Best Database Backup Software
Database backup solutions help businesses protect their data with reserve database copies in the event of corrupt data, user error, or physical hardware failure. By utilizing database backup solutions, businesses can ensure their data is always available, even if their main database fails.
IT or operations departments typically configure backup programs for use by any team within an organization that has a need for security and peace of mind in regards to important files. In the event of data loss, data is restored to its previous state from a backup. These can take the form of incremental or differential backups and can occur as frequently as needed.
Some database backup solutions can be found to support only certain types of databases, while others are built with a more broad approach and can even back up other data, including servers. Whatever the scope, database backup software needs to integrate with other software in a company’s IT infrastructure (e.g., database management tools and other backup solutions) for it to be a valuable asset.
To qualify for inclusion in the Database Backup category, a product must:
Best Database Backup Software At A Glance
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Over the past decade, data risks have diversified, shifting data protection’s role from a passive last line of defense to an active data partner in responding to and recovering from diverse data risks
Druva Data Security Cloud is a cloud-native, SaaS-based platform designed for enterprise data protection across various environments, including endpoints, cloud apps, servers, and VMs. Reviewers like the platform's ease of use, quick setup, centralized management, and strong security features, including end-to-end encryption, ransomware protection, and compliance capabilities, as well as its responsive and helpful customer support. Users experienced some limitations with the product, such as slow initial backups and restores for large datasets, less flexible advanced role-based controls and reporting options, and performance dependency on network speed.
19,155 Twitter followers
# 1 SaaS Data Protection Platform 12x more protection across on-prem, cloud services, and SaaS. HYCU is a data protection solution for cloud, SaaS, virtual, file shares, and physical workloads.
HYCU is a backup solution used for controlled backups of mission critical platforms and Nutanix clusters, and for backing up entire SaaS portfolios. Reviewers like the ease of setup, the ability to perform granular restores, the seamless integration with Nutanix and AWS, and the responsive customer support. Users experienced limitations in scheduling jobs, lack of certain features compared to competitors, unclear error messages in logs, and increasing costs depending on the amount of data or advanced features needed.
5,126 Twitter followers
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a fast, affordable and top-rated backup and disaster recovery solution for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox VE, physical machines, NAS, Micros
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a data protection solution that covers both on-premises and cloud infrastructure, offering features like deduplication, compression, and flexible recovery options. Users frequently mention the product's speed, reliability, and ease of use, as well as the helpful and informative support team and the ability to manage backups in one place. Users reported issues with the user interface performance, which can feel slow when managing multiple backup jobs, and a lack of detailed documentation for some advanced features.
1,368 Twitter followers
Vinchin is a professional provider of data protection solutions for enterprises. It provides a series of data backup, instant recovery, and offsite DR solutions for private cloud, public cloud and hyb
Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a web console that manages backup needs, allowing users to set up backup jobs and restore data. Reviewers appreciate the product's reliability, automation, and centralized management, highlighting its ability to consistently back up servers, databases, and virtual machines without interrupting workflows. Users reported that the interface can feel heavy when many jobs are running, especially on mid-range hardware, and that some advanced configuration options require technical familiarity.
1 Twitter followers
Oracle Database Backup Service is a secure, scalable, and on-demand cloud storage solution designed specifically for backing up Oracle databases to Oracle Cloud. This service enhances existing backup
825,410 Twitter followers
Embrace secure data portability and leverage tools that go above native capabilities for AWS. With Veeam’s leading policy-based protection, you can reliably recover from accidental deletion, ransomwar
51,579 Twitter followers
CrashPlan Platform securely, efficiently, and comprehensively backs up files and emails in Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Gmail, and Google Drive without user action or time-consumin
24,606 Twitter followers
The Veritas Alta Platform is designed to intelligently and securely backup, govern, protect, and orchestrate clean recovery for enterprise data wherever it may live so business continuity is never at
29,357 Twitter followers
EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) is based on open source PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open-source database management system. EPAS gives you the best of both worlds - all the advantages of
8,641 Twitter followers
CyberSentriq is an integrated cybersecurity and data protection platform, leveraging solutions from two best-of breed vendors in the MSP space. Partnering with over 3,000 MSPs and protecting over 150,
Redstor Backup is a cloud-based solution that allows users to tailor their data backup and restore processes based on factors such as data type, location, or age. Users frequently mention the flexibility of the product, its ability to simplify backup and disaster recovery processes, and the security it provides by encrypting client's data and information. Reviewers experienced issues with the user interface being hard to use, the first backup taking longer on slower internet connections, and the need for more detailed reporting and proactive notifications.
1,963 Twitter followers
Fast, secure backup software for businesses and IT providers. Start running backups and restores in less than 15 minutes! Comet is a flexible, all-in-one backup platform available in 15 languages. You
619 Twitter followers
Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) is the gold standard in cyber resilience, leading the charge to protect the world against ransomware and other cyber threats by helping companies reduce risk, minimize downtim
Commvault Cloud is a unified platform for data protection across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, offering features such as backups, disaster recovery, and workload migration. Reviewers like the user-friendly interface, detailed reporting, policy-based automation, and the platform's compatibility with various storage systems including VMware, AWS, and Azure. Reviewers experienced challenges with the initial setup, particularly for inexperienced users or smaller IT teams, and found the interface overwhelming due to the number of features and settings available.
64,825 Twitter followers
dbForge Studio for MySQL is the universal MySQL and MariaDB client for database management, administration and development. With the help of this intelligent MySQL client the work with data and code h
1,742 Twitter followers
Ransomware. Human error. Hardware failure. Natural disasters. The list of threats to business data and systems is endless. Businesses of all sizes need a straightforward, complete backup and recovery
21,592 Twitter followers
SQLBackupAndFTP is SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL backup and restore software that runs scheduled backups, runs file/folder backup, zips and encrypts the backups, stores them on a network or on an
Learn More About Database Backup Software
What is Database Backup Software?
Database backup is the process of saving a copy of a user’s current database into another location. Users can roll back to the previous versions of backup when their primary database is corrupted by human errors, natural disasters, and cyberattacks.
The digital age has pushed data to the forefront of business functions, cementing data as one of the most valuable assets a business can have. Many businesses have adopted database backup software as a means to manage their data, including functionality to add, edit, and remove data as needed. Database backup software allows users to search for data using a massive and customizable range of parameters to get back exactly the information they need. The software is also often integrated into a variety of business functions like storing transactional information and user data to stock quantities and more.
Because the data stored in business databases is important to daily functions, it’s imperative that businesses have their databases backed up. Equipment failures, data corruption, user error, and other calamities can massively affect both internal users and customers. Database backup software helps ensure that companies always have more copies of their business data, just in case it’s needed. Not only that, backups can provide valuable information into past versions of data, meaning companies can track how their data has changed over time and isolate specific changes to find trends. These backups can be scheduled or manually run, and they can back up fully, differentially, incrementally, or any combination thereof.
What Types of Database Backups Exist?
Full backup
Full backups tackle all data within a database. Due to the sheer volume of data that full backups cover, they tend to take quite a while, but they will back up every bit of data they are tasked to copy. Users can restore everything with a full backup.
Differential backup
Differential backups focus on what data has changed since the last full backup occurred. Because they only back up what has changed since the last full backup occurred, they can reduce the amount of time needed to run a database backup. These tend to give a more complete view of what has changed since a full backup doesn't rely on other previous differential backups to restore data. Unlike a full backup, differential backup saves restoration time since it only backs up the most recent data change.
Incremental backup
While differential backups focus on what has changed since the last full backup, incremental backups focus on what has changed since the last backup of any kind. These backups tend to be more burst oriented, in that they cover only what’s changed since the last backup of any kind, and thus, run much more quickly than the previously mentioned types. That said, data recovery for incremental backups relies on the previous backups not getting corrupted in some way, so recovery from incremental backups is slightly riskier by nature. However, the benefit is that this is the fastest backup available.
Filegroup backup
These backups differ from the others listed because they focus on data in a fundamentally different way. Filegroup backups focus more specifically on the group of data being copied as opposed to the last time the files were backed up. They prioritize backing up specific data groups. This allows companies to, for example, back up transactional data significantly more often than employee information. This type of backup might be most useful in databases where data changes quickly and often.
What are the Common Features of Database Backup Software?
The following are some core features within database backup software that can help users to protect the integrity of their databases:
Backup locations: Database backup solutions should allow users to select the storage locations for both saved data and data backups.
Automatic and manual backup: Whichever is more convenient for a business, a strong database backup solution should offer both manual and automatic backup options. Automatic backup adds convenience and ensures backups will happen, while manual backup allows backing up at will and as the need arises outside the automatic backup schedule. Automatic backups should also be schedulable for specific times, ensuring they won’t interrupt the business functions during peak hours.
Backup scope settings: Whether a user would like to back up the entire database or just what has changed since last time, most database backup solutions should allow them to set the scope of what they’d like backed up from their database with ease.
Multiple backups: Users may want to run a full backup bi-weekly, but also schedule differential backups twice a week as well as run incremental backups every day. Most database backup solutions should enable them to schedule several backups without having them conflict.
What are the Benefits of Database Backup Software?
Peace of mind: Database backups can help companies feel more secure about their data preservation. Database backups ensure all critical data is always there when the user needs it. When the business data is corrupted, the data team can continue operation with backup data.
Reliability: Most backup solutions don’t require backups to be run manually anymore. By automating backups and scheduling their frequency by need, users can be sure their business’ data is always backed up, without needing the backup to be manually run every time. Users can also rely on database backups as the single source of truth.
Auditing and transparency: Because most backup solutions can handle maintaining several versions of a backup at once, businesses can get insight into changes in data over time, which allows them to build trends from that data.
Who Uses Database Backup Software?
Database Teams: Responsibility for databases typically falls to a company’s database administrator(s), or a database team if the company has those kinds of resources. So database backup solutions will likely be used most by those administrators or the database team. While databases themselves can be highly accessible for any member of a company, database backup software—as a part of the database maintenance ecosystem—should be handled by those explicitly focused on maintaining a company’s database integrity.
Software Related to Database Backup Software
Related solutions that can be used together with Database Backup software include:
Online backup software: Online backup software usually focuses on smaller volumes of data that businesses would use on a day-to-day basis. These solutions will back up general-use data and files to online repositories. Generally, text documents, PDFs, presentations, spreadsheets, media files, and the like will be backed up with these solutions.
SaaS backup software: SaaS backup software is built to create data backups for any software as a service (SaaS) products a business might be using. These software backups are from cloud solutions, so the data can be anything from sales lead information to marketing data and more.
Server backup software: Server backup software, as the name would suggest, specifically focuses on backing up any server-specific data. These solutions are built specifically to handle large volumes of data, as servers typically hold the highest volume of data for most companies. They also tend to be focused on midsize and enterprise companies, since most small companies don’t need servers. That said, small companies with, say, a large internet presence might have servers as a big part of their business model and would thus need a server backup solution.
Challenges with Database Backup Software
Database backup solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Backup speed: Two main factors affect the backup speed—the volume of data and the speed of the connection. The more data that needs to be copied during the backup, the longer a backup can take. This can be further exacerbated, though, by internet connection speeds when backing up cloud data locally or backing up local data to a cloud repository. Even small quantities of data can take a significant, inconvenient amount of time to back up if the connectivity is poor. If a company is planning on doing regular local-to-cloud or cloud-to-local backups, their internet connectivity should be strong enough to support it.
File volume: When looking for a database backup solution, users should choose one that can handle the volume of data they’re expecting to back up regularly. While some businesses might have thousands of data points to back up from their databases, others might easily pass from millions into billions of database points. Not all solutions may be able to handle that kind of volume, so it’s important to be sure their choice can scale to meet their needs.
Log management: Poor database backup management often results in oversized logs. Buying more disk drive capacity to accommodate database maintenance operation is only the short-term solution. Users can also add a temporary secondary log to handle the excessive growth of the log file, but that will also slow down the restoration process, so they might want to remove it once it is no longer needed. If users want to save space by undersizing the transaction log, the database server may auto grow it in small fragments. This results in log fragmentation which slows down the whole database backup process. Ideally, users should set the correct size for the log file according to the database size and requirement and buy additional space based on predicted growth.
How to Buy Database Backup Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Database Backup Software
Whether a company is looking for its first database backup software or looking to replace an existing one, g2.com can help find the best fit.
Database backup software often comes with specifically desired features and capabilities. To start, companies should first think about their core requirements. They should think about the size and type of database that will be saved, storage location (cloud or on-premises), and constraints related to budgeting, staffing, or continued maintenance. If a database is on cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Drive, there is no reason to replicate the cloud data to an on-premises NAS server for data protection, unless the user plans to experience significant internet data loss. Industries involving large amounts of sensitive data should also factor compliance and security needs into their proposal as well. Also, many companies already have other backup solutions, so these companies can first ask if their current vendor offers database backup as part of their backup solutions.
Prioritizing the desired feature set that meets the requirement can help narrow down the potential pool of database backup solutions, allowing teams to then apply further considerations for budget, ease of administration, security requirements, and more. This holistic approach empowers buyers to move forward with a focused checklist, which can be used in conjunction with G2 scoring to select the best database backup product for the business.
Compare Database Backup Software Products
Create a long list
Requirements gathering for database backup solutions is fairly straightforward, but can still vary greatly depending on the scope of capability. From the bottom of the list, there is backup software from the database vendor. They often come with the database software (Microsoft Azure SQL, Amazon S3, or MySQL databases) or database management software (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MS SQL) but have limited features. For example, if a user is using the Azure SQL server database, they can use Microsoft SQL Server Backup. However, SQL server backup automates checksum (same data page bytes between original and backup) to ensure that the backup file is correct. That might not be enough depending on the context. On the other hand, there are expensive database backup solutions that offer advanced features such as additional integrity checks, different types of backup, good user interfaces, and so on. Some even integrate with disaster recovery software. Users also may want to encrypt sensitive database copies with AES. There are many options so companies need to prepare their list of requirements to get through the long list quickly. Since budget and staffing will largely dictate what products end up on the short list, a vendor’s ability to meet each of the company’s requirements and budget is fundamental.
Create a short list
From the long list of vendors, it is helpful to narrow down the list of vendors to come up with a shorter list of contenders, preferably no more than three to five. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions.
Conduct demos
To ensure a fair comparison, the user should demo each solution on the short list with the same use case and datasets. This will allow the business to evaluate like-for-like and see how each vendor stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Database Backup Software
Choose a selection team
To choose a selection team, the decision makers need to involve subject matter experts from all teams that will use the system. This primarily involves database teams and IT teams. The purchasing team can also help with the negotiation.
Negotiation
Using the requirements prioritization list, users can organize the data to help people understand how each solution meets their requirements. This can prevent siloed thinking and serve as a catalyst for internal debates and bring new questions for the vendor. Every product will have pros and cons, but the selection analysis should paint a clearer picture of each product’s ability to meet the company’s unique needs. The identified cons can then be used to either eliminate options from the short list or serve as leverage for discounts and other offers.
Final decision
After this stage, it is important to perform a trial run if possible with a small selection of IT professionals. This will help to ensure that the software of choice integrates well with the company’s infrastructure setup (on-premises and off-site or cloud backup). If the database backup tool is well liked and well utilized, the buyer can take that as a sign that their selection is the right one. If not, reevaluation of the options may be necessary.
