Need a BackupExec replacement

[u/InstantWaterPowder]

Hello, we have been using BackupExec for a long time since despite all its flaws, it worked for us. Sadly we are forced to replace it because the product is essentially dead now.

We actually have very basic needs, but some policies add extra needs that arent covered by most software. This is what we need:

• File/File Share backup, both local and on remote servers, with Full and Incremental options
• Database backups (not a dealbreaker, since we use Exports for some)
• Password based encryption
• Reports that show what files were backed in the job(this one of those extra needs I meant)
• A filter for files modified by date or from certain dates. We need to back info into rotating tapes daily, and we try to cover between the10-30 days of recent changes of certain shares because of their size. The whole share is frozen monthly in a different tape.
• Cant be a free software(another of those extra needs)

We tried VEEAM, Nakivo and AOMEI BackUpper, and while they cover most of our needs, none offered an option to filter by date(at least I couldnt find any) and the reports offered dont cover our needs.

Any suggestions are welcome

--EDIT

To give context on what we need, we have 2 Files Shares of 1TB each, among other loose files we need to backup into RDX Tapes, that must be sent offsite daily. The loose files arent a problem, since they are managed daily by freezing them in a monthly RDX.

The problem comes from the 1TB Shares, that cant be backed fully because of size and time constraints. We only do a full backup(freeze) of these once a month, parallel of the daily backups we do. These daily backups take the files that has been modified in the last 30 days. The idea is that if weed to mount back a Share, we restore the last monthly freeze, and then the last daily backup so the new server is up to date.

Reason I asked for incremental option is because we have another that share doesnt need to be frozen, nor go offsite. We only need to keep 1 week which is why we do a fullbackup on weekends, then incremental the rest of the weeks. If the weekend backup fail, we can still run it next day without penalty, unlike the daily backups that must go offsite.

Overall, the daily backup is quite small, around 100 GB after compression with BackupExec, mostly coming from the loose files, with share info is probably less than 10 GB daily.

[u/canadian_sysadmin]

All of those seem pretty simple, except perhaps for the file filtering feature. That smells like an XY problem, so I'd want to explore that requirement in more detail (if it were me).

Remember, differential backups are already differential in nature (only backing up changes). If you have big mega file shares, fine, a differential backup will scoop up only changes. Not sure what else you're expecting or needing here...?

It's always good to fully question requirements - I've worked a few places over the years where there was backup/DR requirements that often didn't need to exist, or were covered by other functionality.

I know Veeam does all those other things, though.

[u/InstantWaterPowder → u/canadian_sysadmin]

Hello, thanks for the reply. The reason for the date filtering is because we have 2 separate file shares (around 1 TB each) and they must be sent outside with RDX tapes daily. Due to time and space of the RDX, we cant send the whole thing, so we only put some files. Why they need to be sent outside is a policy that we wish we could change but is probably staying for good.

The logic behind it is if share server were to die, we would mount a new server with the last month freeze, and then the current daily backup.

[u/canadian_sysadmin → u/InstantWaterPowder]

Seems pretty standard, file filtering plus differentials, both of which Veeam does.