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5 backup monitoring tools for better data protection
Do you know where your backups are? Check out this list of cross-platform backup monitoring tools that provide insight into backup performance and health.
In recent years, it has become increasingly important for businesses to keep a close eye on their backups. With threats like ransomware designed to attack and corrupt the very backups an organization would ordinarily use to recover from a cyberattack, understanding the status and state of data backups is critical.
This is where backup monitoring comes into play. Backup monitoring tools are designed to provide businesses with insight into their backups. Data backup infrastructure can be complex and spread across multiple environments, so it's crucial for IT leaders to get an overview of the organization's backups. Backup monitoring tools enable leadership and admins to identify potential vulnerabilities in the backup infrastructure and prioritize areas to address or update. This is especially important as cyber attackers continue to target backups.
Some backup monitoring tools are vendor-specific. With these tools, the monitoring software is either built into a backup product or created by a backup vendor as a separately licensed product intended to work with that vendor's backup software. Other tools, however, are cross-platform in nature and work with a variety of backup tools. This article will focus exclusively on cross-platform tools.
At a minimum, a backup monitoring tool must include a centralized dashboard that tells users exactly what is happening with backup products. The software should also be able to deliver real-time alerts when failures are detected, and a rich reporting engine should be able to provide users with detailed information on long-term trends, data growth, storage consumption and other data related to backups. Some tools also track compliance with recovery objectives.
5 backup monitoring tools to consider
There are several vendors who offer cross-platform backup monitoring tools designed to integrate with a variety of backup products.
This article discusses five of the leading products, as identified by the author's research and expertise in the data backup and IT fields. Products are unranked and listed in alphabetical order.
Alert Centric
Alert Centric is a multi-platform backup monitoring tool designed to work with popular backup applications such as those from Microsoft, Veeam, Datto, StorageCraft, Acronis and Altero. This tool uses a centralized dashboard that displays all backup jobs, products used, the backup schedule and the job status. This dashboard allows backup admins and IT leaders to assess backup health at a glance.
Alert Centric is part of the Invarosoft platform, which offers various plans. The lowest-priced plan is $149 per month and allows for up to 100 users. This plan gives users access to Alert Centric and a tool called Warranty Wizard, which is the vendor's IT asset lifecycle management software. Some of the higher-priced plans include access to additional Invarosoft tools.
Backup Eagle
Backup Eagle is a backup monitoring tool marketed primarily toward ISPs that need to manage a variety of backup products across their client base. Like Alert Centric, Backup Eagle features a dashboard that enables organizations to assess the state of their backups quickly. This fully customizable dashboard illustrates backup histories, success rates, media use and more. The software also detects problems such as missing backups or unprotected resources.
Backup Eagle also features a rich reporting engine that automatically documents backup-related activities, with an emphasis on auditing and compliance. Finally, Backup Eagle's Security Centre detects and alerts backup admins to security events such as unauthorized access to a backup server or changes to retention periods.
Backup Eagle is available as a SaaS product with Backup Eagle Cloud, or as a tool that can be deployed on-premises with Backup Eagle Enterprise. Backup Eagle does not publicly disclose its pricing.
Backup Radar
Backup Radar by ScalePad is another backup monitoring product designed for use by MSPs. Backup Radar integrates with hundreds of different products, including those from AWS, Datto, Acronis and Axcient, to name a few.
While nearly all backup monitoring tools include an integrated alerting system, Backup Radar focuses heavily on reducing alert fatigue by eliminating noise alerts, thereby helping admins to zero in on those alerts that really matter.
Backup Radar also makes it easy to visualize backup trends and to share dashboards with stakeholders. These dashboards can help prove adherence to SLAs or to identify areas for improvement.
Backup Radar offers several different plans. These plans vary in terms of the number of included licenses. The company’s least expensive plan starts at $240 per month and includes real-time monitoring, failed backup detection and onboarding support. =
Bocada
Bocada offers backup monitoring options for both MSPs, with Bocada Cloud and enterprise IT with Bocada Enterprise. Bocada supports a huge number of integrations with products such as Druva, Veeam, Acronis, Rubrik and many others. According to Bocada, over 40 integrations are supported.
Bocada enables users to schedule backup performance reports that generate automatically. You can also use a collection of filters to build ad-hoc reports.
One of the software's more unique capabilities is its ability to produce a complete list of assets across an organization's entire infrastructure and then identify resources that have been left unprotected.
Another unique capability is Bocada's workflow automation capabilities. Bocada suggests using these capabilities to integrate Bocada with an enterprise IT ticketing system.
Bocada offers a free plan that can be used in an organization with up to three users. Paid plans include the Standard, Pro, and Ultimate plans, each of which include a 30-day trial. Pricing for the Standard plan starts at $0.75 per monitored resource per month.
Paessler PRTG
Whereas many backup monitoring tools use direct integrations, Paessler PRTG uses sensors. These sensors enable the software to plug into various infrastructure components. There are over 250 different sensor types. Those that are specifically designed for use with backup monitoring include Active Directory Replication Errors, File, Folder and IMAP. There are also sensors specifically designed for integration with Veeam.
While Paessler PRTG does support visualizing backup monitoring data through dashboards, the software is perhaps best suited to those who want to script their own monitoring tools. An organization might, for instance, scan an email account for backup-related messages or monitor a particular folder and take action based on the contents.
It is worth noting that Paessler PRTG is not exclusively a backup monitoring tool, but rather it is a network monitoring product that includes backup monitoring capabilities. Pricing for Paessler PRTG starts at $179 per month, paid annually. This allows for the monitoring of up to 50 devices. Higher-priced plans enable monitoring for a larger number of devices.
Brien Posey is a former 22-time Microsoft MVP and a commercial astronaut candidate. In his more than 30 years in IT, he has served as a lead network engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and a network administrator for some of the largest insurance companies in America.
