Which one is right for you?
Data resilience is now a priority for storage and backup teams. They need certainty that the data they’re responsible for hasn’t been compromised. They need to know that when it’s needed, it can be used for a clean and fast recovery. They need to know there is no risk of reinfecting production systems following a cyberattack.
The Predatar Recovery Assurance platform and Veeam SureBackup have both been designed to solve these challenges. Because Predatar works with Veeam Backup & Replication, the question we regularly get asked is ‘Which one is right for my business?’
For many Veeam customers, SureBackup is a great choice – especially as it’s included at no additional cost within some Veeam subscriptions. However, for lots of Veeam customers, Predatar is the best option. For example, Predatar’s speed, automation capabilities, and advanced reporting makes it an ideal choice for highly regulated organisations that need to achieve recovery validation at scale, and prove compliance. Businesses using multiple backup products may also find that Predatar is a better fit for them.
This article will help you understand the differences between these two solutions, and make the right choice for you.
Access to Veeam SureBackup and Predatar
When it comes to accessing SureBackup, things are a little complicated. It’s only available as part of some – but not all – Veeam subscription packages. It’s not available as a standalone product, so if it’s not part of your subscription, you will need to upgrade your Veeam plan to use it.
You can find out which Veeam subscription plans include SureBackup here.
It’s also important to know that in order to unlock ALL of the power of Veeam SureBackup, user will also need Veeam ONE and Veeam Recovery Orchestration subscriptions.
When it comes to Predatar, it’s much simpler. Predatar is available as a standalone subscription platform. It is available to all Veeam Backup & Replication users, regardless of their subscription package.
Core functionality
At a high level, Veeam SureBackup and Predatar are built to achieve the same goal: to validate the recoverability and cleanliness of backups. The differences lie in how they do it, their scalability, and in the scope of the backup platforms and file types each one supports.
Backup application support
Veeam SureBackup is built into Veeam Backup & Replication and is designed to validate both VMware and Hyper-V VMs (Virtual Machines). It works well on-prem or in hybrid setups, but not when Veeam runs entirely in the cloud.
By contrast, Predatar is an independent, vendor-agnostic platform providing broader support. In addition to validating Veeam backups, Predatar can also validate backups from:
• IBM Storage Protect,
• IBM Defender Data Protect,
• Cohesity Data Protect,
• Rubrik Security Cloud.
Additionally, Predatar can validate immutable snapshots on IBM FlashSystems and Pure Storage boxes. This makes Predatar a great fit for businesses with two or more backup and storage technologies in their stack.
Workload support
Veeam SureBackup supports Windows and Linux VMs. Predatar goes further, not just validating Windows and Linux virtual machines but also Windows and Linux bare metal servers, SQL databases, and AIX workloads too.
Automation and AI
Veeam SureBackup provides the ability to run automated workflows for recovery testing and antivirus scanning that significantly reduce time, complexity, and manual effort. However, the ‘out of the box’ workflows are relatively basic, and can only triggered based on pre-defined schedules. While the schedules are easy to configure by the user, more advanced automations are only possible with Veeam Recovery Orchestrator (a separate product), or with custom scripting via PowerShell.
Predatar’s built-in automations are more advanced and highly customisable via an easy-to-use interface featuring dropdown options and simple toggle switches. In addition to pre-defined schedules, Predatar automations can be triggered by threat alerts, failed backup runs, SIEM notifications and more.
One of the most impressive aspects of the Predatar platform is the underlying Aurora AI engine. Aurora continually monitors thousands of signals across your backup environment and external intelligence sources to apply a real-time risk score to every node in your environment. Aurora will trigger and prioritise automated testing of workloads at high-risk with no human intervention required.
Veeam’s Isolated lab vs Predatar CleanRoom
Veeam SureBackup uses Isolated Labs. Predatar uses a CleanRoom. So, what’s the difference?
The purpose and general principle are the same: both are safe, segregated environments where backups can be tested for recoverability and potential infections — without any risk to the performance or integrity of production systems.
Veeam’s Isolated Labs run inside on-premise hypervisors and require a Proxy appliance, virtual switch configuration, and access to production backups. When a recovery test is triggered, SureBackup will immediately spin-up an Isolated lab on a VM. Once the workflow is complete the lab will vanish.
Predatar CleanRooms are permanent, always-on environments, which can be deployed on bare metal, hypervisors, or in the cloud – in a just a few hours. CleanRooms are designed to continually run recovery tests and malware interrogation 24x7x365.
Threat intelligence
SureBackup uses ClamAV, an open-source antivirus engine, to detect known infection signatures hiding in your backups. Predatar includes Trend Micro Vision One – recognised by Gartner as a ‘Leader’ in XDR platforms – at no additional cost.
Vision One updates four times daily with up to half a million new malware and ransomware definitions. It brings the insight of over 1,600 threat researchers directly into your backup validation. The strength of this collaboration with Predatar and Trend Micro has meant that Predatar has found malware or in more than 80% of its customers backups that their production security tools had missed.
Speed and performance
In controlled lab conditions, Predatar was tested alongside Veeam SureBackup to evaluate the success and performance of recoverability and cleanliness validation for backup data.
Each solution was tasked with testing 100 virtual machines (including both Windows and Linux), ranging from 100 GB to 500 GB. Some VMs were deliberately infected with sample malware to simulate a realistic threat scenario.
While both products successfully detected the infections, Predatar completed the tests in just 41 minutes, compared to 3.5 hours for Veeam SureBackup.
Trust and Credibility
Did you know, Predatar is a Veeam Ready Partner? For many Veeam customers, Predatar may be a brand they’re not yet familiar with. But Predatar has been creating backup intelligence and automation tools for over 10 years, and has been pioneering Cyber Recovery CleanRoom technology for nearly five years.
In 2024, after rigorous validation by Veeam, Predatar was awarded Veeam Ready status. Today, Veeam users around the world are using Predatar every day, to proactively prove their recoverability.
Search the Veeam Ready database here
Read a customer case study:
Preventing a Cyber Emergency with Veeam & Predatar.
Reporting and compliance
Veeam SureBackup focuses on technical backup and recovery metrics and feeds them directly into Veeam ONE. This is particularly convenient for storage and backup administrators already leveraging Veeam ONE for dashboards and reporting.
Predatar’s reporting is designed for compliance teams as well as backup teams. Out of the box, reports align with NIS2 and other commonly used frameworks, giving you proof of cyber recovery confidence not just technical success.
Conclusion
Veeam SureBackup is a solid option for many Veeam Backup & Replication users — especially small to medium sized businesses with Veeam Universal Licences (VUL).
Predatar offers a more robust and comprehensive solution, organisation handles large volumes of data, wants to test more than virtual machines, operates a multi-vendor environment, or runs 100% in the cloud, Predatar is likely to be the better choice. It delivers deeper automation, broader workload support, and reporting that stands up to the toughest audits.
Want to dig deeper?
Take a look at our Veeam SureBackup and Predatar comparison table and FAQs here. They will help you evaluate both solutions and choose the one that’s right for your organisation.
Get started with Predatar
Contact our friendly team at hello@predatar.com or book a demo get started on your journey to recovery confidence.
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At Predatar, we make every effort to ensure our content is accurate. If you believe anything in this blog is misleading, incorrect, or out-of-date, please let us know.
