Source
r/msp•
SS_Mike

Need opinions on MAXBackup. The good, the bad, all of it.

We are looking at LogicNow MAXBackup as a replacement hybrid offsite BDR solution. We would host the data entirely ourselves as our clients require it not be sent off to servers with unknowns. The demo has gone well but I haven't had a chance to get into all of the restore capabilities so I've only really seen POCs from them. Has anyone used it? The pricing is fair but I'm looking for backup reliability, scheduling, restoring, persistent VM recovery - whatever info you can provide.

Thanks,

Mike

Edit: not looking for competitor recommendations, others are in the running but I have all the info I need on those. This one seems to be a little less well known as they were only recently bought out. This product is known as IASO Hybrid Cloud Backup in the EU I believe.

Posted Jun 24, 2016, 12:48 PM UTC · edited

580
MSPTech•

They are ok for file backup, doesn't do block level imaging. I wouldn't really go down this path. It's cheaper for a reason.

2
mr_snarkypants•

Cheaper than what? What's the pricing like?

2
MSPTech•

You can get them down to 25 a server and 6 a workstation pseudo unlimited cloud storage honor system.

2
mr_snarkypants•

If it's pseudo-unlimited, what are the limits?

2
SS_MikeOP•

They want you to average 500GB used across all your server backups. I don't recall the workstation numbers though. This wouldn't apply to me since I would not be backing up to their servers.

1
mr_snarkypants•

That price point, $25/server and $6/workstation... did they require a commitment for some number of workstations/servers to get that price?

2
SS_MikeOP•

$250 minimum for software only (no cloud storage) for me. Sorry I didn't see this earlier.

1
Eljovencubano•

Not sure if its a newer feature, but their 'True Delta' is incremental block level backup. Says it right on the product page https://www.logicnow.com/products/backup-disaster-recovery

2
lunpar•

Not new. It is block level but not image based, only file based. As other have said, their virtual images mostly work.

2
martyjonesMSP•

Iv never had an issue with physical to virtual, physical to physical or virtual to virtual. They do it a bit different but same results has storagecraft

2
SS_MikeOP•

Can you give me some insight on why the lack of imaging was not acceptable? It used to be that the advantage of imaging solutions was that they were the only way to restore a server to a fully bootable state but that's not really true anymore. This supposedly even supports dissimilar bare-metal restore, although we would be restoring purely virtual even from physical backups. I can see the possibility of admin error in forgetting to select a partition but the same mistake could be made during imaging setup since a lot of those are partition selective as well. I just don't see the imaging requirement but maybe I'm missing something.

Edit: Does not officially support dissimilar bare-metal restore.

1
readingyourmail•

thats an interesting page. their support kb has various articles on bare-metal restores though. I've been meaning to test out this functionality and always assumed it supported that. https://support.logicnow.com/kb/backup/000025202 https://support.logicnow.com/kb/backup/How-do-I-perform-a-Bare-Metal-Restore

Edit: oh you're talking specifically about dissimilar hardware, sorry didn't catch that. Yeah I guess I don't know that for sure.

2
Eljovencubano•

I've been using it for a few months with good success. I haven't delved deep into the more slick options yet (continuous restore and screen shots for instance) but all the basic stuff works well. I've been randomly selecting restore points and running them on test machines, and haven't run into an issue yet. I built a BDR using Hyper-V server free and have been able to spin up all the Standby Images I've tried with no problems at all. Its seems like a very solid choice so far. My biggest complaint is the notification framework is clunky and not at all intuitive if you want to setup any custom notifications. Support has been incredibly responsive with questions I've had. I've been cross-shopping it with efolder/replibit and haven't found anything that really makes either option jump off the page. Ultimately it may come down to an ease of use debate.

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SS_MikeOP•

That's pretty much the two options I'm down to as well. Replibit and MAX seem to be pretty comparable. How do you manage your BDR if it's core in the event of a server failure? Workstation with Hyper-V Manager role?

1
Eljovencubano•

I use a VPN and RDP (or my secondary remote access software, simplehelp) to connect directly to the core server and manage the VMs with 5nine Manager Free and/or CoreFig. This configuration helps keep BDR cost down since I dont have any software to purchase, specifically a Windows Server license.

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mattbrad2•

If you're choices are between Replibit and MAX, this should be a no brainer. Replbit gives you far more control and is lightyears ahead in ease of use. We use Max for file based backups and it does its job well. Replibit is strictly an image based solution but is almost laughable how easy it is to use.

2
Eljovencubano•

The BDR requirement for replibit really kills it for me. Not all of my clients want or need one, so it just becomes an obstacle to entry for some. I didn't find either difficult or confusing to use so I'd be interested to hear what you found easier with replibit.

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mattbrad2•

It's the global management portal that makes it easy. I can see all my sites on one pane of glass and see boot verification screenshots all on one page. We lease the BDR appliance so we own it. I'm using Dell Optiplex 790's with a quad core i5, 16GB RAM and RAID 1 enterprise sata drives. Total cost is about $370. This fits the bill for most clients. I've used Lenovo TS140's which are a bit faster but also about $200 more.

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SS_MikeOP•

Interesting that you use both. Is there any reason you don't trust it for full recovery? Have you tried it and it didn't work? Can you give me a side by side as to why you prefer replibit? As far as I can tell the software is just as easy to use and other than not being image based is comparable and slightly more advanced with persistent recovery to VM unless they forgot to tell me that replibit did that too, which is possible.

1
mattbrad2•

I use both because Max does file based really well and replibit only does image snapshots. I've tried using Max for BDR but once you use Replibit and their global management portal you don't want to use anything else. It's a little '90's looking but I'd prefer function over form any day. It wasn't that I didn't like Max for BDR but it's little things Replibit gives you like being able to see all my boot verification images from one screen (which takes one click to get to). The UI is very elementary but it also loads lightning fast. I can also export to whatever flavor VM I want which I don't believe Max lets you do. The vault portion of Replibit is also a huge plus.

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martyjonesMSP•

We have bought wholesale via IASO for many years (In the US, 4 years probably).

Its a great program for servers - you'll have to roll your own on the BDR side of things if you want an appliance. We find it to work well and support to generally be spot on (I'v only ever called twice). Since the got acquired years ago development has actually been better and faster. They try to have 1 release a month which is sometimes minor but it corrects bugs pretty quickly.

We have used the continuous recovery and haven't had issues. It also can store a copy onto a NAS or another device. Scheduling is all done by time which isn't has granular as one would like it but its never been a huge problem for us. Restorations have never had issues either file/folder or disaster recovery (Both virtual or physical).

It sucks for workstations though. It has no continuous backup or missed backup retrys.

Being on the IASO side i have no idea how things work if you buy from the logicnow side. If you want me to connect you with the distributor we use PM me.

2
MSPTech•

It sucks for workstations though. It has no continuous backup or missed backup retrys.

Yup. Total bullshit and they flat out told me they have no desire or plans to fix this.

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martyjonesMSP•

I'd believe it. Iv complained for years and it's never gonna happen. Honestly though iv always been so happy with the servers I'm just looking at something else for desktops

2
MSPTech•

I don't understand it. If they would just add at least and auto retry. I'd be using it on all my mobile PC's (fuck crash plan) and all Mac's. It's a good product for those things.

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theclevernerd•

Have you found anything else for desktops? We have the same issues with MaxBackup.

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martyjonesMSP•

Haven't looks hard enough yet. Its on my list for July but let me know if you come across a good replacement.

2
MSPTech•

We had to go with BACKBLAZE how lame huh? No branding. But great app, fast, native PC/MAC,fast upload and cheap price. Doesn't do servers.

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SS_MikeOP•

I don't do anything but file/folder on workstations and I use CrashPlan on those because I have a bunch of persistent licenses for it. It has worked well for us for a long time. I have it set to back up every 15-60 minutes so it works great for people that shut down or use laptops. I've had 3 bad files out of well over a million restored and I was able to grab those from my slave server.

1
lunpar•

Missed backups on workstations have been a hit or miss for me. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't and I need to manually run th backups.

2
cryospam•

We looked at this product like 8 months ago, the lack of block level backup pushed us to Repilbit. For non offsite backups they're 30 bucks per server as an Efolder partner.

2
Wdblazer•

Do you mean block level backup or image based backup? They are a file based backup that uses incremental block backup.

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cryospam•

Block level imaging for reduced network transfers. I wasn't clear in my above post.

2
Wdblazer•

If you are looking for reduce network transfers, their backup employed block level backup for file, while its transfer block cannot be as small as an image block based on hard drive sector, I find it to be good enough for us.

2
David949•

I'm also interested in this product but haven't had the time to really dive into it. We are a max shop so I am interested in the single plane of glass and one less vendor billing wise to deal with

I don't remember the answers but are you talking about MOB or their stand alone product?

How does their backup solution work for baremetal restore. Do you back up to a local device or over the net to your office?

2
SS_MikeOP•

So the way they described it to me is that it's not an imaging solution, it's a VSS aware file/folder backup solution but has the capability to do bare metal and virtual restores. I had them show me a proof of concept on the virtual which seemed to work. I'm not sure what MOB is but it's this one.

1
David949•

I've seen the same presentations. I don't see how a bare metal actually works? If a server will not boot or I put in new hard drives then I need the entire server restored. How does that work?

2
lunpar•

Basically, they have a Win PE image that you can run from a DVD or USB memory stick that will allow you to install their Backup Manager onto the new server. From there, you can perform a restore.

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David949•

So for bare metal you install a Windows OS then a restore? Seems like a lot of work for a bare metal

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SS_MikeOP•

So it requires a base OS install of the same version? Or do you mean Backup Manager runs from the PE environment?

1
SS_MikeOP•

I imagine if it's anything like Acronis it would have a bootable restore ISO with basic drivers on it but to be honest I'm not sure.

1
lunpar•

Max Online Backup (MOB) is the version integrated into the RMM. It has different pricing and less features than MaxBackup because (I think) it uses an older release. I remember that they plan to get both MOB & Max Backup equal in features.
I had mixed results with bare metal to dissimilar hardware; I haven’t tried it on equal hardware. Their virtual images work.
In general, the solution works as intended. They have small annoyances with file permissions from time to time.

2
Obyone89•

MOB is pretty much on par with Max Backup now. It's not way behind in features like it was in the past, when a new version of Max Backup is released then MOB usually has the same features about a month later. It's updated pretty quickly now.

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SS_MikeOP•

Are the permissions issues generating alerts to you? We use Kaseya so it would be a standalone solution for us.

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lunpar•

You can see that the backup was not completed successfully. Then you can exclude the offending files from the Backup Manager and backup again. I have never seen a backup marked as good without having able to restore, but we test them periodically just in case.
As far as I understand their reporting is not great but works. We keep an eye on the console to deal with errors. I would love to integrate into my RMM

2
accidentalit•

We use it for file level backups, the reliability and ease of use is very high. We use hyperV replica for imaging offsite

2
PBI325•

We use it for SQL, file, and Hyper-V backups. Works well enough and the restores weve tested/run have passed for the most part. We're happy with it for now!

Also, pricing, storage limit, etc.,, information is a bit hard to find and sometimes takes some persistence/squeezing to get from support. I've spent the time and would love to help if you'd need it.

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SS_MikeOP•

Thank you! I'm having a little trouble understanding what you mean by the pricing and storage limits being hard to get from them? During the demo I received direct pricing and storage limits if I were to back up to their servers (which I won't). Was I missing something?

1
PBI325•

I received direct pricing and storage limits if I were to back up to their servers (which I won't)

They just didn't lay everyone out on the table, he had to ask some questions to get some stuff. It wasn't them being secretive, I think it was our rep just not giving us some information that we thought to be basic.

That said, if you're rolling your own storage, none of my above applies haha

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SS_MikeOP•

Oh okay - Thanks!

1
rm1057•

I've been creeping here for a few weeks, usually every night before bed. I was excited to see this question because my company uses MAXBackup and this is the first time I've even seen someone mention it. Everyone seems to have another recommendation and I started to second guess my selection.

I think they're solid. We moved over to LogicNow for spam filtering and offsite backup about a year ago from Own Web Now (OWN) - terrible, terrible company.

I thought MAXBackup was very easy to use and configure and the client was the most lightweight and least resource intensive of any of the ones I tested. Brand-able, can be re-configured remotely, and they have classes every Wednesday and Thursday for how to set it up properly and restore it properly. Support is great. Haven't really had any issues and we do random restores every now and then as tests, everything always works flawlessly. Pricing seemed fine to me and their per-device model fits within our MSP agreements. I did one bare metal restore to the same hardware and it worked fine. The only thing we haven't really had an opportunity to test is persistent VM backup. We've been pushing clients towards our newly redesigned plans, one of which includes this as a feature and we'll be deploying and testing it on their three servers in the next couple of weeks.

The day SolarWinds announced that they'd bought them I was super excited. People have seemed to knock the merger but I was an N-Able user from 2009-2012 and switch off. I credit what SolarWinds did after buying N-Able 100% as my reason for going back to them and I think if they can do the same thing with LogicNow it'll be a solid combination, so that makes me even more excited and happy with my choice.

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SS_MikeOP•

Thank you very much for the insight! I was kind of worried myself as I didn't really hear of their backup product around at all but the demo and feature set seems pretty comprehensive. I think it's a cleaner looking version of replibit. It has the same screenshot functionality and I like the offsite sync design and being able to recover lost storage nodes from on-site sources in the unlikely event that we lost a node.

1
yothhedgedigger•

Is this the right product for those that don't want backups in the cloud? I thought that the product was designed to always send data to the cloud...thus their "hybrid cloud" solution where it sent to the cloud and to a local storage. And also from this hybrid solution (at least from the desktop version), they said that I couldn't have the backup do local version, then push local version to the cloud. The program backed up to the cloud and the local version simultaneously, so the backups for local took however long it takes to backup to to the cloud.

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rm1057•

You can backup to two locations simultaneously, a local and the cloud, but you can't not backup to the cloud. They said in recent talks with me that they were working on a hybrid option. The lack of hybrid support made us start to question whether or not we would continue using them but once we found out about the per-device model it became a moot point. With the way they do their storage caps it's not really a bid deal to us anymore. That being said if you're looking to backup some things offsite and some (different) things to a local NAS, this is not for you.

We tried Intronis for a while but ultimately found their pricing too high and their monthly minimums and service fees a little too far reaching, and the web interface was a bit of a pain to navigate.

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yothhedgedigger•

Right, so OP says specifically the cloud was not an option for clients...so this seems like the wrong product.

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rm1057•

OP also said "whatever info you can provide." And since he's looking for info about its hybrid capabilities and my talk with LogicNow specifically mentioned that they're working on better hybrid options I figured I'd throw it out there. Plus, you know, he's not the only person browsing this thread looking for info.

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SS_MikeOP•

I think he's saying it's the way the destinations work as it just performs the same backup set locally to a NAS, external HDD, or a BDR server (called a Local Speed Vault and has all the features of the offsite nodes) and also to offsite nodes which are typically their cloud, but you can create your own and point your clients to it instead of their cloud. He is saying that it can't be used for local only like BE/Veeam which doesn't work for his needs. It seems to be perfectly viable for my needs as I am intent on backing up locally and offsite.

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SS_MikeOP•

You might want to check out Virtual Administrator and see if they can help with those Intronis costs since they have a pretty neat model for reselling services MSPs use. I used them for years and have always been a big fan. But if the interface is a deal breaker I guess that wouldn't work out. I haven't used it personally.

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SS_MikeOP•

I'll have to find out but on the initial call with sales I was sure they told me that it would back up to the local "SpeedVault" (on-site BDR server) and then sync offsite. If it does in fact back up to both independently that changes things for me a little. Although one of the things I asked them was if we lost a storage node (our offsite servers) could we rebuild it using existing data from SpeedVaults and another node, and they said yes. Once I find out I'll let you know.

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yothhedgedigger•

I was not aware you could point it to your own data center and not use their cloud. Did you get cheaper pricing for not using their cloud?

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SS_MikeOP•

Yep - $25/server and $6/workstation and obviously no storage limits but there is a $250 minimum which is not a problem for me since I'm transitioning a lot of servers from a different solution.

2
Diavunollc•

It's come a long way, I cant complain about it.

All my bigger clients have a "site concentrator" (onsite copy) it's pretty complete, for the price you probably wont find a better bang for the buck.

That being said I do use HyperV replication where I can. (in addition too)

2
SS_MikeOP•

Thanks!

1
Situbondo•

The product is solid, easy to use and very fast to restore compare to other RMM backup. The only downside is the rep for Maxfocus. I am in the West Coast and I got Patrick Werner. He's horrible in term of communicating with customers.

2
dair0nm0nkey•

Like others I was also happy to see a thread about this but I see I am a bit late to the party.

I have been using the product since 3 years ago via the GFI max days. I did feel a bit discouraged and second guessing my choice as this product is rarely discussed on any message boards. Anytime a recommendation thread pops up it is replibit, storagecraft, datto etc.

For me I have evaluated all of those, and I decided on Max because it gives me the most features at the lowest cost. Lets start there

Pricing wise its $35/server/month with the Cloud storage. Storagecraft/replibit all start at the $60/server range. Datto even more. I have not seen a product come close in pricing from my research

Functionality: I manage a number of different environments. I deploy a local self built BDR onsite. I utilize the Cloud storage to handle the offsite. The local BDR runs vmware and is powerful enough to run ALL the servers in each environment. I run the continuous restore feature which provides a nightly standby copy of each server backed up. I frequently test these and am able to tell clients I can boot up their environment in a matter of minutes if a disaster were to occur. This process requires a couple more manual steps compared to how replibit/datto does it but I am ok with that. I also utilize the virtual drive on each server for quick drag and drop file/folder based restores. This gives that quick easy Windows Shadow Copy style restore option with the difference being the source is actually the data in the cloud

I have considered hosting it in my local DC and saving the $10/month per server. Further to this I have toyed around with the idea of instead of deploying a local BDR to each client to host all the data in my DC and have 1 beefy server that serves as the BDR for all clients. My thoughts on self hosting is the costs to utilize their tier 3 data centers is well worth it, and not worth the savings to do all that on your own. Rolling 1 centralized BDR for everyone isn't the best for me. No way my clients apps can run over a VPN and in the event of a disaster, something that took out their primary servers as well as the BDR most likely took out all their workstations too. I think the more realistic scenario is a server refusing to boot and you coming to the rescue with the standby restored machine

So I am able to quickly restore files for my clients as well as have a working and verified standby copy of their servers running at a super cheap price. Not sure what else I am missing to make this a great choice.

1
rrnworks•

I agree with you dair. But... and there's always a but...

  1. Max still has no easy way to create a simple recurring or continuous backup schedule. You need to manually create multiple schedules for anything more frequent than once a day.
  2. Max has no deleted file protection. It does have 'non-granular' archive and retention settings which is better than nothing but it ends up using more storage space than is necessary and still can miss deleted files.
  3. Max has no true unattended installer. We like to just send an exe or msi to an end user and have them run it, but this still isn't possible with Max. They just came out with a 'scripted' solution with command line arguments, but still does not have a simple packaged exe.
1