Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines Reviews

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines is primarily used in sectors such as mining, health, education, and finance requiring high availability. It allows for point-in-time recovery and is intended for customers who need to ensure minimal data loss with near-zero RPO.

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines provides the flexibility to recover data to any specific point in time. It allows rollback to a point just before an error or incident, enabling effective disaster recovery.

It offers key features like any point-in-time recovery without needing scheduled snapshots. It allows for automated VM protection during processes like failover and testing, and it offers replication flexibility across multiple environments, including local centers and secondary sites. It also provides IP address management when network configurations differ across sites.

The solution currently supports only VMware. There is increasing demand for compatibility with other hypervisors, such as Hyper V and KVM Proxmox. Additionally, licensing has become less flexible and more expensive.

The solution is stable. Most experience with it has been up to VMware version seven.

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines is highly scalable. It offers options to add more virtual appliances to manage parallel replications as needed, allowing for expansion either via additional replication sites or by increasing virtual appliances.

The technical support from Dell is excellent. As a former customer of Dell, the support is a key strength that extends to RecoverPoint.

Positive

Prior to using RecoverPoint, solutions were built with open-source options. However, as the workload increased, there was a need for a reliable and quick solution. The previous solutions couldn't match the granularity and efficiency offered by RecoverPoint.

The initial setup of RecoverPoint is straightforward. While some calculations may need to be done regarding storage space for point-in-time recovery, overall, it is not complex.

Implementation requires one person from the service provider and several customer personnel to understand VM relationships. The service provider should be knowledgeable in storage and virtualization.

The return on investment materializes immediately in incidents requiring compliance with regulatory laws. It acts as an insurance policy for data recovery needs.

The cost of Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines has increased recently with less licensing flexibility. It's now part of a larger bundle rather than a standalone product.

We previously considered solutions, including SRM and Veeam replication.

If continuing with VMware, RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines is a great solution. Overall, I rate it nine out of ten.

When we began with RecoverPoint, it was primarily a block IO replication solution between the storage systems. It is not at the level of VMs. Initially, we had limited experience with VMs. We are still working with IO splitting. It is a solution that integrates with the storage area network, SAN.

The generalization of the journals allows us to go back in time and choose the snapshot suitable for us. We can grab it as needed. It is very powerful in journalization, with the most user-friendly interface. It is a very simple tool to use and offers flexibility in using the tool for recovery and transitioning from one state to another. We can go back half an hour, one hour, or two hours before to get a cleaner image of the data.

The biggest challenge we faced was attempting replication between two different kinds of storage systems, like IBM on one side and Dell EMC storage systems on the other, before opting for VPLEX. 

Initially, making the two storage systems replicate was not an easy task. There was a splitting in the fiber switches at first. Then, the RPAs, which manage replication, would move the IO blocks to the second system. In the end, the two systems were not the same, which made it difficult to synchronize them. 

However, we succeeded in replicating smoothly with Oracle databases and Windows machines. When we acquired the VPLEX Virtual solutions, it became much easier. It was a piece of cake to do the replication between two VPLEX systems since they communicate in the same language.

Even if there is a problem, for example, if the fiber switch is down, when we fix the issue, the system automatically returns to normal by itself.

I would rate technical support a six and a half.

We used IBM Power systems before. For replication, the first solution we used was RecoverPoint. We were looking for simplicity. Hyperconvergent infrastructures like Nutanix or VxRail proved easy to use. Nutanix was seen as better than VxRail.

I'm satisfied with what we did ten or 15 years ago. In the beginning, it was good and rapid. I would rate it eight and a half out of ten.

Most of the time, we buy perpetual license solutions.

In the beginning, we encountered heterogeneous data systems. It wasn't that simple to make them replicate. It's like Dell working on a legacy platform, which is supposed to be end of support.  

For the overall product rating, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We have PowerEdge servers and PowerStorage at both the main and Doctor sites. We use the solution to replicate virtual machines to another site in case of a disaster.

The speed and the footprint the solution uses regarding storage are great. Additionally, the integration with VMware is a very good feature.

At this point, from what we know of the solution and how it works, it's fine. We haven't seen a bug or an issue that would require improvement of the appliance, whether it's the virtual appliance or something else. Maybe integration with Kubernetes for OpenShift would be useful. If you want to replicate containers, that could be improved.

Working with Dell Support is really easy and reliable. In some cases, the response times could improve, but we haven't had issues with their support.

Positive

The setup is quite simple if you know how to install it. If you don't, it is quite tricky so having knowledge of prerequisites is essential. For us, it was smoother because we contracted third-party services.

Typically, one person from a third-party service is involved, and it takes about one to two days to deploy the solution. From deploying to going live, it may take additional days as customers have to provide details about their VMs and requirements.

Our customers' requirements vary, and ROI depends on how much value the company places on having infrastructure and services. We don't conduct case studies, and customers simply tell us what they need, and we provide solutions.

We generally sell the whole package from three to five years so that customers can forget about it. Approaching the end of contracts, customers may choose to extend support for another year if they lack budget to acquire the whole solution again.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Neutral

My client was using the product to migrate his data center from one geographical area to another. We had to move the hardware to a new geographical area and move the VMs on the PCs, so it was used to migrate these VMs.

I heard from my team that the tool is quite useful, as you can do things much faster and better.

The solution's technical team has enough skills, but the process can get complicated with the time you get connected with the L3 support.

I have been using Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines for six to seven years. My company operates as an integrator and reseller of the tool.

In terms of stability, some customers were happy while some were not. There was one customer who had a constant reboot of one of its nodes in his cluster. Dell tried hard to fix that solution, but that was not possible, and so it isolated the node.

It is an easily scalable solution.

I cater to all types of customers' needs, from enterprises to small-sized businesses.

The technical support for the solution has been satisfactory. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The product's initial setup phase was quite easy to install.

I am not a technical person. I don't have hands-on experience with the product's deployment phase.

Customers are experiencing an ROI from the tool's use, but I will not be able to quantify that since it depends and varies from customer to customer.

The tool is expensive. If one means cheaply priced and ten means expensive, I rate the tool's price as a seven.

In terms of price, I wouldn't want to compare Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines with any other solution because it is part of Dell VxRail. I think the customer buys Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as part of Dell VxRail's license. About four of these DRM licenses are offered as part of the bundle.

One is required to maintain the solution, especially for support, upgrades, and updates. Whether one person or more is required to maintain the tool depends on the environment and the number of nodes that the customer has, but I think it is pretty easy. Not many resources are required.

I have no idea if the tool has any AI features.

What I heard from the team is that they had compared SRM with DRM, and they realized that the latter was easy to use, especially with the support they received from Dell during the whole migration process. The team was quite happy with the tool.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

The main use case is site-to-site virtual machine replication and failover.

RecoverPoint replicates workloads fast.

There is a problem with the solution's architecture. First of all, it requires double the resources on the virtual environment to set up one environment. You set up a cluster of virtual machines per site, so you are doubling the resources you need.

While it wastes resources, it also provides a strategy to do high availability. It also lacks backward compatibility with some of the old vCenter servers. When you get an issue, they want you to upgrade up to the latest edition. However, when I have an old vCenter server, I should be able to use whatever version we have to do the replication.

It also has a security vulnerability because it requires several ports to be open in the customer environment. These ports are open on the firewall. It also lacks a reporting mechanism to show a customer, the number of machines you've backed up and the difference. It's essential for a customer to know what is happening. 

I have been using RecoverPoint for two and a half years.

RecoverPoint hasn't been very stable in this particular customer use case. However, I don't know if it is because of their environment or the connection. The solution is generally stable if you set it up well.

RecoverPoint is scalable.

I rate RecoverPoint support eight out of 10. An engineer is usually available, so they will put you straight through to the engineer when you call on Skype. You have access to live support, but you don't get a live engineer with PowerVault.

We used other products from Veritas, VMware, and CommVault. RecoverPoint for VM is specialized. The main difference is that it's dedicated to the disaster recovery strategy. It doesn't have those aspects of point-in-time backup and recovery. It's for disaster recovery site-to-site replication and continuous backup. 

It's complex for someone who has never set it up before. I would rate it six out of 10 for ease of setup. 

RecoverPoint's licensing is based on the number of virtual machines and the capacity that we are backing up, and the number of cores. It's between $5,000 and $30,000, depending on the licensing model and your environment. I think they even have something below $4,000. You also need to pay maintenance, which is about 10 percent of the price. 

I rate Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines seven out of 10 because the support is great. 

We encourage customers to use this solution if they have two sites. For example, an HQ and a disaster recovery site. The workload can be moved directly if the disaster site is the main site.

It would be good to have a critical application on the customer side. We suggest the customer makes a disaster for the main or critical applications in their environment. In the next release, the software should be integrated with other solutions to understand all customer applications.

We have been using this solution for three years. Depending on the customer, it can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have about five customers from the banking sector in Egypt using it.

There are licensing costs for enterprise customers like the banking sector and oil and gas. The licensing costs are okay.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten and recommend it to others.

We are using it for DR Security.

Point-in-time recovery and ease of deployment are valuable.

Its scalability and integration with VMware cloud foundation should be improved. 

It should have features for recovering a group of virtual machines and full-scale security. For recovering all the VMs at once, they don't have a GUI option, and we have to use the command line.

I have been using this solution for more than one year.

It is stable.

Its scalability can be better.

We have good support, but we have been having issues with the product. We've been trying to work on them with the help of their support.

It was straightforward, but we had issues after the setup. So, we are working with their support to resolve these issues.

It was a part of a backup solution. So, it was free for us.

We checked out Commvault and Zerto.

I would rate it a seven out of 10.

One of the standout features of Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines is its real-time data protection capability. The tool operates in real-time, ensuring that changes to virtual machines are continuously captured, which is crucial for minimizing downtime and potential data loss. This means that in the event of a disaster or data loss, recovery can be achieved with precision, down to specific points in time. The solution provides both local and remote data protection, facilitating communication and safeguarding against issues like data corruption. With a focus on optimizing RPO and RTO, RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines emerges as a comprehensive and singular solution for organizations seeking robust data protection and disaster recovery measures.

While Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines offers a solid solution for our local and remote data protection needs, there are a couple of areas that could be improved. The configuration process seems a bit challenging, and the installation takes a bit longer than expected. Additionally, the user interface could be more user-friendly to enhance the overall user experience. In terms of cost, the pricing is a bit on the higher side, especially for a company of our size. It would be great to see some adjustments in pricing or perhaps more flexible options. Additionally, Dell could improve its service by implementing a more automated and centralized solution for IP connectivity issues. Offering additional services like remote system location, recovery, and repair could provide valuable support to customers, even with an added service charge. This approach would streamline software-related issue resolution remotely. Dell could extend similar remote solutions to its partners, fostering stronger partnerships. For hardware-related problems, ensuring a quick supply of similar SKU stock could lead to swift resolutions within a short timeframe, aligning with the industry trend of remote software support and rapid hardware response.

Both the hardware and software are scalable, allowing for easy upgrades and improvements. This scalability means Dell can sell software with added features for the next five to six years. Whether it is for an Android or iOS cell phone or a similar solution, Dell can offer a scalable and continuously upgradable recovery option for customers.

It is on the expensive side.

Overall, I would rate Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as a ten out of ten.

We are using Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines primarily for data replication from one location to another.

The solution could improve by being more easier to use. However, once you have used it for a while it becomes easier. Additionally, there could be better support and compatibility with management by having a command-line interface. This would be beneficial for the customers.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable but the performance could improve.

We have two customers using this solution.

The technical is very good but sometimes it takes them a while to come back with a solution to our issue.

The installation is straightforward if the version you have is compatible with your infrastructure.

One person can do the whole implementation, monitoring, and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required for this solution and the pricing depends on how many virtual machines you have.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines a nine out of ten.