Double Take vs XOsoft WANSyncHA

Queries the following Comparison is trying to Answer:

• XOsoft WANSyncHA VS Double Take
• How does Double Take compare to XOsoft WANSyncHA?
• Advantages & Disadvantages of XOsoft WANSyncHA & Double Take
• What is better Double Take or IBM XOsoft WANSyncHA? How?
• Independent Unbiased Comparison XOsoft WANSyncHA & Double Take

XOsoft WANSyncHA VS Double Take Introduction:

If you have reached this page you are more probably considering building a disaster recovery for your current infrastructure, but still can’t solve the puzzle of the solution or the vendor to use you are at the right place. We offer and are preparing many comparisons regarding Disaster Recovery for Physical and virtual environments. At this page we are comparing between two legend Disaster Recovery Solutions for Most of Microsoft environments. XOsoft and Double Take are the two major vendors for Software Base Disaster Recovery Solution. Other Disaster Recovery Solutions Comparisons will be published regularly. At this page the comparison we will focus on the competitive information of Double Take & XoSoft. It will has a high over view of Double Take Versus XOsoft WANSyncHA.

Feature	NSI Double-Take        VS       XOsoft WANsyncHA
Ability to exclude specific files/folders from replicationselection	Yes	Yes
Continuous Data Replication	Yes	Yes
Replication Granularity	Byte-level	Byte-level
Open-file Replication	Yes	Yes
Storage Hardware Independent	Yes	Yes
Automatic Failover	Yes	Yes
Automatic Failback	Yes	Yes
Notification by e-mail, GUI,Event Log and SNMP	Yes	Yes
Command Line support	Yes	Yes
Data Compression	Yes	Yes
Multiple levels of data compression	Yes	No – either on or off
ITComparison Team Comments	Double Take provide better flexibility when it come to compression levels. It offer multiple levels of data compression, which give the chance for each organization to tune the compression level to fit their specific need unlike XOsoft, which offer only an On/Off switch to toggle compression On/Off.
Scheduling per replication set	Yes	NO
ITComparison Team Comments	Double take has better flexibility in allowing to have different scheduling per replication set, oppose to having one scheduling per all sets.
Application integration with “inband” Commands and Pre/Post Failover Scripts	Yes	NO
Snapshots Capability	Yes	Yes
replicate NTFS encrypted files  (EFS)	Yes	NO
ITComparison Team Comments	Till today, XOsoft still does not support the replication of NTFS encrypted files which is one of the widest used encryption method on windows platform. CheckXOsoft does not support NTFS Encrypted files replication  In the other hand, Double Take provide full support for NTFS encrypted files and provide a real solution for replicating encrypted files. XOsoft are planning on supporting NTFS encrypted files replications in future releases, but no specific date has been provided.
Work on OS Layer	Yes	Yes
Application Aware	Yes	Yes
special rights required to replicate all data	No	Yes, Domain Admin
shares always in sync	yes (once per hour)	No, Only during initial  synchronisation
ITComparison Team Comments	Unlike Double Take, XOsoft does not keeps shares in sync which can generate a great pain in keep up with updating shares on the destination server specially when using XOsoft to protect your file and print sharing servers. This factor can be a real shy away factor from XOsoft when planning to protect file and print sharing servers where shares changes often. Please check http://www.xosoft.com/support/faq2/pub/show_subtopic.pl?sn=36 for more info on this XOsoft limitation. Keep up with shares manually is not required by Double Take as it keep it updated on hourly basis. If file & print sharing is in your focus then Double Take got a great advantage being able to keep up with your shares automatically.
Microsoft Operations Manager support	Yes	False
ITComparison Team Comments	Double take offers a bit more manageability and easy monitoring by allowing integration with Microsoft MOM if desired.
replication and synchronisation can run simultaneously	Yes	No, Full Sync has to be done before Replication start.
ITComparison Team Comments	in XOSOFT (replication and synchronisation) do not run together, this means that during re-sync there is no replication and data is not protected till a full sync has been established, on the other side Double take start both synchronisation and replication when the connection is made, it means changes are sent immediately and protection of data after connection establishment can be reached faster. Double take approach lower the time data is unprotected after connection establishment to minimum.
replication volume-based	No-it captures changes at the file system level	No-it captures changes at the file system level
Linux Support	NO	Yes, offer special products for protecting Linux Data.
replicates file permissions	Yes, In real time	Yes, but not in real time.
Uses Memory Buffering to improve performance	Yes	No, Directly write to disk which slow performance.
Support Level	DIRECT 24/7 support from the developer done by a team dedicated to Double-Take!	24/7 support available, but the team supporting the product is the CA team and is not only dedicated for XOsoft. XOsoft support seems to be even worsen after they have been bought out by CA, as they are not the butter and bread of CA.
Investment Protection	same single product for File, SQL, Exchange, etc	Separate Product for each application it protect File, SQL, Exchange.
ITComparison Team Comments	Double Take uses a single product which can protect Exchange, SQL, File, print server, etc with the same license can be used to protect any one of them. This protect your investment as you can move your license across the several servers you want to protect freely as needed as licenses are not tied to the application it protect. In the other hand, XOsoft has a different product for each application it protect, which mean if you are buying license to protect file & print server today then you got rid of your file & print server and want license to protect your Exchange you would need to purchase a new one, where in Double take you would move the license across.
The ability  to manage replication configurations from multiple client management stations simultaneously	True	False
ITComparison Team Comments	This ability of double can lower the time necessary to make configuration changes to the replication environment from multiple locations. Quite useful for large firms with multiple sites.
Full Server Recovery ability.	Yes, when adding Double-Take Server Recovery Option (SRO)	Nothing equivalent available yet
ITComparison Team Comments	Double-Take Server Recovery Option (SRO) provides the ability to restore entire servers, including the operating system (OS), applications and data – even to servers with different hardware configurations. More it even allow the restoration of the full server to many point of times. SRO is a unique feature of Double take with no equivalent from any Disaster Recovery solution provider.
initial synchronization Performance Compression Disabled  Compression Enabled	15% faster  Twice as fast	15% longer        Twice as long
resynchronization Performance  Compression Disabled  Compression Enabled	5% longer 30% faster	5% faster 30% longer
Failover Performance	Double Take required almost 2/3 of the time required by XOsoft to complete a failover.
Exchange performance	A bit faster than with XOsoft	A bit slower than with Double Take.
Replicate Registry changes	Yes, but only with SRO Option	Yes
ITComparison Team Comments	XOsoft replicate the Windows registry to help their failover process, but it can increase the risk of virus spreading to the disaster server as well. Double Take can offer registry replication if you get the SRO option, but its not required.