Best Backup and Disaster Recovery Tools for MSPs

Sergei Serdyuk
VP of Product Management   Nakivo

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) face constant pressure to safeguard client data against ever-growing threats such as ransomware, hardware failures and accidental deletions. Without a solid backup and disaster recovery strategy, even a minor incident can lead to costly downtime and loss of trust.

The right tools ensure data protection and streamline the recovery processes for maximum efficiency. Discover the best backup and disaster recovery tools for MSPs to keep your clients’ operations running smoothly.

Why Backup and Disaster Recovery Are Essential for MSPs

For MSPs, the stakes of data loss or prolonged downtime are exceptionally high. Every minute without access to critical systems can lead to significant financial losses and impact client trust. Beyond immediate operational disruptions, such incidents can cause lasting reputational damage that’s difficult to repair.

The MSP-specific data protection challenges include:

  • Multi-tenant environments. While these provide better efficiency and security, MSPs should invest in backup solutions that can protect multi-tenant environments.
  • Scalability. MSPs should be aware of their customers’ continuously growing data volumes and create a scalable infrastructure for storing and backing up data.
  • Compliance. MSPs or their clients may work in regulated industries or regions, and they must back up data and store it properly to ensure regulatory compliance.

Must-Have Features of the Best Disaster Recovery Tools for MSPs

The top MSP disaster recovery solution must include the following features:

  • Centralized management for diverse client environments. While clients can configure their own backup solutions, they often rely on MSPs to set up and manage backup and recovery jobs, so the best disaster recovery tools for MSPs should accommodate both scenarios.
  • Automated backups and recovery workflows. Backup solutions for MSPs must support automated backups, allowing a job to be configured once and executed regularly without manual intervention. As for recovery workflows, the solution must support multiple data recovery options, including full and granular recoveries.
  • Integration with virtual, physical and cloud infrastructures. Organizations use various environments, including physical machines, virtual machines and cloud. A reliable backup solution for MSPs should protect a wide range of physical and virtual environments, with broader platform support offering greater flexibility and value.
  • Cloud disaster recovery services for MSPs. Since a large number of customers use cloud services nowadays, it is important for MSP IT disaster recovery solutions to support cloud backup and disaster recovery.

Backup Solutions for MSP: What to Look For

The MSP backup tool should include some essential features, such as:

  • Endpoint protection. In this context, endpoints can be servers, workstations, virtual machines in the local infrastructure and in the cloud. Consider using a solution that can protect data at this level.
  • MSP backups for NAS and similar storage devices. MSP backup solutions should include NAS device protection, as many organizations rely on them for storing and sharing critical data.
  • Backup to cloud. Consider a solution that supports backup to Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3 and other cloud storage.

Top MSP Disaster Recovery Solutions

Below, you can see the list of the top disaster recovery solutions for Managed Service Providers.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is one of the most affordable MSP IT disaster recovery solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. It is a comprehensive data protection solution with a wide range of features.

  • Backup and recovery for virtual, physical, cloud and SaaS environments. NAKIVO protects virtual machines in VMware vSphere, Proxmox VE, Microsoft Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV. It also supports Windows and Linux physical machines and servers, as well as EC2 instances in AWS. You can also protect Microsoft 365 data and applications.
  • Ransomware protection. You can configure immutable backups to prevent alteration or deletion by ransomware. You can also apply encryption to data at the source, in transit and at rest. Additionally, you can perform pre-recovery malware scans to ensure that your backup data is clean.
  • Powerful multi-tenancy. MSPs can manage up to 100 isolated tenants within a single product instance, all from the centralized MSP Console. Each tenant accesses their own secure, self‑service portal to run and monitor backup, replication, and recovery tasks independently, ensuring seamless delivery of Backup‑as‑a‑Service (BaaS) and Disaster‑Recovery‑as‑a‑Service (DRaaS) with minimal overhead.
  • Reliable disaster recovery. Wide and flexible retention settings allow MSPs and their clients to implement complex disaster recovery strategies. The Site Recovery feature is developed to run automated workflows.
  • Multiple backup destinations. The NAKIVO backup solution for MSPs allows you to store backups on local repositories, SMB or NFS file shares and cloud storage (Microsoft Azure, AWS S3 and S3-compatible object storage).
  • Flexible MSP backup pricing options. The flexible licensing model allows MSPs to buy a set of licenses that are grouped in a license pool. Then, the MSP can provision the needed number of licenses to tenants from this pool. NAKIVO offers a 15-day, fully featured free trial, no strings attached.

Veeam Service Provider Console

Veeam Service Provider Console is a web-based, centralized data protection management platform designed specifically for Managed Service Providers, cloud providers and large distributed enterprise IT teams. It allows multi-tenant control and monitoring of Veeam-powered backup, replication and disaster recovery services. The included features are:

Centralized management for backups across multi-tenant infrastructures. Veeam Service Provider Console supports multi-tenancy, meaning each customer (tenant) can be logically and securely isolated in the management portal. MSPs can delegate access to end customers, partners or internal teams to manage their own backup jobs, monitor alerts or view reports.

Scalable disaster recovery management for MSPs. Deep integration with Veeam Cloud Connect enables Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS). Replication and failover orchestration are used to manage and automate VM replication to a secondary site (on-premises or cloud) as well as perform planned or emergency failovers via the console.

Strong focus on virtual workloads and hybrid cloud environments. There is full support for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Integration with Veeam Backup & Replication enables image-level backups of VMs, agentless recovery as well as replication and snapshot orchestration. Hybrid Cloud Integration allows administrators to manage backups for workloads across on-premises data centers, public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and Microsoft 365.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is a unified data protection platform that combines backup, disaster recovery, cybersecurity and endpoint management into a single solution.

Unified backup, disaster recovery and cybersecurity for MSPs. As Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is the all-in-one cyber protection platform, this solution unifies backup, disaster recovery (DRaaS), antivirus, ransomware protection, patch management, remote desktop, monitoring, security and compliance reporting. This single-agent, single-console solution is designed for MSPs and provides a multi-tenant management portal for managing multiple customers in isolation.

AI-based threat detection with integrated data protection. One of the main features of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is proactive AI/ML threat detection based on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Using machine learning and behavior-based analysis to detect zero-day threats, fileless attacks and suspicious processes. Acronis Active Protection continuously monitors for ransomware-like behavior (e.g., rapid file encryption).

Cloud, endpoint and NAS protection. Acronis can back up and protect workloads across Microsoft 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams), Google Workspace, Azure and AWS (via agents or APIs). Endpoint protection includes backup for Windows, macOS, Linux desktops/laptops and virtual machines (VMware, Hyper-V, KVM). Agent-based and agentless backup options are available for Network Attached Storage (NAS) and SMB file shares. It is possible to store backups in Acronis Cloud or a custom cloud (partner or on-premises).

MSP Backup and Disaster Recovery Pricing Insights

Pricing is an important factor when it comes to choosing a data protection solution.

MSP Disaster Recovery Tool Price Range

Pricing for MSP backup and disaster recovery tools typically follows usage-based, tiered or per-device models.

Factors that affect MSP backup pricing

Pricing can vary significantly depending on several operational and technical variables. Storage volume is the primary driver of cost in cloud-based backup. More data means higher costs. Some vendors offer hot, cold or archive tiers with different rates. In addition, protected workloads matter. More endpoints, VMs or SaaS users mean higher pricing. Moreover, vendors often bundle agents or licenses.

MSP Disaster Recovery Vendor Pricing for Scalability

Take into account a few recommendations regarding pricing evaluation when choosing backup solutions for MSPs:

  • Look for clear cost breakdowns by: Endpoint/server/VM, storage tier, disaster recovery compute and features (e.g., ransomware protection, remote desktop).
  • Some vendors offer usage-based billing with no up-front commitment. Others require annual commitments and minimums (for example, 1 TB or 10 endpoints). Look for monthly billing tied to actual usage with no penalties for short-term churn.
  • Ensure the vendor supports multi-tenancy and role-based access. Check how flexible the licensing scheme is to ensure you can add only what’s needed, bundle or unbundle services per client.

Conclusion

Choosing the right backup and disaster recovery tools is critical for MSPs to safeguard client data, minimize downtime, and maintain trust. By prioritizing solutions that offer robust protection, flexible recovery options, and scalability, MSPs can deliver reliable, high-quality services. The right tools not only protect data but also strengthen your reputation as a trusted partner in resilience.

Sergei Serdyuk

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