Bacula Enterprise vs Bnkr

Bacula Enterprise is commercially supported software for managing backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across networks. It lists support for virtual environments, containers, SaaS and IaaS, databases, Windows environments, and storage systems. Virtualization integrations include VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, Xen, XCP-ng, Proxmox, KVM, Red Hat Virtualization, Azure VM, and OpenStack; cloud interfaces include S3, Azure, Glacier, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. Backup policies can be full, incremental, or differential, with a built-in scheduler, incomplete-job restart, and bandwidth limits. The subscription includes the software suite, BWeb web-based administration, technical support, and future patches, updates, and version changes. Listed security features include FIPS 140-3 compliance, multi-factor authentication, AES encryption options, TLS communications encryption, and immutable disk volumes. SIEM and SNMP monitoring integrations are also listed. Subscription tiers depend on secured endpoint count and support response time, not data volume or storage consumed. Pricing is available on request; the maker offers a 30-day trial with support for €199, with trial support responses stated at one to two business days.

Bnkr is a free, open-source Kubernetes backup and migration application focused on valuable data inside a cluster rather than the whole cluster. It backs up files in Pods, Deployments, and StatefulSets, plus MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB databases. Schedules can run hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or through a cron formula, and manual backup and restore are available. Email notifications report successful or failed backups and migrations to multiple recipients. Bnkr describes bidirectional migration of files and supported databases between Kubernetes, servers, and S3. The project runs as a single-binary web server and can be deployed in Kubernetes with a service account able to access backup data. Its README recommends the official image because some dependencies are external tools. Bnkr is available on the web or for self-hosting, uses the MIT license, and lists more than 20 themes. The free plan is listed at free, with no usage limit stated.