New backup software provider – vSquare Backup, has recently came out of stealth. The company provides backup services for VMware vSphere or recently added Microsoft Hyper-V. They have a Free Plan as well along paid plans based on monthly subscription.
vSquare Backup allows not only to backup VMs on those two hypervisors, but at the same time the product can backup ESXi or Hyper-V configuration. Also supported is the Free ESXi hypervisor.
The solution is cloud based where you only install the backup client on Windows based machine (PC, laptop or VM). The admin console called Anywhere Administration Console allows to setup the connection to the vSquare backup servers. The connection to the vSquare backup servers with particular backup plan unlocks features present in each one of those. It's agent-less backup solution (no agents in VMs).
Depending on the plan you'll pick, different options will be available. One of those options available in Professional, Enterprise or Corporate plan (not in Startup) is the cloud backup where you can specify selection of cloud providers where the backups will be stored.
The Startup Plan (Free) is limited to 2 backup jobs at the same time and no cloud based backup. Also the backups aren't optimized See the differences in each of those plans on this page at vSquare backup.
Screenshot from vSquare Backup site showing the possible destinations of backups.
Select virtual disk for backup – Individual VMDKs can be selected (except in the Free plan) so you can (or do not have to) backup selected virtual disks only.
Individual file restore is of course possible too, in addition to full VM restores.
If there is a proxy server in your organization, then you can specify that during the setup:
DR (replication) solution is also possible (with appropriate plan) where your VMs are replicated to another datacenter (or ESXi host) and ready to be powered on.
Personally I haven't tested vSquare backup solution yet, but it's on my to-do list. It seems like interesting and unique solution as it's subscription based only. No purchase necessary and you can upgrade/downgrade or cancel any time.
vSquare backup is new company but very dynamic adding new features and enhancements very fast. Microsoft Exchange backup/recovery (with individual items) is supported and recently also Hyper-V from Microsoft has been added to their list of supported hypervisors.
Source: vSquare Backup
This was a great product to use but after an update to ESXi5.5 vSquare could no longer initiate a backup and became useless to me. I downgraded the plan from Pro to Free so I don’t spend money on a broken product, contacted support several times but they did not respond. A quick check of forums showed that other people have the same issue so it looks like vSquare is broken for those using ESXi free. I uninstalled it and am using Trilead instead, works great!
Crazy how mileage may vary! I’ve come across VSquare after a series of failures and bad backup from Trilead. Currently using Pro version and never looked back!