AIMultiple’s latest disaster recovery benchmark, published July 2, 2026, has delivered a stunning result: Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud recovered a full Windows Server 2022 workload in just 73 seconds. The same platform restored an Ubuntu 24.04 server in roughly 108 seconds, outpacing competitors Comet Backup and MSP360 and resetting expectations for how fast cloud-based disaster recovery can be.

The test, which simulated the restoration of a mid-sized business server from a cloud backup, measured the time from initiating recovery to the point where the system was fully operational and accessible. Acronis’s 73-second Windows time means that for the first time in a public benchmark, a mainstream DRaaS solution has broken the two-minute barrier for a complete server recovery—a feat that will have IT managers rethinking their recovery time objectives.

The Benchmark That Redefined Speed

AIMultiple, a respected third-party testing organization, structured its benchmark to mimic a real-world disaster: a production server becomes unreachable, and the IT team must restore it from the latest backup stored in a remote cloud region. The Windows Server 2022 instance was configured with typical roles—a domain controller with around 500 GB of data, including system state, Active Directory, and several line-of-business applications. The Ubuntu 24.04 server simulated a web and database host with roughly 400 GB of mixed data.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s 73-second recovery on Windows was more than just a marginal win. According to AIMultiple’s report, the next-fastest competitor, Comet Backup, took several minutes to complete the same task. MSP360’s performance lagged further still, failing to complete the restore within what would be considered an acceptable window for many businesses. For Linux workloads, Acronis’s 108-second result was equally decisive, cementing its position as the fastest recovery solution across operating systems.

These times are not merely synthetic dashboard measurements. AIMultiple’s protocol included a series of post-recovery validation checks: verifying that all services started correctly, that data integrity remained intact, and that client workstations could reconnect to the server without manual intervention. Acronis passed all checks, demonstrating that raw speed did not come at the expense of reliability.

What This Means for You

For System Administrators

If your disaster recovery plan still relies on traditional backups that take tens of minutes or even hours to restore, the AIMultiple benchmark should serve as a wake-up call. A 73-second recovery turns a catastrophic server failure from a resume-generating event into a short coffee-break interruption. This isn’t just about convenience—it directly impacts your RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and, by extension, your organization’s ability to meet service-level agreements.

Consider a domain controller failure. With many backup solutions, restoring the AD database and getting replication going again can take 20–40 minutes. During that time, user logins may fail, group policies won’t apply, and productivity grinds to a halt. A 73-second restore means that by the time you’ve notified your team of the outage, the system is already back online.

For Managed Service Providers

Speed sells. MSPs offering Acronis-based DR services can now market a concrete, independently verified advantage: guaranteed restoration in under two minutes for Windows workloads. This isn’t a lab trick—it’s a repeatable benchmark result. In a crowded market, that differentiator can win contracts over rivals whose recovery speeds remain in the double-digit minutes.

Additionally, the faster the restore, the lower the overhead for your support desk. Fewer emergency calls, less downtime tracking, and happier clients who won’t dread their next quarterly business review.

For Business Decision Makers

Downtime costs money. The IT industry’s oft-cited figure is $5,600 per minute, but even a conservative estimate of a few hundred dollars per minute puts a 30-minute outage at five figures. Slashing that to 73 seconds reduces the cost to a rounding error. When evaluating DR solutions, don’t compare feature lists alone—demand independent restore-time benchmarks like AIMultiple’s.

For Linux Shops

The 108-second Ubuntu recovery is equally impressive and underscores that Acronis’s speed isn’t a Windows-only optimization. Linux servers power critical web, database, and container orchestration workloads. A fast restore there means your Kubernetes nodes or PostgreSQL instances can be back in service before a monitoring system even triggers a high-severity alert.

How We Got to 73 Seconds

Disaster recovery hasn’t always been this fast. A decade ago, a “rapid” restore might mean 15–30 minutes for a full server, and that was assuming you had a recent, intact backup and a warm standby environment. The journey to sub-two-minute restores has been driven by three key shifts.

Instant restore technology. Acronis and others have moved beyond file-by-file restoration. Instead, they spin up a VM directly from the backup repository, giving users immediate access while data is asynchronously moved to production storage in the background. This “instant-on” capability cuts the user-visible recovery time dramatically.

Flash-optimized cloud storage. In 2026, most DRaaS providers use all-flash cloud storage tiers, which drastically reduce I/O latency during restore operations. Combined with deduplication and compression, the effective throughput during a recovery can exceed what’s possible from older spinning-disk arrays.

Integrated cybersecurity. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud unifies backup with active anti-malware and threat detection. While that doesn’t directly speed up a restore, it does ensure that the recovered system isn’t infected—a common pitfall that can force repeated restores and delay full return to operations.

AIMultiple has been benchmarking DR solutions annually since 2022. Earlier tests saw restore times hovering around 3–5 minutes for the fastest solutions. The jump to 73 seconds reflects both maturation of the technology and intense competitive pressure to shrink recovery windows.

What to Do Now

Don’t take your own DR plan’s recovery times at face value. Vendor claims are often based on ideal lab conditions. Here are concrete steps to act on the AIMultiple findings:

  1. Run your own fire drill. Simulate a total failure of a non-critical server and time the entire restoration process—from initiating the restore to validating that services are reachable. Duplicate the AIMultiple methodology as closely as possible: same OS, similar data volumes, cloud-to-cloud recovery.

  2. Evaluate your RTO policy. If your stated RTO is, say, 30 minutes, but you can actually restore in under two minutes, you may be able to tighten SLAs and reduce insurance costs or compliance burdens.

  3. Test different failure scenarios. A simple server crash is one thing. Test restoration after a ransomware attack where you must be certain the recovered data is clean. Acronis’s integrated malware scan during restore is a feature to look for.

  4. Consider a hybrid approach. Even if you’re locked into another backup vendor for primary protection, you can deploy Acronis as a secondary DR solution for the servers that demand minimal downtime. The cost of licensing a few critical workloads may be far less than the cost of extended outages.

  5. Download the AIMultiple report. The full benchmark report includes detailed methodology, competitor rankings, and performance under various load profiles. Reading the primary source will help you make an evidence-based purchasing decision.

For those already on Acronis, ensure you’re using the latest build of Cyber Protect Cloud (version 16.0 or later as of mid‑2026) to benefit from the most recent performance optimizations. The 73-second result was achieved with default settings and no special tuning, but reviewing your backup plans for optimal deduplication and storage tier selection can shave off a few more seconds.

The Outlook

AIMultiple’s benchmark doesn’t just crown a winner; it raises the bar for the entire industry. Comet Backup, MSP360, and others will inevitably respond with faster restores in their upcoming releases. Within a year, sub-60-second Windows recoveries could become table stakes, and businesses will begin to expect near-instant failover as a standard feature.

What’s next? Look for AI-driven recovery orchestration that can instantly provision backup infrastructure in a different availability zone or region without human intervention. Acronis already offers automated runbooks, but tying those to real-time performance metrics could further shrink the effective recovery time to the point where users never notice an outage. The 73-second benchmark is likely just the beginning.