Carbonite Endpoint vs. Percona XtraBackup

It's really great if you have a small or medium-sized business like ours. You can choose the number of computers you want to back up and pay per computer. And since it's pretty easy to set up and deploy, you don't need a dedicated IT guy to do it for you. On the other hand, if most of your data is already in the cloud (like Google Docs or Google Sheets) and you don't have any other critical data then you can get by without it.

Incentivized

Xtrabackup has many excellent features that are supposed to be in any backup solution. It's well suited for all MySQL deployments but it's not appropriate for any other database. If you are using any MySQL flavor (MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server for MySQL), it's your only and perfect solution for backup and disaster recovery.

• Protected file restoration: Users love having confidence that their files are being backed up remotely with no action required on their part.
• Device tracking: While we've only enabled this feature for a small set of key personnel, this feature is useful in helping to determine if a given asset is lost, and works across mobile device platforms - unlike in-built solutions for individual users.
• Management console: The management console is clearly organized and easy to work with. Setting up groups and policies is logical and hierarchical, and makes managment tasks easy.

Incentivized

• The ability to stream backups (using netcat or socat) to a target destination has many uses, for example, 1)We do not need to store a backup locally on the database server 2) We can stream backups into object storage using GCSFUSE.
• The hot-backup functionality is probably the most important function. We are able to take backups of our primary instances with minimal impact on the database instance.
• XtraBackup has many parameters that can be tuned, allowing us to increase performance or reduce by using the parallel thread parameter for example.
• Partial backups.
• The ease of use when doing restores. Simplified, fast and accurate.

• Carbonite indicates which files are being backed up by its dot system so that you can easily backup a single file that you don't see the dot on by selecting that option from the file's context menu. But there is no place for me to go to select entire folders or data sets so that it will back up everything in that folder, regardless of file type. Carbonite automatically backs up a majority of files types by default but does not take into consideration specialized file types like font files. These files are very important for a designer like myself and I can't afford to lose my fonts. But I also don't want to have to select the option to back them up one by one. I have over 1,000 of them! So there is definite room for improvement here.
• The cost is significantly more than what I paid for Mozy, almost double. For the first year, they are giving old Mozy users a deal comparable to Mozy's pricing, but after that my pricing will be almost double what I used to pay.

Incentivized

• Remote execution: Xtrabackup doesn't support remote backup. The backup process has to run locally and have to store data locally.
• LifeCycle management: Xtrabackup doesn't support backup lifecycle management. Users have to manage it themself.
• Stability for large databases.

I found their alerting to be very poor. I missed several days of backups without knowledge of this, until I signed into the portal. I would get daily emails reporting backups were in progress or done, but nothing indicating that a backup had been stuck or paused for 3 days. For this reason alone, I did not renew.

Incentivized

Takes a bit of getting used to when you first set it up.

Incentivized

Does what it needs to do quietly and efficiently in the background without interrupting the workflow. It offers instant automated back-ups without troubling the end user. As it is such an automated system, once it is up and running, there is little or no support needed from the service provider. From what I understand the support from Carbonite during the setup and implementation was absolutely fine.

Incentivized

Great support, detailed online documentation, and examples in many scenarios. Bugs can be logged and are tracked. Great community support has been built-up due to Percona XtraBackup being a great product. Frequent releases ensure bug fixes are committed as soon as possible. Over and above this, the development team stays up to date with the latest releases of MySQL and ensures it is 100% reliable.

Carbonite Endpoint 360 definitely has a solid footing in the market. Barracuda Essentials is a more comprehensive solution offering many additional features and complementing services including archiving and email Antispam and encryption. Proofpoint is very similar to both products and has many features as well. Overall, the market is very competitive on the backup and retention of Office 365.

Incentivized

Percona XtraBackup saves us time and money. Besides the performance and reliability, the support and documentation are top-notch. It's not just about the cost savings, but about the functionality and the minimal impact that XtraBackup has on the database server during a backup window. Percona XtraBackup has been integrated into Percona XtraDB Cluster which makes adding nodes easy and fast.

• We have only started this process at this time and have not fully completed our transfer of data up to the cloud.
• As far as business objectives, we now have at least implemented a backup solution on a very vital server at an off-site facility that had not ever been backed up in two years and holds data for a major constitutional office in the county.

Incentivized

• It is free and the best backup tool that I know of. Using this for free means we save on having to purchase other backup software.
• As a DBA it is the standard backup tool that is used everywhere I have been.

Incentivized