ITSA Feature -- What to Buy: Comparing products for virtual backup

This is the first article I produced as part of TechTarget's IT Solutions Provider (ITSA) program. We started the program just producing the product and vendor comparison articles before expanding to include the technology research, business case, and RFP features.

I was responsible for deciding on the topic, determining its scope, working with the media groups to coordinate topics and schedules, finding a qualified writer, ensuring the article met all of the ITSA objectives, shepherding the story through the creative process, and editing it, and submitting it to the appropriate site editor.

Brien Posey is a big part of the ITSA program and wrote a number of great stories for me.

Server virtualization has become an indispensable part of the modern IT infrastructure. It can reduce data center hardware costs while improving both agility and resiliency. A downside to server virtualization, however, is that it requires virtual backups to be handled differently than they would be in a physical data center.

Thankfully, data backup vendors are keeping pace with the virtualization trend. If your IT environment is new to the server virtualization scene, or you are planning on changing vendors, there are dozens of different products that can be used to back up your virtual servers.

This article will walk you through the four essential purchasing criteria for virtual server backup software -- enterprise application support, deduplication and replication capabilities, and recovery features. It will also compare four products: Veeam's Backup and Replication v7 Enterprise Plus, Symantec's Backup Exec 2014, CommVault's Simpana v10 and Unitrends' Enterprise Backup.

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