Mirror, mirror on the wall: Is Acronis backup truly the fastest of them all?

Analysis + comment Acronis claims its Backup 12 product is "the fastest data protection technology in the world." An EMC partner senior tech architect says no, it's not, and has figures that he says proves it.

Acronis claims in a Scuderia Toro Rosso release that: "According to the latest report released by Network Testing Labs this week, Acronis Backup 12 has largely outperformed other competitors. It only takes 35.6 minutes to back up a 180GB virtual machine with Acronis, compared to higher numbers with anything else on the market. This makes Acronis Backup 12 the fastest data protection technology in the world."

That's 5.06GB/min, or 83.3MB/sec.

We have been contacted by a senior technical architect/senior installation engineer at an EMC premier partner, who objects to Acronis' claim.

He says: "It's not even a fast speed which is odd, our basic Backup Exec installations can do this. When you work the figures out, it's about 83.3 MB/sec; the fastest speed you would see down a 1GbitE port without any acceleration. DDBoost on its own can do 450MB/sec down a 1GbitE port. When you add VM change block tracking and only move 1 per cent to 15 per cent it's much faster again."

He provided details of two backup installations using EMC kit, saying; "Both installations are EMC NetWorker 8.2 with EMC VBA backup appliances sending the data to EMC Data Domain via DDBoost. The VBA appliances are based on EMC Avamar technology."

He also provided two screenshots for them: "The images are from two different installations; the first is a very large council backing up a 1.8TB VMware server. The backup took 13.54 minutes and was boosting to 19GB/sec."

The second installation was a very large retailer's main database server. This was around the same size as the first server and backs up at 25GB/sec. These backups are using multiple mechanisms to do this.

"On some sites, there are up to 150 of these running at the same time, all with the same performance. I have large airports back up and finish the whole VMware environment in less than 1 hour. The VBAs are using hot add, source-based direct LUN access deduplication, DDboost and VMware change block tracking. The VBA can use all the mechanisms in reverse, unlike any other product on the market.

"EMC VBA can also make any backed-up VMware server appear instantly on the Data Domain, automatically connect the Data Domain to VMware as a data store, register the server, power it on and storage VMotion it back to the VMware SAN that it was originally running on while fully working from the Data Domain."

His conclusion is that the Acronis "fastest data protection technology in the world" claim is not justifiable.

Acronis response

We asked Acronis about this and it responded: "The Network Testing Labs (Lab) has performed the tests on the identical equipment for each test, as defined in the Lab report. In this process, the Lab aimed to re-create a typical environment representative of average Acronis business customers. In this typical environment, Acronis software has outperformed the competition, showing results from 60 per cent to 100 per cent faster, with all other variables being the same.

"Note that, as for any backup software, the performance depends on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, the CPU number and frequencies; RAM capacities and speed; source HDD/RAID model, performance and latency; storage performance, cache speeds and capacities; network throughput, bandwidth, load; network switch models, and more.

"For example, if the environment would have high-end CPUs, extremely fast 100GbitE+ network or optical Fibre Channel, multi-tier accelerated SSD RAID arrays with sizeable cache for SAN and storage, the results would differ by an order of magnitude.

"To summarize, as with any test in a different environment, the actual results can differ significantly due to any of the factors listed above, and cannot be directly attributed only to the backup software."

In addition, according to the lab, "Acronis Backup 12 is proving to be faster than both Veritas BE 15 and Veeam Availability Suite 9. We also find in our testing that the Acronis Backup user interface is easier and more intuitive to use than that of the other two products. Your developers have done an excellent job."

The Lab is currently finalizing the report, and will publish it on their website in near future.

El Reg comment

Acronis' release stated: "It only takes 35.6 minutes to back up a 180GB virtual machine with Acronis, compared to higher numbers with anything else on the market." Note the "anything." Was everything else on the market tested? We think not.

The release baldly says: "This makes Acronis Backup 12 the fastest data protection technology in the world." It did not say that, on the tested configuration and compared to the other tested backup products, Acronis Backup 12 was faster, which would have been perfectly accurate and acceptable.

It said Acronis Backup 12 is the fastest data protection technology in the world, which is not, in our view, an acceptable claim.

Also, if "the results achieved in any other test cannot be used to either support or disprove Acronis' claim, based on the report by an independent lab," then Acronis' claim is unchallengeable, untestable, and thus useless.

What we say is furnish the detailed hardware and software specs and test load of the equipment used in the test and let other vendors replicate it with their backup software.

For Acronis to simply say: "This makes Acronis Backup 12 the fastest data protection technology in the world," seems to us to be verging on being risible. Grade one marketing faecal matter at its finest. ®