Top Virtualization Backup Software in 2025: What IT Teams Really Use

Virtualization backup software play a crucial role in ensuring business continuity, data security and streamlined recovery when unexpected disruptions occur. With so many backup solutions for businesses available, it can be challenging to identify which tools truly deliver on reliability and efficiency.

This post highlights the top virtualization backup software trusted by IT teams in 2025. Read on to discover the leading VM backup solutions that can secure your virtual infrastructure and keep operations running smoothly.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a comprehensive data protection solution with a wide list of features and supports multiple virtual and physical environments. Virtual machine backup is agentless and image-based, which is possible due to native APIs.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports VM backup for multiple virtualization platforms:

• VMware vSphere
• Proxmox VE
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Nutanix AHV
• Amazon EC2

Virtual machine backup is supported on standalone ESXi hosts and hosts managed by vCenters and clusters. Even if VMs in a cluster migrate from one host to another, the NAKIVO solution can detect this automatically if this VM is added to the backup job. Native VMware Changed Block Tracking is used for incremental backups. VMware vSphere versions 5.5 to 9 are supported.

NAKIVO for Proxmox VM backups offers significant advantages for businesses seeking reliability and speed. With incremental backup technology, Proxmox virtual machines can be protected more efficiently, reducing backup time and storage usage compared to traditional or manual methods. The solution also includes encryption, compression and backup immutability. Immutable backups safeguard critical data from ransomware attacks, while encryption strengthens security by preventing unauthorized access to backup files.

The Site Recovery feature can automate complex disaster recovery workflows. The built-in recovery testing functionality ensures VMs can be successfully recovered within the RTO framework.

The retention policies are highly customizable:

• Support for the Grandfather-Father-Son retention policy.
• Deduplication and integration with hardware deduplication appliances.
• Policy-based protection can be used to discover new or modified VM and automatically include them in a backup job.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication includes the following features:

• Immutable backups in local repositories, public clouds, S3-compatible storage and deduplication appliances.
• Backup encryption protects backups against unauthorized access. Role-based access control and two-factor authentication improve security.
• Site Recovery (disaster recovery) is used to implement automated disaster recovery workflows for VMs.
• Cross-platform recovery (backup export) allows administrators to recover physical and virtual machines to a supported virtualization platform, such as VMware VMDK and Hyper-V VHD/VHDX formats.
• Multiple backup destinations. Backup repositories can be created on local servers, SMB/NFS file shares, public clouds (Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, Wasabi) and S3-compatible storage. Backups can be sent directly to tape.
• Multi-tenancy for Managed Service Providers and large organizations.
• Application-aware backup with log truncation for databases.
• VMware vSphere monitoring to detect possible issues early.
• Full VM and granular recovery (files, directories, application objects).
• Convenient user interface. All components and features are available in a single pane of glass. Centralized administration in a user-friendly web interface that simplifies backup and recovery management for administrators.
• Integration with antivirus software to check backups for viruses and malware before recovery.

You can download the 15-day Free Trial of NAKIVO Backup & Replication and test the solution in your environment.

Vembu BDR Suite

Vembu BDR Suite is a backup solution that supports virtual machine backups and offers broad virtualization support and cloud-native capabilities. This software supports the following platforms:

• VMware vSphere and ESXi. Backup via VADP, including hot-add and SAN modes for efficient LAN-free transfer.
• Microsoft Hyper-V. Host or cluster-level agentless backup, with application consistency and support for changed block tracking.
• KVM. Agentless VM backup for KVM environments.
• Proxmox VE. Backup supported as part of broader virtualization support (inferred via inclusion in supported platform lists).
• Cloud VMs. Agentless, cloud-native backup for AWS EC2 and Azure VMs.

Vembu provides multiple features designed to ensure efficient, reliable and flexible VM protection:

• Agentless and application-aware backups for VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, KVM and AWS EC2.
• Supports scheduling incremental backups as frequently as every 15 minutes.
• Three-tier integrity verification – mount test, boot test and image integrity checks.
• Export backups to formats like VHD/VMDK/RAW for VM migration between hypervisors.
• AES-256-bit encryption with optional user-defined or system-generated password.
• Retention supports up to 999 versions and GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) retention.
• Scale-out backup repository. Aggregate storage across local disks, NAS (NFS/SMB), SAN (iSCSI/FC), with dynamic storage pool expansion, even on the fly.

Vembu BDR Suite supports multiple storage targets: Local disks, SMB/NFS file shares, SAN (iSCSI and Fibre Channel), mapped drives on Windows or Linux as well as backup to tape (LTO 3+). Supported cloud storages include AWS S3, Azure and Google Cloud. Vembu also provides Vembu Cloud, a proprietary and secure cloud storage.

Altaro VM Backup

Altaro VM Backup is part of Hornet Security, specializing primarily in VMware and Hyper-V. This virtualization backup solution is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.

Altaro VM Backup supports the following environments:

• VMware vSphere, including vCenter integration.
• Microsoft Hyper-V, including standalone and clustered hosts (with Cluster Shared Volume support).
• Proxmox VE backup is available in early access.

Key features and capabilities of the Altaro virtualization backup software:

• Rapid setup. The solution can be deployed in under 15 minutes with minimal complexity.
• Simple, centralized dashboard to manage hosts and backups.
• Hot/live backups. Back up VMs without downtime using VSS-based snapshots.
• Frequent incremental backups for minimal RPO.
• Recovery as Clone/Cross-Platform Restore to restore VMs to the same or different hypervisor (e.g., VMware to Hyper-V).
• Granular recovery: file-level restoration and MS Exchange item-level recovery.
• Augmented Inline Deduplication. Supports industry-leading deduplication across jobs without post-processing; improves speed and saves storage.
• VM backup compression and encryption.
• Backup Verification & Sandbox Restore — Test recovery scenarios safely through isolated verification.

Notable VM backup capabilities of Altaro include:

• Back up as frequently as every 5 minutes; retain per-VM policies.
• Back up multiple VMs simultaneously for faster throughput.
• Set up tiered backups (weekly/monthly/yearly archives).
• Control multiple Altaro instances through the cloud portal.
• Store data in immutable cloud storage (Azure Blob, Amazon S3, Wasabi) to ensure ransomware resilience.

Supported backup locations:

• Local storage: External USB/eSATA drives, internal hard disks.
• Network shares and NAS via UNC paths (file servers, NAS devices), RDX Cartridges and Offsite Backup Server (use remote server or secondary site for offsite storage).
• Azure Blob Storage as a direct cloud backup target.
• Amazon S3 provides compatibility for offsite and immutable backups.

Commvault

Commvault is an advanced platform that protects physical machines, VMs, cloud, Kubernetes and SaaS applications (Office 365, Salesforce). It is all about enterprise scale and integration, particularly with storage arrays and cloud (the MSP version is also available).

Commvault delivers expansive support for virtualization across both on-premises and cloud environments:

• VMware vSphere (vCenter-managed or standalone ESXi), including support for VM templates, VMDKs, snapshots, RDMs, vSphere tags, vApp settings, DRS and Fault Tolerant VMs (with proper version).
• Microsoft Hyper-V with agentless backup, application-aware, CBT-driven incremental (“incremental forever”) protection and SLA-based policy management.
• Other virtual platforms (as of Service Pack 22), including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon EC2, Citrix Xen, Docker, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack, Nutanix AHV, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Oracle Cloud (Classic & OCI), Oracle VM, Red Hat OpenShift/Virtualization and VMware environments
• Containerized workloads, such as Kubernetes, are also covered, in addition to traditional VM workloads.

Key features and capabilities of Commvault:

• Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and management.
• Centralized protection via VSA proxies (virtual or physical), enabling agentless protection at the VM level and providing full VM, incremental and synthetic full backups.
• Policy-based automation: Define SLAs, automate discovery/filtering of VMs and conduct scheduling and reporting through the Commvault Command Center.
• Full, incremental and synthetic full backups utilizing changed-block tracking (CBT) to minimize load and storage consumption.
• IntelliSnap integration: Utilize hardware/software snapshots for fast, consistent data capture.
• Live Recovery/Instant VM Recovery. Power on VMs directly from backups without a full data restore. Commvault can mount VMs directly from a backup for validation or short-term access.
• Application awareness and granular recovery are supported. Application-consistent backups (MS SQL Server, Exchange, Oracle) with pre-/post-scripts are used to ensure transactional integrity. Granular restore options include full VM, guest-level files/folders, individual disks and cross-platform restore.
• End-to-end encryption (in-transit and at-rest), plus secure access via role-based access, SSO and SAML authentication
• Support for anomaly detection, air-gapped copies, and pre-configured policies to enhance ransomware protection

Commvault offers diverse and flexible targets for VM backups:

• On-premises storage:
  • Disk-based libraries via local or network-attached storage;
  • Tape and virtual tape libraries (VTLs);
  • Scalable systems like HyperScale appliances for dedupe and metadata efficiency.
• Cloud storage targets:
  • Public cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) can serve directly as backup or recovery targets (without needing gateway appliances).
  • Support for air-gapped storage and immutable backup retention for ransomware resilience.
  • Multi-region protection strategies ensure locality-aware, cost-effective storage policies.

Commvault can be used in complex environments, including hybrid clouds and mixed infrastructure. Although the initial setup can be more complex than that of other solutions, this product is a reliable virtual backup solution with robust disaster recovery capabilities.

Acronis

Acronis provides effective data protection for physical and virtual machines. The Acronis family has multiple products, the main one being Acronis Cyber Protect. It provides a wide platform support, both agentless and agent-based. Agentless (hypervisor-level) backups are supported on:

• VMware vSphere/ESXi (various versions from 4.1 through 8.0);
• Microsoft Hyper-V across multiple Windows Server and client editions;
• Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), KVM, Proxmox VE and Nutanix AHV (early support in newer cloud versions);
• Oracle VM Server, Parallels and more.

Notable features and capabilities of the Acronis solution:

• Supports full, incremental, differential, file-level, image-level and full VM backups, with efficient backup via VM quiescing.
• Full traditional and instant recovery for VMware vSphere (15 seconds or less RTO), including bare-metal and cross-hardware restores.
• Universal Restore handles hardware differences across physical and virtual environments.
• Deduplication is either at the source or target, reducing network and storage load.
• Cross-platform conversion to VMDK, VHDX, etc. for VM migration.
• Integrated anti-malware and anti-ransomware protection, AES-256 encryption and blockchain-based notarization for backup integrity.
• Backup validation via checksums, reports and ML detection (especially for Hyper-V).
• Centralized web-based dashboard, multi-tenant management, flexible scheduling and backup policies.

Supported backup destinations:

• On-premises and network options;
• Local folders, network shares (SMB/NFS/DFS) and Secure Zones (encrypted local partitions);
• NFS folders (for Linux/macOS agents) and SFTP servers;
• Acronis Cyber Infrastructure (ACI) — a software-defined storage (block, file, object via S3/Swift/NFS), acting as a gateway for Azure and other clouds;
• Full support for cloud destinations, including Acronis Cloud, Azure/S3-compatible platforms and integration via ACI. AWS S3 and Wasabi are supported, including immutability.

Emerging Trends in Virtual Backup Security

As cyber threats continue to evolve, some of the top MSP disaster recovery tools are integrating smarter features to detect and respond to anomalies in real time. One such advancement is the use of an AI detector. This tool is an AI-powered tool that can scan backup data patterns, logs, and user behaviors to identify potential tampering, malware infections, or compromised virtual machines. These tools play a growing role in securing backup environments, especially in hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures where traditional rule-based systems may fall short. Services like Oracle managed services can complement these features by ensuring enterprise infrastructure is optimized, monitored, and secured at scale.

Conclusion

Choosing the right virtualization backup software is essential for protecting business-critical data and ensuring smooth recovery in case of disruptions. The top business continuity solutions in 2025 combine speed, security and efficiency to support IT teams in maintaining resilient operations. By investing in reliable virtual machine backup software, businesses can strengthen their data protection strategies and stay prepared for evolving challenges.