Data Resiliency Cloud as a top choice for cloud-first organizations. By eliminating on-premises hardware, it simplifies operations and provides a scalable, consumption-based model for securing VMs, endpoints, and cloud applications. This platform is one of the more modern virtual machine backup solutions designed to minimize infrastructure management while maximizing ransomware resilience.
🔔 That being said, cloud is not always best – especially for backups. There is greater risk of compromise and always longer recovery when something breaks (you need to copy the data from the cloud all the way to your server – slow).
Druva claims that what sets them apart is its air-gapped, immutable backups architected on AWS, offering a robust defense against cyber threats. Its commitment is backed by financially-guaranteed SLAs for immutability, availability, and reliability, providing a level of assurance that many competitors do not. For businesses heavily invested in the cloud, Druva presents a compelling, zero-touch infrastructure solution.
The primary drawback is its cloud-centric nature, making it less suitable for organizations with strict on-premises data residency requirements or tighter RTO/RPO’s where cloud downloads of 5 hours is not speedy enough. Its credit-based pricing also demands more active budget management than traditional licensing.
Website: https://www.druva.com
Acronis offers a unique proposition in the market by tightly integrating its virtual machine backup solutions with a comprehensive cybersecurity suite. Acronis Cyber Protect is designed for businesses and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who prefer a unified platform to manage both data protection and endpoint security. It supports major hypervisors like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, providing a single console to manage backups, anti-malware, and remote assistance.
The platform’s core strength is its convergence of backup and security. Instead of piecing together separate tools, administrators get a holistic view of their environment, from VM backups to threat detection. This integrated approach simplifies management and can reduce the total cost of ownership, making it an attractive choice for organizations seeking efficient and consolidated virtual machine backup solutions.
The primary drawback is that if you only need a backup tool, the extensive security features may add unnecessary cost and complexity. Furthermore, enterprise-level pricing typically requires direct engagement with their sales team.
Website: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/cloud/cyber-protect/pricing/
AWS Backup isn’t just one product; it’s a fully managed, policy-based service that centralizes and automates data protection across AWS services. It’s the go-to native option if you’re all-in on Amazon’s cloud. This service is designed to be one of the simplest virtual machine backup solutions for EC2 instances, RDS databases, EBS volumes, and more. You create a backup plan, assign resources, and AWS handles the rest, including lifecycle management to move old backups to cold storage. It’s a key player among virtual machine backup solutions for cloud-native shops.
The primary advantage of AWS Backup is its seamless integration and simplicity. It provides a single pane of glass to audit and manage backups for a vast array of AWS services, ensuring compliance and consolidating billing. It’s an essential tool for any organization seeking to streamline their virtual machine backup solutions within the AWS ecosystem. However, like its Azure counterpart, it has its limits. For specific application-aware scenarios or granular on-premises protection, AWS often directs users to AWS Systems Manager for scripting or third-party tools from the AWS Marketplace.
While fantastic for AWS resources, its capabilities for hybrid environments are limited compared to dedicated third-party tools.
Website: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/solutions/public-sector/backup-restore
For organizations heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure Backup offers a seamless, first-party virtual machine backup solution directly integrated into the Azure portal. It simplifies data protection for Azure VMs, SQL/SAP HANA databases on VMs, and Azure Files shares by eliminating the need for any third-party infrastructure. Management is centralized through Recovery Services vaults, which provide a unified dashboard for backup policies, monitoring, and restores.
🔔 Arguably, this is required anyway. Companies using a hybrid model will need to have “Windows Server Backup” for infrastructure like domain controllers and using MARS, you can take system state backups and the data is safely replicated to the cloud using encryption during the copy.
The key advantage of Azure Backup is its native integration. It leverages Azure’s built-in governance tools, such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Azure Policy, to enforce compliance and security standards across all backup operations. This deep integration makes it a compelling choice for businesses that prioritize a consolidated, cloud-native approach to their backup strategy, offering a strong alternative among virtual machine backup solutions for Azure-centric workloads. It’s one of the most popular virtual machine backup solutions for Azure users, but as we’ll see, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
While it excels at protecting Azure resources, its capabilities for hybrid and multi-cloud environments are more limited compared to dedicated third-party solutions.
Website: https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/backup/
For organizations deeply integrated into the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the native Backup and DR Service is a compelling and streamlined virtual machine backup solution. It provides managed, centralized data protection for Google Compute Engine VMs, Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) workloads, and various databases and file systems. This native approach simplifies policy management and ensures that backups are stored securely within Google’s own infrastructure.
What makes this service stand out is its tight integration and focus on security. It creates immutable backups stored in secure, Google-managed vaults, offering strong protection against ransomware. The ability to manage both on-premises VMware backups (via GCVE) and cloud-native VMs from a single console makes it a powerful hybrid-cloud virtual machine backup solution.
While the native integration is a significant advantage, its cost efficiency is maximized when your primary workloads are on GCP. The pricing model can also be complex, varying by resource type with different per-GiB or per-node billing structures.
Website: https://cloud.google.com/backup-disaster-recovery
And there you have it, a whirlwind tour through the landscape of the industry’s premier virtual machine backup solutions.
I would encourage anyone reading this to begin by understanding their RTO/RPO’s which will likely make the decision easier. Do not get hooked by the fun or sales tactics and truly understand each system and how it can be added to a backup solution.
In almost all cases, a combination approach is required, so don’t be hooked by the idea of having “one platform” for everything in your environment. If someone suggests this, you can be confident they are not capable of making a decision of this caliber.
We’ve navigated the robust platforms of Veeam and Commvault, explored the security-centric approaches of Rubrik and Cohesity, and delved into the integrated offerings from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The single most important takeaway is this: there is no universal “best” product.
Your journey to selecting the right virtual machine backup solutions begins with a candid assessment of your needs.
Are you a cloud-native startup heavily invested in a single provider? Then native tools like AWS Backup or Azure Backup present a compelling, deeply integrated starting point. However, as we’ve highlighted, these powerful platforms are not a silver bullet. They are fantastic virtual machine backup solutions for many workloads, but they have their limitations.
A prime example is the challenge of backing up Active Directory Domain Controllers. A simple snapshot can lead to USN rollback and catastrophic failure, which is precisely why specialized agents like Azure MARS exist. This proves that not all virtual machine backup solutions are created equal. Can AWS do something similar? Yes, through a combination of its Systems Manager for application-consistent snapshots and third-party agents, but it’s a more hands-on process compared to Azure’s dedicated tool. These nuances are critical when evaluating virtual machine backup solutions.
The world of VPS hosting, with providers like Cloudways, Vultr, Linode, DigitalOcean, and UpCloud, offers another crucial lesson. Their “one-click backup” features are undeniably convenient, but they are often just basic, hypervisor-level snapshot services. These are not comprehensive virtual machine backup solutions. We’ve all read the horror stories on forums and Reddit where users who relied solely on Vultr snapshots discovered they simply didn’t work when needed and their data was gone forever. Talk about a bad day at the office.
This underscores an immutable truth: you must own your backup strategy. Relying on a host’s basic tool is a high-stakes gamble. A proper 3-2-1 backup rule (three copies of your data, on two different media, with one copy offsite) is non-negotiable. This means having both onsite and offsite backups. This is where dedicated virtual machine backup solutions truly shine, offering granular control, restore verification, and portability that simple snapshots can never provide.
The most effective virtual machine backup solutions incorporate application-aware processing, immutable storage options, and sophisticated recovery orchestration. Remember, a backup you haven’t tested is just a hope, not a plan. Whether you need the extensive feature set of Veeam or the cloud-native simplicity of Druva, ensure your chosen solution aligns with your RTOs and RPOs. Ultimately, the best virtual machine backup solutions are more than just software; they are the cornerstone of your business’s resilience and a critical part of your continuity plan.
The 3-2-1 rule is a data protection strategy that says you should have three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with at least one of those copies stored offsite. It’s a foundational principle for robust virtual machine backup solutions.
While convenient, host-level snapshots are not a substitute for proper virtual machine backup solutions. They are often stored on the same infrastructure as your primary data (violating the 3-2-1 rule), can lack application consistency, and there are documented cases of them failing to restore. True virtual machine backup solutions offer greater control, verification, and portability.
Onsite backups are copies of your data stored at the same physical location as your primary systems. They are great for fast restores. Offsite backups are stored in a separate geographical location (like a different office or the cloud) to protect against site-wide disasters like fires or floods. A complete strategy for virtual machine backup solutions includes both.
An application-aware backup communicates with the application running inside the virtual machine (like a database) to ensure the data is in a consistent state before the snapshot is taken. This is crucial for transactional systems and is a key feature of advanced virtual machine backup solutions.
Howdy folks, my name is Ben, a veteran in the ICT space with over 15 years of comprehensive experience. I have worked in the health sector, many private companies, managed service providers and in Defense. I am now passing on my years of experience and education to my readers.
