Backup & Recovery

Chapter 8. Commercial Backup Utilities

The main purpose of this book is to help those with smaller budgets figure out how to back up their systems without spending a lot of money. Toward that end, we have explained the basic backup tools that are available in Unix, Windows, and Macintosh systems. We have also covered four different open-source backup and recovery tools that can meet the data protection needs of many companies.

For those who cannot meet their backup and recovery requirements with open-source utilities, there is an entire industry with commercial backup utilities available to you. Remember that just being a commercial product does not make a given product better than an open-source product. Some commercial products offer less functionality than that which is provided by the open-source tools covered in this book. Others, however, offer significantly more functionality and may be used to solve problems unsolvable with open-source tools.

By explaining the various features that commercial backup products have, we hope to help you decide:

When it might be appropriate to purchase a commercial backup product

Which commercial product might be right for you

Choosing a commercial backup product is hard work. There are more than 50 products with hundreds of features that change every day. Combine the complexity of the subject matter with the fact that every company’s data protection needs are different, and the result is that if two administrators of equal skill from two different ...