Top 10 Best Windows Server Backup Software Solutions in 2024

Windows Server reigns supreme among server operating systems. Nearly three-fourths of the servers worldwide run on the operating system from Microsoft. Compared to its workstation counterpart, Windows Server provides improved stability and versatility to handle enterprise-grade tasks efficiently. Still, on their own, these improvements do not guarantee seamless performance or data integrity. The following is a list of the most advanced dedicated backup solutions that will help you avoid data loss and maintain business continuity.

Before we compare the features of specific solutions, let’s get an overview of server backup software essentials. As the name suggests, the term “server backup software” refers to solutions used to back up essential data on servers and recover it when the need arises. Server systems are built with a focus on reliability and continuity, yet the possibility of failure cannot be ruled out completely. From human error and natural disasters to various malicious activities, there are still lots of things that can disrupt the performance of your service. For this reason, a reliable and properly configured backup solution is an essential component of business continuity.

However, uninterrupted business performance is not the only reason for having a Windows Server backup solution. Here is an overview of the benefits backup software can provide.

Improved performance: Loss of profits may be the most evident outcome of service downtime, but it’s certainly not the only one. Disrupting the flow of operations also has a detrimental effect on the performance of the organization. In this sense, the ability to swiftly recover from an incident is crucial for maintaining a steady pace and delivering results consistently.

Customer trust: Another critical aspect of service availability is its impact on how your audience perceives your business. There are two ways in which server backups can help you maintain customer trust. On the one hand, the ability to recover operations after an incident ensures consistent customer experience, which strengthens customer loyalty in the long run. On the other hand, server disruptions often result in customer data loss, which can be a massive problem in its own right. Entrusting one’s data to the company only to find out it has been lost is a huge blow to an organization’s reputation, which is why server backup is a key component in the long-term customer retention strategy.

Regulatory compliance: In many sectors, data has become the subject of strict regulation, which makes preserving and maintaining it a challenge in its own right. Keeping large volumes of data and protecting it from loss can also get quite expensive and resource-intensive. Fortunately, modern server backup solutions offer a cost-efficient way of complying with regulations and performing e-discovery searches.

Overhead reduction: All things considered, keeping servers operational and preserving data does get expensive, both financially and in terms of human resources. In this light, the automation capabilities of server backup software offer considerable potential for improvement. A tightly configured schedule can save a tremendous amount of manual labor and, by extension, reduce managerial expenses.

Business resilience: No matter how tight the protection of the server is, there are many failure possibilities that mustn’t be ignored. The first things that come to mind are natural disasters since they are nearly impossible to foresee and extremely difficult to recover from. Recently, the threat of ransomware has grown in magnitude to rival natural forces, in both scope and impact. From this standpoint, server backups are perhaps the only way to hedge against risks and maintain resilience against disruptions.

Now that we understand why Windows server backups are necessary let’s briefly look at the main features backup software should have to provide the outlined benefits. Understanding these features is crucial for choosing the right solution for your organizational needs.

Incremental backup: This feature tracks changes made on the server after an initial backup and excludes the unaltered data from all subsequent backup files. This way, the amount of data that has to be processed on each backup job is reduced. Incremental backups are particularly beneficial for infrastructures with large volumes of data, only a part of which is changed over time.
Diversified backup storage: The ability to store backups in multiple locations and on different types of media is critical for ensuring the safety of your data. Advanced server backup software is expected to let you store backups both locally and in the cloud and should support storage media such as tape.
Granular recovery: In some cases, it may be necessary to retrieve a specific item rather than recover the entire server. Granular recovery allows you to search your backups for a particular item and restore it without having to perform a full recovery. It can also save you lots of time and effort in certain situations.
Shadow Copy: This is a feature specific to the Windows operating system that enables backup creation while the apps on the target machines are still running. Shadow Copy is essential for ensuring data consistency and working with large data sets.
Deduplication, compression, network acceleration, bandwidth throttling: Server backup solutions offer a variety of enhancements to improve the performance of backup job creation. While not strictly required, these are highly desirable for reducing the load on the organization’s infrastructure.

Now, without further ado, let’s look at our top 10 picks for Windows Server backup.

BDRSuite

BDRSuite for Windows is a Comprehensive and Cost-Effective backup solution for Windows Servers and Windows Workstations. You can save up to 70% on Backup Costs with BDRSuite.

Disk-Image backup and Files/Folder Backup for Windows Servers
Backup the entire machine or a specific disk/volume
Flexible Scheduling & Retention Policies
Bare Metal Recovery (BMR)
Cross Platform Migration (P2V)
Granular File & Application-Item Recovery
Automatic Backup Verification
Centralized web console to configure, manage and restore server backups
24/7 Technical Support

MANAGEENGINE

ManageEngine OS Deployer is a complete backup and recovery solution that enables you to deploy operating systems anywhere across the globe. It allows you to create a master image of the OS and deploy it to desktops and servers from a single console.

Customize your images according to your organizational needs. This software helps you save time and effort by seamlessly migrating user profiles. Provides reliable and convenient driver management to collect and distribute drivers automatically.

Perform live disk imaging by imaging a machine when it’s live and functioning in the network. You can also deploy the captured images to multiple systems independent of their hardware. We achieve this using the automated driver management feature.

Using this feature, we automatically collect the drivers present in the machines where the image is captured and store it in our driver repository. If some of the required drivers are missed during automatic collection, you can also manually download, extract, and store them in your driver repository.

Image live machines
Migrate user profile data
Hardware independant deployment
Customize deployment
Deploy OSs anywhere
Automated driver management

NAKIVO

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a lightweight and affordable backup solution that can offer comprehensive protection for Windows servers by running incremental, app-consistent and secure backups.

Perform incremental backups to save time and storage resources
Create ransomware-resilient backups
Store your backups locally, on tape and in public clouds (Amazon S3, Wasabi, Azure)
Instantly recover individual files and application objects
Use Volume Shadow Copy Service to run app-consistent backups
Migrate physical workloads to virtual for fast recovery in case of disaster
Apply deduplication and compression to free up storage space
Create backup copies to eliminate a single point of failure
Transform data into unreadable ciphertext to prevent unauthorized access
Improve backup performance with Network Acceleration
Offload your network with Bandwidth Throttling
Use Calendar Dashboard to avoid backup overlaps

ACRONIS

Acronis Cyber Backup is an easy to use, efficient and secure backup solution that protects your entire Windows Server environment.

Comprehensive Windows Server Backup Solution
Flexible, Granular Recovery for Your Windows Server
Unmatched Scalability with Centralized Management
Application-Aware Backup Delivers Full Data Integrity

BACKUPASSIST

The right backup software for Windows Server or Office 365. Trusted in 165 countries, BackupAssist gives affordable cyber-resilience for SMEs.

Full server backups, including (where applicable) Active Directory, Hyper-V, Exchange Server, SQL Server
File based backups with version history
Back up to different destinations: USB HDD, NAS, Cloud storage, RDX
Variety of onsite, offsite and offline recovery points
Multiple backups and backup types for multiple layers of protection
Safeguards that protect the backups from corruption by ransomware

VEMBU

Vembu ImageBackup for windows server is a robust and comprehensive backup solution for protecting the windows servers including the operating system, application and files of physical computing environments in a single pass.

Quick VM Recovery to ensure business continuity
Instant File level Recovery for windows server backups
CBT Driver for high performance incremental backups
VembuHIVE, an in-house File System for efficient backup storage
Backup Windows Servers with pass-through disks
Supports MBR and GPT disks greater than 2TB
Application-aware technology for consistent application Backups
Automated Backup verification
Flexible & Configurable Retention Policies
Bare-metal Recovery by using Vembu Recovery CD

N-ABLE

MSPs can expand their business capabilities with Windows Server backup software that offers a centralized overview of customer backups across workstations.

Easily back up your Windows Server to the cloud
Manage Windows Server backups from a centralized dashboard
Encrypt your server backup data for secure storage
Restore Windows Server backup data quickly and securely

ALTARO

Altaro Physical Server Backup is a server backup software solution created to satisfy this need, with the added bonus that it’s free.

Reliable, fast backup and recovery
P2V backup for physical servers
Backup schedule
Restoring your backups
Avert the impact of a disaster
Encryption and retention policies
Ease of use
Local management console
Fast and efficient backups
Optimized backup size
No impact on your pocket
Community support
Single-vendor solution

NOVASTOR

NovaStor’s Windows server backup software supports physical and virtual servers with application-aware backups to ensure full data integrity.

Web-based Interface
Auditable Reporting
Multistreaming
Deduplication
Granular Restore
Virtual Machines
Bare Metal Recovery
Logical Cloning

NOVABACKUP

NovaBACKUP local and cloud Server backup & disaster recovery solution for Windows keeps you HIPAA compliant. Also supports MS-SQL, Exchange, and unlimited VMs.