TrustRadius Insights for Arcserve ShadowProtect are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
User-Friendly Interface: Several users have praised the software for its user-friendly interface, finding it relatively simple and easy to navigate. This indicates that Arcserve ShadowProtect offers an intuitive design that simplifies backup scheduling and management.
Robust Disaster Recovery Solutions: Multiple users have mentioned the amazing disaster recovery capabilities of Arcserve ShadowProtect. This suggests that the software excels in providing reliable and robust solutions for recovering data in critical situations, ensuring minimal downtime and smooth operations.
Flexible Backup Options: Users appreciate the versatility of Arcserve ShadowProtect when it comes to backing up data. They have highlighted the ability to backup to any location as well as configure bandwidth usage for off-site backups based on varying network conditions. This indicates that the software offers flexible options for optimizing backup processes according to specific requirements.
ShadowProtect is previously used in my previous company and I would say it is one of the best backup software I ever used. It is so easy to use and configure. It is used to back up all of our infrastructure on-prem to local and off-site locations.
Pros
Users friendly
Easy off-site replication
Cons
Remote management
Likelihood to Recommend
Using the backup data to restore VMs. ShadowProtect is very easy and quick to use if you need to restore your VMs through backups due to some unforeseen issues.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
We used ShadowProtect SPX to backup servers across all departments. We use both the local backups and the Storagecraft cloud replication option. It provides hourly, reliable, and secure image-level backups of all our key servers. We also deploy ShadowProtect SPX to all managed services customers to protect their servers. When using cloud replication, it provides a reliable backup that is insulated from ransomware attacks. Restores are quick and straightforward, even to dislike hardware or a virtual machine.
Pros
Quick hourly backups
Central management portal
Cons
Better automated reporting from management console.
Some icons in software don’t display correctly when viewed through Kaseya Remote Control.
Likelihood to Recommend
ShadowProtect SPX is perfect for physical server workloads and mixed physical/virtual. It would not be my first choice for backup in a purely virtual environment because of the licensing model. It isn’t ideal for relocations but excels at image-level backups. Adding the cloud replication option adds value and makes it a perfect DR solution.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
I use ShadowProtect SPX on all of my servers and my clients' servers. It is a great backup software to retain data for long periods of time with great retention settings.
Pros
Great retention settings.
It's easy to replicate off-site.
Disaster recovery is amazing with SPX.
Cons
The replication offsite can have issues over time. It takes manual involvement to keep it working right.
SPX remote management isn't easy out of the box.
Likelihood to Recommend
SPX is not well suited for remote users. SPX is great for stationary servers with long term retention as a priority.
We still use ShadowProtect on a couple of legacy servers that don't support our Acronis backup software. Our aim is to migrate off of these installations as soon as our clients update their systems. ShadowProtect is a full-featured backup system that we use for Windows Servers. Backups can be virtualized on any PC, which helps in recovery during disaster situations. While this is a great service, and was our first entry into the virtualizable backup space, we found better options elsewhere
Pros
You can virtualize your backups using Virtualbox, a free program that works on any PC.
Backups are versatile, and you can back up to any location you'd like.
Alerting can be set up for failed backups.
Cons
Space management on filling NAS devices are difficult, since all of the incremental files rely on each other.
A few services run in Windows for ShadowProtect, causing a multitude of possibilities of problems. We've had e.ach of the services crash at various times giving various error messages
It is more expensive than some of the competitors.
Likelihood to Recommend
ShadowProtect is good if you don't have many systems to back up and have time to perform backup maintenance tasks on occasion. However, the backups do fail from time to time, and the cloud integration is not easy to set up.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
As a managed IT services provider, we use ShadowProtect SPX for image-based backups for our clients, and off-site backups also. We have been in situations where it was necessary to restore a file or folder from days or weeks ago, and mounting the backups was easy to do in order to get the data. Also, we've used the backups for bare-metal restores in a pinch and using the recovery environment, were able to revert back successfully.
Pros
Scheduling incremental or full backups, as well as consolidation schedules, is fairly straight-forward and not too complicated.
The ability to use Head Start Restore or even mount a temporary live server scenario using VirtualBox in an emergency has been helpful to keep clients' operations running with minimal downtime.
Configuration and flexibility of bandwidth usage for off-site backups have been useful in situations where client sites had lower bandwidth limitations.
Cons
In the past, the few times that we've relied on support for assistance on an issue that was pressing, we did not get the rapid response we had hoped.
There have been some rare instances in which a backup chain corrupted, or a particular file in the chain corrupted, which requires the file to be deleted or the entire chain restarted.
When mounting backups, the user interface on the new SPX is not as intuitive as before the major SPX release.
Likelihood to Recommend
In situations where business continuity needs are high, ShadowProtect backups provide the ability to keep operations running with very minimal downtime, even in situations like crypto-locked data. If a backup server is set up in an environment to resume a live server from backup, this is even more helpful. In situations where clients don't care as much about quickly recovering their data, they can go without a solution like this.
We are an MSP with 385 licenses of Shadowprotect rolled out currently. About half of these licenses are SPX. We back up locally to a server that gives us local DR capabilities, and then we replicate to either our cloud or to StorageCraft's cloud.
Pros
Shadowprotect has a relatively simple interface so it's easy to set up.
Due to the simple UI, it is easy to restore files.
Imagemanage works fairly well once it's set up and doesn't need much babysitting.
Cons
Storagecraft SPX is a step backwards in terms of functionality. Restores are definitely slower.
It is hard for us to have visibility into errors int he new version of SPX. We prefer the previous version.
SPX is not really supported by Connectwise Automate so we are unable to centrally monitor backups anymore with the product.
We often have jobs that start and never finish, so an alert is never created. We have to do a weekly manual check of every backuped up server in order to ensure it's working
Storagecraft has come back and is now doubling our price for what we consider an inferior product to the previous version prior to SPX.
Likelihood to Recommend
We are switching backup platforms from SPX.
VU
Verified User
Partner in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
We use ShadowProtect in our enviroment to provide high volume backups. With other products we are sometimes unable to backup very often and we use ShadowProtect specifically on some machines to be able to make a backup every 15 minutes
Pros
Fast Backups
Retention Management
Cons
Offsite Backups
Disaster Recovery
Likelihood to Recommend
If we have a scenario where we need very fast backup/ a lot of backups per hour we tend to go towards ShadowProtect , we have several customers with important servers that we backup each 15 minutes with a VSS consistent snapshot. The continuous incremental option also allows us to create one "full backup" and never again afterwards. This gives us the possibility to give longer retention periods to our customers.
Verified User
Employee in Research & Development (51-200 employees)
