Backup+/iX vs RoadRuner
Although the features and capabilities of BACKUP+/iX and Unison's RoadRunner are similar, BACKUP+/iX offers many significant benefits.

Online Backup Technology
BACKUP+/iX's online backup technology is very different than RoadRunner's and provides several distinct advantages:

RoadRunner's online backup feature requires users to exit files for backup, which normally means shutting down and restarting applications. BACKUP+/iX's exclusive Zero-Downtime Backup capability does not require users to exit files or applications to be shut down for backup; users can work through the entire backup.

BACKUP+/iX captures all transactions that occur during the backup and recovers them on restore, whereas RoadRunner does not. BACKUP+/iX's superior data protection also permits "snapshot backups" of critical files to be taken at any time, thereby providing additional recovery points.

An online backup with RoadRunner can consume as much additional disk space as the files being stored, as well as high CPU and I/O overhead. By contrast, BACKUP+/iX uses virtually no disk space and far fewer resources. Also, RoadRunner automatically puts itself in the BS queue, while BACKUP+/iX respects the queue in which it has been placed.

Performance
By optimizing the backup data and varying the number of processes, BACKUP+/iX is able to achieve a higher data throughput rate than RoadRunner.

BACKUP+/iX's exclusive Delta Backup capability dramatically reduces the size of backups by backing up only changes to files instead of changed files.

Data Encryption
BACKUP+/iX permits all backups to be encrypted or password-protected, thereby closing an often-overlooked security hole.

Disk Defragmantation
BACKUP+/iX is able to defragment disk space as part of a restore operation, thereby reallocating files into larger chunks among fewer extent blocks. This can result in better system performance, as fewer disk I/Os are required to access files.

Device Support
BACKUP+/iX supports all conventional backup devices and new high-performance high-capacity backup devices, including DLT and DLT autochangers and the new Exabyte 8mm Mammoth drive. BACKUP+/iX has been benchmarked at speeds of up to 20 Gb/hour and capacity of 80 Gb or more per cartridge. BACKUP+/iX can support up to 64 backup devices in parallel for store and restore and only BACKUP+/iX supports FASTSEARCH and APPEND on DLTs.

Intergrity and reliability
BACKUP+/iX has better mechanisms for detecting, reporting, and handling errors. BACKUP+/iX can, for example, automatically verify every backup by rewinding the tape, putting it back online, performing a verification, and ejecting the tape. Everything is done automatically and unattended.

Tape and tape library managment
BACKUP+/iX's Tape Manager & Librarian automates all aspects of backup, including media selection, scratching, and tape label printing. It also provides extensive reporting capabilities against backups, including the ability to find the backups that contain a specified fileset.

Intelligent restore capability
BACKUP+/iX's unique Intelligent Restore capability permits files to be restored with no knowledge of which backups or tapes contains the files. By issuing a single restore command, the correct backups and tapes are automatically called for.

ONVS option for restore
BACKUP+/iX's ONVS option for restore can restore files by volumeset from a backup that contains multiple volumesets, thereby eliminating the need to perform separate backups by volumeset in order to restore by volumeset.