DATTO has been a leader in business continuity area with their proven track record with Business Continuity and Data Recovery solutions for years.
iDrive’s BMR offering appears to aim at getting a piece of lucrative BCDR pie.
How do the two solutions stack up?
Both solutions are feature reach and it’s not quote apples to apples comparison so let’s focus on main differentiators.
Datto
Pros
Reliability and speed of hardware and Datto’s platform.
Availability and professionalism of support staff.
Screenshot verification of successful virtualization.
Cons
Can be cost prohibitive for small and midsize organizations.
Occasional SNAFUs with the agent software can be annoying to troubleshoot.
iDrvie BMR
Pros
Fairly inexpensive solution appears to attract SMB’s with limited IT budget.
BMR hardware offered by iDrive, although limited in selection, it works reliably.
Cons
Limited availability of support staff, especially outside of typical business hours.
Backup report summary emails can be confusing with too many entries.
Cloud backup/replication doesn’t seem to be quite ready for prime yet. We keep getting error messages and support hasn’t been able to resolved them.
Management console has room for improvement before it can scale.
The entry level BMR device’s specs are rather weak (Intel I3) to run local visualizations of multiple VMs.
We really like the BMR devices and the price point. However, the technical support staff is hard to reach and timely callbacks are scarce. We’ve had the best luck in just repeatedly calling them until reaching the a BMR support tech. Backup software seems to be rough on the edges and need some TLC and patience with dealing with occasional snags. If one is not concerned with that, iDrive BMR provides decent entry level business continuity option for those with tight budget.
If you’re looking for a robust, full-blown DR solution for your systems, one that offers cloud virtualization, technical staff that can be of assistance wiht 2 AM Sunday meltdown, Datto is definitely a better alternative.
| DATTO | iDrive BMR | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Datto provides a variety of hardware options w/very good warranty and field upgradability options. | IDrive offers four appliance options (2019) ranging from 4TB to 24TB. |
| Backup Technology | Agent -based or agentless Image based backup. | iDrive's proprietary agent-based Image-based backup technology. |
| Local virtualization | Local virtualization works well and it depends on resources assigned to VMs. | Local virtualization works as advertised. |
| Cloud virtualization | Cloud virtualization works as advertised. | Not available as of Q1 2019. |
| BRM Restore | Bare-Metal Restore works well. | Yes. Have not tested it yet. |
| 24/7/365 Support | Live support is always available when you need them. | Tech support is availability is abysmal. Despite advertised hours: M- F 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM PST it's extremely difficult to get a live specialist to assist. Big red flag, especially one has a meltdown and needs help with recovery! |
| Real time alerts | Real time email alerts about backup status and health of agents. | No alerts are available. |
| Reporting | Granular reporting and screen shot backup verification are available. | Daily email backup reports are available, |
| Free Seeding drive | Datto offers a free seeding drive called Round Trip. It's available every quarter. | iDrive offers a free seeding drive for the initial full backup. |
| Cost | It can be expensive especially for larger appliances and cloud backup. | Pricing of iDrive's Appliance and their Hardware as a Service (HaaS) be enticing. |