Best Backup Solution for VMware Alternatives in 2025

As so many are looking at their options for virtualization solutions into 2025, one of the deciding factors can be the backup solution that can be used to backup your workloads, such as virtual machines. Arguably, there are a several VMware alternatives that many are looking at in 2025. However, the main contenders as alternatives include Nutanix, Hyper-V, Proxmox, XCP-ng, and Kubernetes. Let’s look at the available backup solutions for these VMware alternatives.

1. Backup Solutions for Nutanix AHV

In looking at the alternative that many are looking at moving from VMware, Nutanix certainly has a strong chance of being the favored alternative. For years now, it has been the enterprise alternative to VMware with their strong HCI offering.

Many feel more comfortable migrating to an enterprise offering rather than moving to an open-source offering for their core virtualization technology. The Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) is a well-known solution that also has many commercially available backup solutions, even including most of the ones that organizations may already be using to back up their VMware ESXi environment.

Best Solutions

• Veeam Backup for Nutanix: Veeam has continued to bolster their enterprise backup solution for Nutanix. Veeam is a solution that most trust with their enterprise data and have used it for years with VMware. You can use it to backup and replicate your Nutanix data.
• HYCU for Nutanix: This is a purpose-built backup solution for Nutanix AHV. HYCU offers native integration with Nutanix and also agentless backup with application aware functionality.
• Rubrik: Another trusted enterprise backup solution for protecting Nutanix. Rubrik’s AHV backups provide automated policies and instant recovery capabilities. Rubrik is also well-known for its ransomware protected backups

2. Backup Solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V

I think Microsoft Hyper-V is also a strong contender in the space of VMware alternatives. If a company is not looking at Nutanix, they may be looking at Hyper-V as an alternative solution. Many organizations already have Microsoft enterprise agreements in place and are very familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem. Many are also using Microsoft 365 for enterprise communication and collaboration solutions.

With this being said, Microsoft Hyper-V is probably one of the strong contenders on the table of virtualization alternatives for those moving away from VMware. Which backup solutions are a great fit for backing up Hyper-V?

Well, thankfully, Hyper-V has been around a long time and most of the commercial backup solutions out there support backing up Hyper-V virtual machines, giving companies many different options for backups. Here are just a few of the best solutions.

Best Solutions

• Veeam Backup & Replication – As you would expect, Veeam fully supports backing up Hyper-V, with agentless backups, file-level restores, and integration with Microsoft 365.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication – The NAKIVO solution also has agentless backups, site recovery, and ransomware protection for Hyper-V environments along with protecting many other solutions.
• Active Backup for Business by Synology – I am putting this one on the list of solutions, since many SMB environments may also be running Synology NAS devices. With that, you get a free license for Active Backup for Hyper-V making this an extremely economical solution to protect your data. This is also a great option for home lab environments.

3. Backup Solutions for Proxmox VE

Proxmox has gained traction arguably like no other solution on the list of VMware alternatives. It seems like everyone is talking about Proxmox as an alternative solution to VMware, both in the home lab and in production environments. Proxmox combines KVM virtualization along with LXC containers into a cohesive platform that allows most the ability to run what they need to in their data center. Let’s note the backup solutions.

Best Solutions

• Proxmox Backup Server – This is the native backup solution for Proxmox and it is completely FREE which is a big deal as most organizations spend a large percentage of the same amount of money on their backup solution. It is the one that most are used to with Proxmox and it offers deduplication, compression, and incremental backups. Proxmox also has the ability natively to replicate virtual machines between storage of multiple Proxmox hosts.
• Veeam Backup & Replication – Veeam Backup and Replication v12.2 introduced official support for Proxmox backups and it my testing it works flawlessly, in true Veeam fashion. It is a great turn of events to have Veeam, one of the flagship data protection companies officially supporting Proxmox agentless backups with this release.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication – NAKIVO with the release of v11, now also supports agentless backups of your Proxmox VE Server virtual machines. It is gaining a strong following in the enterprise as a solution that is a great alternative to other solutions like Veeam Backup & Replication.

4. Backup Solutions for XCP-ng

Another strong contender for a VMware alternative is the XCP-ng solution which is a free and open source fork of the Citrix Xen hypervisor. It also has a free backup solution built into the solution out of the box with the feature built into Xen Orchestra.

Best Solutions

• Xen Orchestra – The de facto backup solution for XCP-ng, offering incremental backups, deduplication, and disaster recovery.
• Bacula – Bacula has a backup solution that backs up XCP-ng albeit as a paid product. It contains additional features for XCP-ng backup, including support for databases, clusters, and applications backup
• Vinchin – Provides a backup solution that has more bells and whistles than the Xen Orchestra backup solution and a customizable dashboard

5. Backup Solutions for Kubernetes

Many organizations are once again accelerating their move to containerized solutions. With that being said, Kubernetes is the de facto standard for running containers in the enterprise and allows organizations to have the benefits of high-availability, scalability, and elastic nature of running workloads that they have in the cloud. However, like all solutions, Kubernetes needs to also have proper data protection around the solution to make sure mission critical application data is protected.

What are the top solutions for protecting your Kubernetes environment with backups?

Top Solutions

• Kasten K10 – This is a purpose-built backup solution for Kubernetes by Veeam. Kasten K10 provides many of the enterprisey backup features for Kubernetes like application-aware backups, DR, and multi-cloud support.
• Velero – This is an open-source backup solution for Kubernetes that provides backup, recovery, and migration for K8s cluster resources. It allows for protecting persistent volumes backing stateful Kubernetes resources.
• Commvault for Kubernetes – A modern backup tool offering features like self-built on-premises or cloud deployments, auto-discovery and protection of kubernetes applications by namespace or label, application-consistent snapshots of persistent volumes.

Which backup solution is right to choose?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one size fits all solution to the question of which solution is right. Each organization may choose a different VMware alternative for one reason or another. With this choice comes differences of choices for the backup solution. For Nutanix and Hyper-V, there are really only enterprise solutions available that will need to be licensed. However, for the open-source solutions on the list like Proxmox, XCP-ng, and Kubernetes, there are both free and open-source and paid solutions for backups.

All-in-all, look for the following in a backup solution for the VMware alternative that fits your needs:

• Integration – Make sure your backup solution integrates as you would expect, natively with your chosen virtualization platform.
• Ease of Use – Simple configuration and management interfaces go a long way in day-to-day management. A complex solution with many features that are hard to use is generally not as good as a more simple solution with not as many features but that are very easy to use and implement
• Data Recovery Capabilities – Make sure the solution has fast recovery times, can do granular restores, and can do application-consistent backups for application restores.
• Ransomware Protection – Look for backup tools with immutable backups and anomaly detection to have additional security possibilities.
• Cost – Open-source tools like Velero or Xen Orchestra can be cost-effective for smaller setups, while enterprise-grade solutions like Veeam or NAKIVO provide more comprehensive features as you would expect from a pay-for solution.

Wrapping up

The playing field for VMware alternatives is getting much larger with many different virtualization solutions. However, thinking about the backup solution is an area that must be considered as this is one of the most important aspects of running your production workloads, protecting your data. It is great to see there are so many different solutions that can protect, even the free and open-source hypervisors on the list. Also, many of the enterprise backup solutions that ones are already familiar with using, like Veeam, are also capable of protecting many of the VMware alternatives which helps to bring along the familiarity that organizations already have with their backup solution.