Agent-based and agentless replication - what are the pros and cons?

The main benefit to using agent-based replication is that such backups are a proven industry standard. Agent-based replication also avoids the need to power down systems during backups, ensuring a continuous operating cycle, while also providing application hooks to further backup integration or "hot backups".

The downside of agent-based replication is the management and cost overheads involved in keeping the agents up-to-date. Conversely, agentless replication, by its very nature, avoids these overheads providing a much cheaper solution. However, it also requires systems to be offline while backup is taking place, which for critical systems is often unacceptable.

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Businesses need to weigh up the added cost of agent-based replication against its benefits in order to decide whether having systems offline is acceptable. In general, if a system is business-critical, it should use agent-based replication. For non-critical or remote systems, short offline periods are no great problem, and agentless replication should be used.