I have never used a so-called Enterprise (paid) backup solution with Zmanda or Bacula. I think for this post I want to focus on Zmanda instead of Bacula... the wording of Bacula kinda pushes me away in that every little thing having to do with it is a "plugin".
The way Zmanda Enterprise is described on their website, it makes them look so fantastically perfect that it would make anyone want to shoot themselves for even the slightest thought of something more expensive like Unitrends or Veeam.
So what I'm wondering, is if Zmanda does it all, and more, than Unitrends and Veeam Backup, for a lot less money... then how are backup solutions like Unitrends and Veeam in business? (lets leave the other stuff like replication and veeam monitor out of it for this)
I know it's a software solution, so you'd still have to provide the hardware, capacity, etc for the backups and such... and licensing is still per device or cpu.
So what are the convincing reasons to not go with Zmanda for a large enterprise backup solution with lots of hypervisors, lots of physical Linux and Windows servers, databases, etc. Lets say all raw data would be in the mid-20's of terabytes. Tape backups would be in play, and eventual cloud backup. Backup copies (backup replication) wouldn't be a factor at this point.
All products do have paid support options. I don't know how good the support of Zmanda would be vs Unitrends or Veeam, as I've heard and lived through bad stories regarding all of them.
Can you convince me Zmanda is not for me, and another popular solution is better for the company? Can you convince me Zmanda is better for me and Unitrends/Veeam/etc... would be worse choice for the company? Why?
Management sometimes does quick searches and see open source!, or free!, or does everything XYZ can do and more! and think, hey let's present this instead!
Anyways, by looks and features alone, I don't see why I shouldn't be sold on Zmanda vs XYZ, unless there's more of a potential to be stuck without good working backups and/or retention, lack of support, or worse utilization of hardware and/or capacity.
Thoughts?