4. Which BMBR Product Is Best For You?

If you’re on a super-tight budget, Shadow Protect for SBS is probably your best bet. It includes server backup and recovery, and an unlimited number of workstations as part of the license, and handles image backups and bare metal and individual file recoveries on local drives. Bare metal backup and recovery are both pretty straightforward, but the product lacks some of the bells and whistles you’ll find in the other two, more expensive offerings. But for all that, it costs only $495.

The Symantec Backup Exec package for SBS costs $600, but you must also purchase up to one dozen additional Workstation Backup Exec licenses at $40 each to cover workstations as well as your server. That comes to $1,080 for our hypothetical configuration, but this also provides sophisticated backup and bare metal or discrete file recovery. Whether on the server or on the workstation (or using Restore Anywhere to run things across the network), backup and recovery are easy and straightforward, as is the media-based Lights Out recovery when a boot image is required to restore a machine. Small businesses that already use Symantec products will find these familiar, and may be able to negotiate bundle pricing on the purchase, or maintenance thereafter.

Like Shadow Protect, the Yosemite Backup SBS Master Server includes workstation backup as part of its overall pricing. To perform bare metal recovery, though, you must purchase the Bare Metal Disaster Recovery Option at $499 in addition to the SBS Master Server at $874, for a total of $1,373. That said, the Yosemite products offer some of the best support for Volume Shadow Copy Services around. This product also supports SharePoint, in addition to SQL Server and Exchange, and supports both hardware and software encryption for backups. Though it is slightly more expensive than Symantec, it also offers arguably better services and performance.

Table 1: SBS Product Features and Prices