AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery Reviews

Enterprise disaster recovery.

We went from an organization with minimal to no disaster recovery. I was able to spin up the disaster recovery environment with AWS rather quickly and meet business requirements. We continue to build off of it as well. It is in place, and it is simple enough where we can continue to add licenses and systems, and swap systems out too. As we remove some servers, we can always add new ones in with the same license.

The speedy, quick configuration and installation was the initial reason for the product and what I enjoyed about it. Now, it just continues to be simple and works well.

One item that they did fix was, and this was when we first started, they had only one type of license. Then they did come out with a Tier 2 type of license, which costs a little less money. It updated a little less frequently, which seems to fit our needs. That was definitely helpful. 

There are some servers where we do get failures with the CloudEndure client. I don't know necessarily if it's the CloudEndure issue, but it's something that my engineers fixed on our end. It's always something that's easily repairable, though. There is a constant update of the servers. 

It's a fairly simple product once the infrastructure's in place. We did hire a third-party to help us build the AWS infrastructure to work with CloudEndure, but once it was up and running, it  pretty much runs on its own now.

There were no stability issues, once it was up. We built the environment once, but that was because we migrated to the additional licenses. However, once it was up, the only instability was just some random servers. There was pretty much always fixed on the client side, and usually it was Linux machine.

I don't recall any CloudEndure crashes with server usage.

We just did an upgrade, and it went fairly smoothly. Once it is on the machines, if we are not changing anything around, it seems to work fine. Even the reporting features on the dashboard are pretty cool. You can see what state all the servers are in. You can get reporting if something is not updating, so the visual stations are good as well.

Technical support has always been responsive. We engage with a third-party to work with us on CloudEndure and the infrastructure, so we work with them most of the time. For any of our dealings with CloudEndure, they have been pretty responsive.

We had an old school type of DR with replication. 

Since we put CloudEndure in place, which is our DR for our Tier 1 and 2 servers, replicating out from our facility to AWS, and it has been bare-metal to bare-metal type of disaster recovery. This is our first cloud-based DR solution.

The setup was fairly simple, and we spun it up pretty quickly. We did have a third-party help us, so most of the effort was putting into building the AWS environment, but that wasn't too difficult. We designed the AWS environment, then on a smaller subset, we installed the client and the client started replicating, and that was our initial test. Then from there, we kept adding servers.

It helped us build our disaster recovery. Our organization was moving towards the cloud in a lot of areas, so it saves us ample dollars from having to buy hardware for disaster recovery. We even used it for other cloud systems for disaster recovery as well. The other piece to it was not relying on any specific type of server. It worked on our Window servers and our Linux servers, because it is versatile.

The pricing is better now that they had come out with the Tier 2 which replicates a little less often. In comparison to what I would have been spending with any other type of solution, the pricing is fair. 

Where the price adds up, there are CloudEndure licenses, then there is the AWS environment, and finally, there is the AWS storage, so cumulatively, it adds up. The license would be better if it cheaper. I do not think it is great pricing, but I would say it's fair.

Through my third-party, I locked-in for the long-term. I received some price discounts from a three-year deal versus a one-year, which I probably question a bit now. It forced us into a certain amount of licenses. From year-to-year, I can't really play with it that often or drop it if needed. I am sort of locked into a certain amount of serviceable licenses because of the long-term deal. This has nothing to do with CloudEndure. This is between the third-party and me.

When we first went with this, it was we did lay out three options. We had somebody help us with making this decision. It was CloudEndure, it was moving towards a metal to metal type of DR solution, and the other one that we had up and running was VMware. I don't even know if they sell the product anymore, but VMware had a DR type of solution. We used the three of those, and we were testing them. VMware didn't seem to cut it. From a cost savings, it seemed like it made sense to go with CloudEndure and AWS versus a metal to metal type of DR solution. We did have a VMware solution in place, but we canceled it.

I haven't really compared other cloud-based DR solutions, so I can't compare it to anything else.

I was able to build this up real quick and testing has always been successful as well. I have had issues bringing data back to the facility, but the restore has always worked with CloudEndure.

Before you jump into it, test it and be aware of the bandwidth. We did have to put in a dedicated AWS direct line for our building. Make sure if you are going to put something in place like this that you have the proper bandwidth. The bandwidth is a constant upload communication to the AWS DR environment, so if you do not have the proper bandwidth, it will definitely eat up your internet line.

Disaster recovery.

I wouldn't necessarily say there has been a particular improvement. This is a DR solution, so we are able to meet the disaster recovery requirements of our applications.

• Ease of use
• Reliability
• Cost
• Stability

Definitely there should be better logging. From a customer perspective I would like to see more logs on what is happening. If there is an issue, I would like to know what the problem is. Right now, we have to depend on the support of the vendor to check and let us know, because we don't have access to a lot of logging information.

Also the UI could be a little sleeker.

There have been no issues. 

Scalability is pretty good. It's seamless; it can do it automatically. 

Their phone support is pretty good. The only thing I would like to see is, they don't have a formal ticketing system. There is no way I can go back and see what questions we had six months back, what issues we had, and how they were resolved. But otherwise, the support is fine.

This is the first solution we are using in the cloud. In the datacenters there are other solutions used, but this is the first time we are using a DR solution in the AWS cloud.

It was straightforward. It was pretty easy.

I feel the product's pricing is a good value. Licensing is pretty straightforward.

We went looking at other options but the market is not really mature yet. I don't think there are numerous options, at least for me, on the public cloud side. We did look at a couple of other options, but we didn't go into detail, to evaluate them. We evaluated CloudEndure and we were pretty much happy with it so we just went with it.

We did look at Dell EMC, NetBackup, things like that, but we didn't really pursue them.

Planning ahead is important, just making sure you really understand what you need before finalizing the solution.

We use it for disaster recovery. It appears to be working fine for us.

We were in a different environment which had its own tool for performing disaster recovery. When we moved into AWS, we decided to move forward with this tool for disaster recovery. 

It provides our disaster recovery solution. It works fine in our tests.

Disaster recovery. It is what we have the product for.

Sometimes, one of the servers will get behind for one reason or another, and it does not notify us when that happens. This could be a helpful improvement.

Sometimes a server will get a bit behind. 

There has never been any issues with scalability. They license us on a per machine basis. We have a set number of machines, which we have licensed.

Technical support has been very good. They usually respond quickly to our requests.

Our group did not use a different solution, but our data center had a different solution. When we went to AWS, the data center people were not able to support us with a disaster recovery solution, so we looked and chose CloudEndure.

The initial setup is really straightforward.

We were happy with the pricing that they gave us.

We investigated several different options and chose this one.

Follow the write-up. It is very good. 

The ability to replicate our database and our data from one cloud to another is the most valuable feature. We are using it for disaster recovery so we replicated all our databases from Rackspace Cloud to Amazon Cloud. We moved from Rackspace to AWS because we didn't want to end up in a situation where we would be locked, so we chose to replicate our databases to another public cloud.

We are currently only using it for disaster recovery but are planning to migrate.

It could be a bit more automated. When we wanted to start using replicated data, the process was complex. For example, with Amazon we needed to stop replication of CloudEndure, and needed to create another instance of our server. Only after that are we able to start using the data, and by then the data is outdated. Therefore, the data becomes outdated quickly. To actually start replicating the data, I need to start a manual process which takes time.

We've used it for four months so far primarily for disaster recovery.

We had issues, but it was because we needed to use a specific instance of a server in order to make CloudEndure work perfectly. I suggest that you use experts when you start using it.

It’s very stable. We haven’t experienced any problems since the system became operational.

We're only replicating database servers – 20 servers. However, in total data, our website is ranked #475 in the world. All our operational databases are replicated using CloudEndure.

It's very high. We have good relations with all levels of management in the company, including the CTO and their architects, so their customer support has been great.

I've never heard of any complaints.

We tried a native solution from Rackspace but it failed.

We set it up as part of a POC and it was easy.

We implemented it ourselves in-house.

It's disaster recovery so you’d need to look at the business data. I'd say that the ROI is extremely high and valuable.

We tried native solutions before, and once we migrate to AWS, we'll try their native solution as well, but we'll still need CloudEndure to replicate between our data centers.