Open Source vs. Proprietary Backup And Recovery

By Chander Kant, CEO, Zmanda Corporation

Proprietary backup software vendors design their backup and recovery solutions so that the same software used for backup is required for recovery. For example, if an organization uses a proprietary backup product to write data to tape, the only way to recover the information from that tape would be to use the same product (and version) that was originally used to store the data.

Thus, if you need to restore information from a tape that is seven years old, you better hope that you have the specific version of the original backup software and a valid license or else you'll likely pay premium price to recover the information. Proprietary backup solutions are a bit like depositing money into a bank and then having to pay the bank for privilege making a withdrawal.

Most proprietary backup and recovery solutions only restore information to the same type of hardware and operating system on which the original data resided. However, with open-source solutions, data can be restored to any type of hardware. This creates another level of flexibility for system administrators.