DESCRIPTION
The release notes provide brief, high-level descriptions of the features of Unitrends Free, highlight major differences between Unitrends Free and Unitrends Enterprise Backup (UEB), and provide information on system requirements and community resources. Any recommendations and considerations follow best practices and requirements for a successful deployment. For detailed instructions of procedures supported in Unitrends Free, consult the Unitrends Administrators Guide.
Contents
Welcome to Unitrends Free
Features
Comparison Table
User interface
Requirements and considerations
Additional resources
Welcome to Unitrends Free
Unitrends Free™ is free virtual backup and recovery software that quickly deploys as a virtual appliance in VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. The appliance performs host-level backups of the virtual machines you choose to protect.
Features
These features are available for Unitrends Free:
- Protect and recover for free
You will never have to pay for Unitrends Free. If you decide to purchase a full version of our Unitrends Enterprise Backup virtual appliance, which offers a wide range of advanced data protection features for physical and virtual machines, you will be able to migrate your backups from the Unitrends Free appliance.
- Quick and easy deployment
At less than 1GB, downloading Unitrends Free is fast. Once downloaded, the Unitrends Free installer eliminates the guesswork by automating deployment.
- Appliance setup in seconds
Getting started is easy with our 3-step setup wizard.
- Intuitive interface
Unitrends Free introduces an intuitive interface that greatly simplifies the process of protecting and recovering your data. The new UI is a work in progress and we value your feedback. Please use the Unitrends Community button in the UI to let us know what you like and dislike, request features, and provide any feedback to help us improve your experience. We also encourage you to participate in the discussions in our Unitrends Free forums.
- Protection and recovery made simple
- Protect up to 1 TB of unique VM data, with no limits on the number of VMs you can protect and no constraints on the number of sockets.
- Schedule fast, incremental forever backups for daily recovery points. Changed-block tracking and incremental forever backups ensure your backups complete quickly and consume minimal storage space, since only changed data is processed after the first backup completes.
- Recover files and VMs in just a few clicks. Use instant VM recovery to quickly run a virtual machine from a backup and minimize downtime.
- Easily monitor backup, backup copy, and recovery jobs using a dashboard of interactive tiles.
- Cloud integration
Copy backups to Google Cloud, Google Nearline, or Amazon for longer-term data protection.
- Unitrends community integration
Get Unitrending to stay in sync with the Unitrends Free community forums and Knowledge Base. The community forums are directly integrated into the user interface, allowing you to search the forum and work with our community easily. For details, see Support for Unitrends Free.
Comparison TableUnitrends Free is available in two editions: the original edition and Unitrends Free for Google Cloud Platform, which was created in collaboration with Google Cloud Platform. The following product comparison table highlights the major differences between the Unitrends Free editions and Unitrends Enterprise Backup.
Feature |
Unitrends Enterprise
|
Unitrends Free |
Unitrends Free
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing Model | Paid | Free | Free |
| Amount of Data Protected | Unlimited | 1 TB | 1.5 TB |
| vSphere Hypervisor-Level Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Hyper-V Hypervisor-Level Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Next Generation User Interface | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Physical Protection for 200+ Operating Systems | Yes | Windows Only | |
| Deep Virtual Protection | Yes | ||
| Granular Application Protection | Yes | ||
| Local Backup Copies for Tape, Disk | Yes | ||
| VM Recovery—Full, Instant VM, and File | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| P2V, V2V, V2P Recovery | Yes | ||
| Windows Instant Recovery | Yes | ||
| Dissimilar Bare Metal Recovery | Yes | ||
| Protects free VMware vSphere (Free ESXI) | Yes | Yes | |
| Amazon Web Services† | Yes | Yes | |
| Google Cloud Storage† | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unitrends Cloud† | Yes | Coming Soon | |
| Managing a License | Yes | ||
| Cloud Backup Copy Targets | Google Cloud Storage Standard Google Cloud Storage Nearline Amazon S3 Rackspace |
Google Cloud Storage Standard Google Cloud Storage Nearline Google Cloud Storage Nearline |
Google Cloud Storage Standard Google Cloud Storage Nearline |
| Backup and Restore of applications: SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and Oracle | Yes | ||
| Management of Other Appliances | Yes | ||
| Automatic Installation of Unitrends Agent | Yes | Manual install | Manual install |
| Credential Manager | Yes | ||
| Adding NAS Assets | Yes | ||
| Deduplication | Yes |
User Interface
The user interface in Unitrends Free differs from the user interface in Unitrends Enterprise Backup in the following ways:
- There is no Feedback button in the Help menu.
- There is no access to the legacy interface.
- The following Dashboard tiles are not available and do not display as tile preferences in Unitrends Free:
- Recover Summary
- Backup Copy – Cold Targets
- Backup Copy – Target
- The following Dashboard tiles are selected by default in Unitrends Free and cannot be deselected:
- Backup Summary
- Storage
- Active Jobs
- There is no Add Appliance button on the Appliances tab of the Configure page.
- There is no Remove button on the Appliances tab of the Configure page.
- There is no Add Storage button on the Storage tab of the Configure page.
- There is no Copied Assets tab on the Configure page.
- There is no Manage Credentials tab on the Protected Assets tab of the Configure page.
You can deploy Unitrends Free on an ESX or Hyper-V host. Unitrends recommends running your appliance and protected VMs on different hosts. This prevents losing VMs and backups in case one of the hosts fails. See the following topics for requirements and considerations:
- Requirements and considerations for deploying on an ESX host
- Requirements and considerations for deploying on a Hyper-V host
- Storage requirements, for both VMware and Hyper-V deployments
You can deploy Unitrends Free on a server running paid versions of ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, or 6.0. On paid ESXi versions, run the EXE installer from a Windows machine on which both .NET Framework 3.5 and 4 are installed. For details, see the following Microsoft documents:
You can deploy Unitrends Free on Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled. Note, deploying to other operating systems, such as Windows 2012 R2 Server Core and Hyper-V Server, is not supported. The appliance deploys using an .EXE installer that must run from the Hyper-V host on which you deploy the appliance. Both .NET Framework 3.5 and 4 must be installed on the server. For details, see the following Microsoft documents:
Once deployed, install the Unitrends Hyper-V agent on the host before adding the host to the appliance. You can access the agent from the Unitrends Free download page or directly here. The file name for the agent is Hyper-V Host Agent.msi.
Storage requirements
In addition to the hypervisor requirements, the following resources are required to deploy the Unitrends Free VM appliance:
Storage requirements
In addition to the hypervisor requirements, the following resources are required to deploy the Unitrends Free VM appliance:
- Minimum of 2 virtual processors (CPUs)
- Minimum of 4 GB of RAM
- 90 GB of space for the VM’s initial disk
- Minimum of 128 GB of backup storage
Support for Unitrends Free
Support for Unitrends Free is provided through the following resources:
Support for Unitrends Free is provided through the following resources:
- Unitrends Free forums
- Unitrends Free Administrator’s Guide
- Unitrends Free tour
- Knowledge Base articles
The forums are a key component of Unitrends Free. We encourage you to post questions in the forums and answer questions posted by other Unitrends Free users. Forums are moderated by Unitrends employees. You can access the forums here: https://unitrends-support.force.com/UnitrendsFree/s/.
Recovery-Series and UEB Administrator’s Guide
Recovery-Series and UEB Administrator’s Guide provides complete instructions for deploying, setting up, and using procedures supported in Unitrends Free. If you have questions that are not covered in the guide, please search the forums or post questions. For assistance with troubleshooting, see our Knowledge Base.
Unitrends Free tour
After you complete the Quick Setup dialog, a short tour guides you through the necessary steps to begin protecting your VMs.
Knowledge Base articles
Articles in our Knowledge Base provide assistance with troubleshooting. If you encounter a problem that is not covered in a Knowledge Base article, we encourage you to search the forums or post a question. You can access KB articles and forum discussions here:
https://unitrends-support.force.com/UnitrendsFree/s/
Recovery-Series and UEB Administrator’s Guide provides complete instructions for deploying, setting up, and using procedures supported in Unitrends Free. If you have questions that are not covered in the guide, please search the forums or post questions. For assistance with troubleshooting, see our Knowledge Base.
Unitrends Free tour
After you complete the Quick Setup dialog, a short tour guides you through the necessary steps to begin protecting your VMs.
Knowledge Base articles
Articles in our Knowledge Base provide assistance with troubleshooting. If you encounter a problem that is not covered in a Knowledge Base article, we encourage you to search the forums or post a question. You can access KB articles and forum discussions here:
https://unitrends-support.force.com/UnitrendsFree/s/