Arcserve ShadowProtect vs Kopia

Arcserve ShadowProtect is a paid backup and recovery product for Windows and Linux. It creates image backups for physical and virtual computers and servers, with support for workloads including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, IIS, Hyper-V, Dynamics CRM, VMware vCenter, Oracle Database, and custom applications. Listed SaaS coverage includes Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Azure DevOps, Dynamics 365, Power BI, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Zendesk, Jira Cloud, and Confluence Cloud. Backups can run multiple times daily, use incremental images, be encrypted, and go to cloud image destinations. Immutable backups and application-aware backup are supported. Recovery features include item-level restoration, bare-metal restore, and bootable recovery media. ShadowProtect also provides test failover, failover orchestration, failback orchestration, and audit logs in a hybrid deployment. Annual and two-year subscriptions include updates, upgrades, and standard technical support during the subscription period. A perpetual license covers one system in physical or virtual environments. There is no free plan; pricing is on request and a 30-day trial is listed.

Kopia is an open-source backup and restore tool that creates encrypted snapshots of selected files and directories. Snapshots are incremental, and content deduplication stores duplicate file content only once in a repository. Policies can schedule snapshots, set exclusions, define retention, and apply compression. Recovery options include mounting a snapshot as a local disk, restoring an entire snapshot to a chosen location, or selecting individual files. Kopia encrypts data and filenames before they leave the machine, supporting AES-256 and ChaCha20. Storage can use Amazon S3 and compatible services, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Google Cloud Storage, WebDAV, SFTP, local or network storage, and some Rclone providers; Rclone support is experimental. Reed-Solomon error correction and repository consistency checks address data integrity. CLI and GUI interfaces are available, with optional server mode and an API for managing multiple machines. KopiaUI provides a web application in server mode. The software is free, but storage must be provisioned and paid for separately.