BDRShield Reviews

Vembu has been a great solution for my smaller clients who don’t need a lot of storage. The entry price is excellent for small businesses who want to use cloud backups.

I have 8 clients currently using Vembu Cloud BDR.

Moving to cloud backups eliminated the need for clients to change USB drives or worry about drives being stored offsite.

I can restore through the Vembu client or pull the file from anywhere via the browser. So far, it has been adequate in meeting my clients' needs.

There are a lot of cloud backup solutions that can handle documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and pictures, but they are more limited for those who need cloud backups for applications like SQL. 

I have had issues with new client registrations. There are frequent connectivity issues to the cloud servers. Multiple times, I have had to prove to support that it wasn’t a problem on my end. It always works out in the end, but it is troubling to have the same issues repeated across different clients. Issues eventually get escalated to the cloud team and are mysteriously resolved with no changes on my end. I don’t know if it is an AWS issue, capacity issue, or something else. However, it is concerning for clients when they get several failure notices for their backups, though through retrying the job was eventually successful.

It can still mature in some ways. The agent interface can be improved and the portal could be more informative.

I have been using Vembu Cloud BDR with clients since 2019.

I have had no issues doing restores. Throughput on restored data is an issue for some other cloud backup solutions. However, I have never had an issue with Vembu Cloud BDR.

We have always gotten to a solution eventually. Sometimes, it takes some time though. 

I had an issue that had to be escalated to the cloud team that was only available 9 to 5 local India time. Having to stay up for a support call at 2 AM (my time) was frustrating. I had to pursue it to prove a new client registration issue was not a problem on my end. Not being believed by support and having to go to that extreme should not have been necessary. I was correct in the end, as they eventually found an issue on the Vembu client provisioning side. I think the whole situation could have been handled better.

Most of my issues were resolved, but there is rarely anything on my end that needs to be fixed. Most resolutions say something like, “We detected a problem on our servers and took steps to resolve the issue.” Then, things start working again. While we get a resolution, I don’t have much visibility into what was done. Since we generally get there eventually, I will rate the technical support as seven out of 10.

Mozy used to be the major player in this market space. Mozy’s demise, with its purchase by Carbonite, left a void for a solution that could handle SQL cloud backups and meet small business needs. Vembu Cloud BDR has been filling this void for my small clients for a few years now.

I have clients that have used many solutions. For those who switched to Vembu Cloud BDR, most are coming from Carbonite (originally Mozy) or Backup Exec with local storage.

It is straightforward when it works. I have had issues a couple times with new client registrations.

Deployment takes less than an hour.

My implementation strategy is to register the cloud account, install the client agent, configure the jobs, and then run.

I deploy and maintain the solution.

Backups are like an insurance policy. You pay for the protection and hope you don’t need it. You don’t really expect a return, just security if needed.

The pricing is good. The tough part is estimating storage needs.

We used to be able to license regular PCs at no cost. We just paid for storage. The recent addition of the workstation license has changed that. For clients who use Vembu Cloud BDR for backup of remote user laptops, they now have licenses that they need to buy in addition to their server license.

The solution has excellent affordability for businesses with tight budgets.

I checked up on just about every cloud backup solution that I could find. This solution provides SQL application backups with a good entry point for small businesses.

It is a good value. While there have been some issues, that happens with any solution. Vembu Cloud BDR is a good entry product for small clients and can also scale to larger environments. I have not seen anything that diminishes its value.

Restore speed has been fine. Luckily, I have not had to do a complete restore, only occasional files or an SQL database.

Most clients were using local USB drives for backup storage prior to moving to Vembu Cloud BDR. Speed of restores was not an issue coming from a local source. The only clients who have seen an increase were those that previously were using another cloud backup provider that has notoriously slow restore throughput.

I will increase usage as client needs dictate.

I would rate it as eight out of 10. 

We are using it for the backup of our VMs and restoration activity. We are deploying some new technologies for which we would be able to use the features of Vembu.

It has been very helpful for data backup and restoration and license management. License management and everything else works smoothly, which is very useful for us.

Its restores are nice and reliable. They are fast and smooth. As compared to other tools, they are 80% faster. The speed of the restores also depends on my network. We have less than 10 gigs of speed.

It provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files. They have many options to restore the data. We tested them during the DR last December. Having multiple ways to restore the service and data is very useful.

Its download VM feature is useful in migrating physical machines to our VMware environment. There were no challenges in doing that through the GUI. It was user-friendly.

The ability to map a drive and restore a separate file is most valuable. The restoration activity is good.

The data integrity check features are useful during the restoration activity. At the time of restoration, we are also checking the DR plan.

We haven't yet checked its compatibility with the new technologies in the market, such as Nutanix. It would be good if any new technology can also accommodate Vembu.

They need to improve their marketing because not many people are aware of it. People ask me what is Vembu, and I have to explain to them it is a good tool for backup and other things. 

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

Its stability is good. Its reliability is good when we have VMware and Linux VMs. It works smoothly.

Its scalability is dependent on the number of licenses that you purchase. Currently, we have 10 to 15 engineers and project managers who use this solution.

It is being used extensively. We are using only Vembu for the backup part. So, our core data depends on this solution. We have around 20 VMs, and we are taking backups of almost 100 GB of file server data. We might increase its usage in the future. Some of the people approached us to go for a new tool, but I explained to them the features that it offers. We don't have any plans to move to another solution.

Vembu team is giving excellent support to us. They provide 24/7 support. We can reach out to them at any point in time. They are able to address and give proper support for our queries. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

My organization was using another solution previously. I have used Symantec backup and other tools in my previous organization. All these tools are more or less the same.

It was already installed when I joined this organization.

We have seen an ROI in terms of reliability. When we invest in a backup solution for infrastructure backup, it should work at critical times. With Vembu, I am able to restore data quickly without any issues.

Its price is reasonable as compared to other solutions. There are no additional costs.

While increasing the count on the server-side, we have to take care of managing or optimizing the license.

We have not used Vembu's instant boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs or physical machines after a crash. We have also not used Vembu for the backup for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or AWS.

I would rate Vembu BDR Suite a 10 out of 10. It is a good tool for backup, replication, and restoration. Everything is good in this solution.

Mainly, we use it for our backup recovery. If you have relevant data, we need to make backups similar to the data to ensure that we can export it in the case of any emergency or disaster. The main use case is disaster recovery for relevant data to be able to survive after any disaster.

I have two deployments. One of them is Hyper-V deployment with backup for Hyper-V virtual machines. The other one with backup for the Vembu virtual infrastructure version. Both of them are on-premises. There is nothing on the cloud.

All our clients have been happy with the backup and restore features.

It is easy. You can save a lot with their features, without a lot of hassle. You can design your backups closely and flexibly without a lot of details or variables. It is very straightforward. You can put what you want in the right place in a very short amount of time.

The speed of the solution’s restores is good. It is dependent on the infrastructure and the nature of the connection between the storage and servers. Overall, it is good. There are no problems when using it.

You can restore all your data or partial parts of it. You can restore a specific version of the data. It has a lot of options for restore, so you can have the correct data that you want to restore. This is very important. You must know what you are going to restore. Otherwise, you may be overwriting correct data with other data. You must know what specific files you are restoring as well as which version. Partial restore is very important because there might be some files which are newer than the backup and some files that are corrupted. You need to restore some files from the backup, but not all the files.

We have the VM replication. We can copy a VM to another host with VM replication.

Maybe they can add some features regarding working with the vCenter cluster to be able to have more power over the cluster overall, not just over a single or specific host. Also, I would like some enhancements in technology for the web interface, e.g., some interactive technologies to advance the interface of Vembu. Although the current interface is very good, maybe they can use more advanced technologies for its web development.

I have been using it for about a year.

For the entire time that I have used Vembu, I didn't encounter any issues. It is very consistent and nothing failed nor was corrupted. 

I have three people trained on the solution, and the main person is leading the support. They are IT specialists. The role of backup administrator is assigned to them. They keep track of the backup operations done daily or weekly. If something needs to be restored, they are responsible for restoring it.

Scalability is good.

I am backing up two environments: Hyper-V and VMware. One of them is about 40 VMs, and the other about 60 to 65 VMs, supported by three machines that are dual sockets each.

The main component in the backup solutions is compatibility. The backup is located on the hard disk, and I didn't face any corruption of data, which is very valuable. When something happens as an error, there is technical support who gives us the reason why this error is emerging. In most of the cases, the errors are emerging from the operating systems in which you are trying to back up. Sometimes, the client refuses to connect, etc. All this is under control and can easily be solved.

I refer a lot to the knowledge base on the website, which is very good. I haven't needed to contact support persons interactively. 

I tried to install it twice on Linux just for testing, and I succeeded, but it was picky sometimes, because there are a lot of options with command line interface. So, it was a challenge to get it to work on many operating systems. However, on Windows, the setup was very straightforward and no problem at all.

Using Windows to deploy takes not more than five minutes. It is very fast. For Linux, it takes about half an hour to an hour, according to the problems that we would face.

We tried to restore it mainly on the physical machines, not virtual. The hardware that it is deployed on is very reliable. We faced problems on the backup machine itself. The machine, which functions to store the data, must be very reliable. You also need to keep it away from any disaster or security exposure.

I did contact their technical guys for some technical discussions before we deployed one of the instances that we used. They were very good and helpful.

Manually restores or restores from manual backups are very hard. They take some time. Restoring from a platform software, like Vembu, makes things very easier, particularly the speed to restore which version, which state, and to where. So, you speed up the overall operation by 20% to 25%.

The ROI is very good because you have the safety of being protected by backing up your data a lot. If an incident happens, then we can restore valuable data, save a lot of money, and preserve the continuity of the business. This is a big benefit which provides a lot of value. 

The pricing of Vembu is one of its strong points. The license is not as much as other competitors, and it has a variety of licensing options: subscription-based, perpetual licenses, and a virtual machine license. You can design whatever license that you adopted to your environment, and that can support your environment without extra cost, providing more than you need. So, you can design a license that fits your environment and budget. The pricing is very good and can be used when the budget is tight.

I used Veeam software for a while, but as a trial. I didn't support it because their prices are very high. I think Vembu provides the most resolution for our backups.

I use the Microsoft Windows Backup tool sometimes. However, it feels like a very heavy tool, not a sophisticated tool.

I know that there are features that are more advanced with other competitors, but those are not needed often.

I used Vembu's Data Integrity Check once when doing an integrity check for the backup. If I have doubts that the backup is good or bad, it might be good for that, but I haven't used it a lot.

I encouraged you very much to engage with Vembu. Vembu is a really good software. I was convinced to use the company and software the first time that I saw it. I recommend it to everyone I know. It is a very powerful backup solution with a good price.

I would rate it as nine out of 10.

We're deploying it to support the backup of some on-premise VMware vSphere workloads.

Vembu has been a great benefit to us and it's been very positive. I would definitely say it's been a good thing.

We're using some very specific components of it like the on-prem backup to back up some separate systems for DR.

The restores have been reliable. We went through testing validation and we haven't had any issues.

We just started to use Vembu's Data Integrity Check. We need to validate the backups to see that they're able to be restored. This feature is pretty important. It's a big deal.

The restores have performed very well but our infrastructure is highly connected. Our infrastructure is the way it was before. We have a 10-gigabit infrastructure. So the performance of our backups has occurred the same as it did before, and it's been very good. We haven't noticed any difference between what we were doing before and with Vembu now.

It's important to us that Vembu provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files. But it's not critical because we back up the entire environment. So if we had a problem, we pull back the entire system. There's only a couple of instances where we pull back individual files. Being able to recover the entire virtual machine is the most important piece.

We used the Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs when we did the testing, but it's not necessarily something that I think is going to be an absolute requirement for us. It would be important if we lost everything

We do a lot of internal automation, so the Vembu API definitely has some gaps. The Vembu API could definitely use some improvement. We do rely a lot on automation outside of just the regular interface. We've noticed that the Vembu GUI is good, but we do leverage the APIs for a lot of stuff, and there's definitely some room for improvement there.

When it comes to the GUI, it could use some UI modifications to make it a little bit easier to navigate, filter, and sort information.

We just made the purchase. We just went through the evaluation and we purchased it in the last two months.

So far, it has been very stable for us. We haven't had any problems.

We're not a big shop. We don't scale to thousands and thousands of workloads, but it's scaled very well for the things that we've needed to do.

We're 100% into Vembu right now. I don't know that we'll be looking to do anything more. That all depends on what the infrastructure requires of us, but right now it's working very well. I don't think we're going to scale out and do Hyper-V, Office 365, or any of that stuff, at least not right now. If that does become a need, we'll be using Vembu for that because we know it can do that kind of work, but right now that's not in scope for us.

We have a little over 150-some odd workloads, virtual machines, and we have six hosts. Spread across six hosts, we have 150 workloads. It's not a big environment.

Technical support was very good. We engaged them. They did respond very quickly. We were able to get them in and work through the issues that were there. They did have to go back to the team a couple of times to get some answers for us, but it was certainly no more than one business day between them going back, figuring out what's going on, and getting back with us. They were very good.

We did use another solution but it was for the exact same kind of thing that we're using Vembu for.

It worked fine for a while but the updates weren't happening on a regular basis and the product wasn't moving forward the way that we wanted it to. Vembu has a lot more time under its belt in terms of development and whatnot. It turned out to be a much better solution for us.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

Vembu has two options for deployment, Windows or Linux, and so we had looked at both options. Both options for setup and configuration were pretty straightforward. There were some bugs that needed to be worked out, so we had to engage the Vembu support team. That team engaged very quickly and worked diligently to get the issues resolved. There were two or three things that needed to be addressed. Ultimately, we chose to go down the path of Windows deployment for Vembu, not necessarily because there were problems with the Linux platform, but because the Windows platform seemed to work better for us for some of the automation that we're doing. Overall, it was very good. 

The initial proof of concept to deployment was about a two-month venture for us. It was not very long.

Three people were required for the deployment. We're all engineers and I have the decision-making ability.

We have seen ROI. The real return is when something bad happens. All the proof of concept work that we did, all the testing we did, it all panned out for us. We're already seeing a return on that.

They do have a pretty good breakdown online. Their product detail and data sheets and all that kind of stuff listed out pretty well what it does. So we knew right away that it was going to probably align with what we needed to do. It was pretty easy for us to understand how well it was going to be aligned.

I think it's priced well. Obviously, we're happy with the pricing.

There were a number of different technologies we looked at. They were all the same basic feature functionality that we were looking for. In some cases, it was the price. A couple of the products that we were looking at are more than twice the cost of Vembu. We're not a big environment so to pay twice the amount of money for effectively the same solution just didn't make a lot of sense for us. There are some less expensive solutions too but they didn't offer some of the automation that we needed. They didn't offer an API. They didn't offer as easy a path to getting into Vembu as Vembu offered. Vembu wasn't the least expensive and they weren't the most expensive, but it did align with what we needed. And a lot of what we needed was VMware and vSphere backups, automation, those kinds of things, and we felt that Vembu was the way to go.

We do have a tight budget. We're not a big shop or environment. It was very affordable. The cost was a big deal but it was very affordable for us.

Look at it to align it with what you need it to do. See if it is well aligned with the way your infrastructure operates and the needs that you have with what Vembu can offer. Obviously price and budget are concerns, but I think that initially, it has to meet your needs. You're not going to go out and buy something that only gives you half of what you need. It's really all about evaluating the business needs first.

I would rate Vembu an eight out of ten.

The solution is used for:

1. Backing up important data and applications to the cloud. BDRSuite allows businesses to back up critical data and applications to the cloud, which can help protect against data loss in the event of a disaster, such as a cyberattack, hardware failure, or natural disaster.
2. Disaster recovery and business continuity. BDRSuite provides businesses with disaster recovery and business continuity services, which can help them quickly restore their data and applications in the event of a disaster.
3. Remote monitoring and management. BDRSuite allows IT administrators to remotely monitor and manage backup and disaster recovery operations, which can help streamline the backup process and reduce the risk of errors.

BDRSuite can help organizations protect their critical data and applications from loss or damage. By backing up data to the cloud and providing disaster recovery and business continuity services, BDRSuite can help organizations quickly recover their data and continue their operations in the event of a disaster.

Secondly, BDRSuite can help organizations reduce the risk of downtime and data loss. By providing remote monitoring and management capabilities, BDRSuite can help IT administrators identify and resolve issues before they become more significant problems.

Finally, BDRSuite can help organizations save time and money by automating backup and recovery processes and reducing the need for manual intervention. This can help reduce the risk of human error and improve efficiency.

The most valuable aspects include:

Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery. BDRSuite provides cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services that can help businesses protect their critical data and applications against various types of disasters. This feature can be valuable for businesses that require high levels of data protection and security.

Instant Recovery. BDRSuite offers an instant recovery feature that can help businesses quickly restore their data and applications during a disaster. This can be especially valuable for businesses that require minimal downtime and want to resume operations quickly after a disaster.

Multi-tenant support. BDRSuite provides multi-tenant support, which can be beneficial for managed service providers (MSPs) or businesses with multiple locations. This feature enables MSPs and businesses to manage multiple client or site backups from a single console, which can help improve efficiency and reduce management overhead.

The solution must improve:

1. The user interface. I have seen that the BDRSuite user interface can be less intuitive and more challenging to navigate compared to other similar products. Improving the user interface could help new users get up to speed more quickly and reduce the learning curve for the software.
2. Performance and reliability. I have experienced issues with the performance or reliability of the software, such as slow backup speeds or failed backups. Improving the performance and reliability of the software could help ensure that backups are completed efficiently and effectively.
3. Customer support. The quality of customer support provided by BDRSuite is not great. Tere are slow response times or unhelpful support staff. Improving the quality of customer support could help ensure that users are able to quickly and effectively resolve any issues they may encounter while using the software.

I've used the solution for six months.

We have, in-house, around 70 end-users and around 30 branches. Currently, We are using Vembu to do the daily backup of our in-house end points. 

As data is increasing day by day, taking and managing backup is a hard job. As IT personnel, we were looking for a solution where we could do auto backups for all our machines and restore them at any point in time as required. 

Vembu came to us and solved our problems in the backup space. In the next phase, we are looking to deploy it for our remote branch users. It's a great solution.

It made it easy for us to handle the daily backup of endpoints. Earlier, we had to manually do everything, and that was also not in real-time and involved engagement of one IT person's time. 

Vembu saved us time and manpower. It helped our organization to secure valuable data within the organization. 

Concern related to the data of individuals has been resolved as personal data is removed from the backup. Only data related to the company is taken. This also has reduced the storage space required.

The auto-scheduling of incremental backups and multiple retention points features has helped us to get the backups of endpoints without any intervention. Multiple retention points help us to restore data from multiple points and states. 

The reporting is great for noting the success and failure. If it fails it gives the reason why it failed and we can take action accordingly and resolve the issues. 

Mail notification helps us in monitoring the backups daily. All failures are sent through to us so that we can check and take action as required.

The backup and restoration should be faster in newer releases. 

The dashboard should more interactive. 

Responsiveness to any command has to improve. Currently, it takes some time to respond the commands like abort or suspend.

They need to centralize the configuration and management features for File folder backups from endpoints. This should be in the next releases.

The reporting feature is good, however, it can still be improved upon.

We are eagerly awaiting these features in the next releases. We hope we will get them soon. 

I've used the solution for the last two years.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is great.

Positive

No, we were not using any backup solution earlier.

The initial setup is very simple.

We had help from the vendor team for the installation process.

Our ROI has been very good.

Vembu is a good value for money solution.

Yes, we evaluated Retrospect.

They need to keep improving the solution so that we can reduce the time taken for backups and restorations.

We manage 100s of backups at any given time. This includes virtual machines, both VMware and Hyper-V, physical machines running Windows, and file-level backups.

We have backups that are 100% cloud-based as well as ones that retain both a local backup and a cloud backup copy. The data replicated to the cloud must be contained within a data center that is owned/managed by our organization.

Our recovery processes primarily include being able to restore directly to an ESXi host/vCenter appliance. This must be able to be completed in the shortest amount of time possible.

The Vembu BDR product is very intuitive and easy to use. This provided us easy training of our staff, a quick process for our internal documentation, and reduced time in installation/configuration and deployment to new customers/devices.

The high level of stability of the Vembu BDR Suite has reduced our engineering management time by at least 35%, which has also lead to a higher rate of successful backups.

The retention mechanisms within the solution are a critical component of our backup strategy. It has allowed us to reduce the amount of backup storage we use by more than 25%, which has saved on our hardware costs both initially and on an ongoing basis.

The most valuable feature is the highest level of flexibility. The Vembu BDR platform allows you to backup virtual machines and physical machines at both the file level and image level. You can choose to deploy offsite backups only, onsite backups only, or both onsite with replication offsite.

Being able to use one platform to accommodate all of these different scenarios has allowed us to train our staff on one solution and really make sure they are experts at that product. 

The ability to restore backups directly to any ESXi Host/vCenter environment is critical for us. The process in which to execute the restore is simple and the recovery time is quick. We regularly execute restores of 5TB-10TB environments in a matter of hours.

With any backup that uses VMware snapshots, there is a disk ballooning issue where VMware reports that the server is using 100% of the assigned storage, even when the disk is thin provisioned, when the Windows "Optimizer" runs while the snapshot is in place. Basically, this is the case when the backup is running. This issue is not specific to the Vembu BDR solution; however, it would be nice if Vembu was able to implement some function that would disable/disallow the Windows Optimizer from running during a backup.

We have been using Vembu BDR Suite for more than 10 years.

As an MSP, we have used many different backup solutions, as both a managed service as well as customer-deployed. The Vembu BDR solution is one of the most stable platforms we have used. For us, some of the measurements we use to determine stability are:

1. The installation/configuration is streamlined and functions as expected.
2. General use of the product runs smoothly without any regular "glitches", services stopping, or having to constantly reboot the machine to resolve issues.
3. Backups have a high completion percentage. More importantly, not getting failed backups on reoccurring issues that you have already implemented a fix for.

It currently supports all of the features that we need in a backup solution. However, I am aware that as O365 implementations continue to grow, I suspect additional O365 backup functionality will be needed. Vembu BDR currently supports backups of O365, although it does not currently have an email archiving function to the O365 backups. This is something that we have had customers request.

As with any technology based product, there are times when assistance is needed to configure, update, or troubleshoot the product. It is critical for our organization to be able to obtain support 24x7 with a team that understands their product. This is one of the areas we are most impressed with Vembu Technologies. They are always very quick to respond, provide excellent tools to their team, and are always efficient at driving the ticket to resolution.

We had a few concerns with our previous backup solution that we were looking to remediate.

1. The synthetic full was a forever backup, which over time would take up a ridiculous amount of space. With the Vembu BDR solution, we are able to configure a retention process of however many days we specify. This greatly reduces the amount of backup space used and ultimately saves us in hardware costs.
2. The time needed to maintain the backups was a problem. Our volume of failed backups on Vembu BDR is at least 50% less than our previous backup platform. This not only reduces our engineering costs but also increases the morale of our engineering team, as they are less stressed about failing backups.
3. Backup chains on our old backup platform had to be manually validated and cleaned up. I felt the risk of missing a file during this process was too high and could result in the inability to restore data. With Vembu BDR, the retention process is entirely automated within the software and requires no manual cleanup.

Compared to other backup solutions, the initial setup was the most straightforward.

We deployed in-house.

I would guess our tangible ROI was 12-24 months. However, for us, it was more valuable to deploy a solution that provides us confidence in being able to restore, as well as reduce the stress of our engineering team. These are invaluable items that you can't really put an ROI on.

If backup and recovery performance is critical for your environment, then the hardware is just as important as the software. We deploy full servers as our backup appliances with only SSD disks and enough processing power and memory to support the backups and the restored servers if onsite recovery is a component of the solution.

Any organization that is looking to deploy a backup solution in their environment with minimal time commitment and the highest level of confidence in being able to restore their data should be seriously considering one of the Vembu Technologies backup solutions.

In summary, the Vembu BDR solution currently fulfills all of the functions that we need it to at this time.

We use it primarily for backups and restoration of data, for disaster recovery purposes. We back up our file servers as well as our access control servers. We use it for standard, physical Windows 2016 servers, at this stage.

The key things we use in this solution thus far are only the backup portion, the recovery, and the reports. We will try to make use of it more extensively, but for now it's working for us.

It's on-prem at this stage, but we would love at a later stage to go to the cloud.

• The dashboard is very nice. 
• The solution is very user-friendly. 

When you're looking at your dashboard, you can see all your active jobs. You can see exactly if they're successful or failed and you can actually drill down and see what caused the problem. The fact you can see that right away is nice. 

It's a very simple layout, but effective. What you see is what you get. Some dashboards have these funny graphs and a lot of information. But what I want to know is, number-one, what jobs are running? What type of jobs are running? And I want to know what the job status is. If it's a red "X" I know I have to investigate. If it's a green checkmark then I know I don't have to stress about it, it has actually backed up what I've selected. It's simple. That's what you want.

What I would love to see on the dashboard are graphs, per backup  job. I want to see the month and the days in it. It doesn't matter what type of graph, but it must just give you more information. Currently it's in text format and you have to click on it and investigate. It would be nice if I could see information in a small chart as well. If a job has failed, when did it actually fail and what percentage of it failed? Did it fail completely, 75 percent or 100 percent or did it only fail partially?

Then we would know we have to look at settings, or maybe there's a permission issue, or maybe the unit was offline. Currently it's just showing a red "X" and you have to go in to have a look. If it gave you some information such as "100 percent complete, successful," and not just a checkmark, and if it failed it would tell you, "75 percent successful," then you would know more.

We've only been using the product for three months, and only on three servers.

It's very stable, unless you have somebody messing around. Otherwise, it should not have any issues.

It's scalable. It's similar to industry standard backup and disaster recovery solutions, like Veeam. 

We want to move to the cloud at a later stage, and we also want to do backups of Office 365. We're in the process of moving from webmail to Office 365. Once we're there, we're going to use the same platform to make backups of critical user data and mailboxes.

Although Office 365 has retention and backup solutions in place, we prefer to use Vembu in addition, on top of that, for our high-level users, to be 100 percent sure. Microsoft can maybe give you 30 or 60 days of retention, but if you have your own backups, you can go back to one year, based on the typical needs of users.

Once we have our Office 365 portion up and running and maybe one or two email users, I would love to perform a backup online. The challenge we have is that our upload is a bit slow. We might need to use a satellite link, but within the next month or two we should have a solution and the internet should not be a problem. Then we can most probably run some of these backups from the cloud version. The idea is to ultimately move to the cloud.

Currently, the information we back up is for about 60 to 80 active users, across all the employees in the company.

The salespeople I've dealt with are fantastic; they are great people. They wanted the solution to work and they only stopped phoning me the moment I told them, "Listen, I'm alright. I'm okay now." They wanted to make sure that the application was working and meeting our needs. That was very nice.

And obviously, you can contact them anytime and they will help you. Their technical support is great. It's top-notch. The turnaround time is quick. The last time I contacted the person I have always dealt with, within a couple of hours he contacted me. It's not like it's 24 hours or 48 hours, it's less than that. It is good.

It's a very nice, easy, and economical solution. I'm coming from a Veeam background, but Veeam is a bit expensive. That's why we opted for Vembu. I tested out the Vembu trial version and found that it has a lovely interface, it's easy to work with, and it's something I can teach quickly. With Veeam, you must attend courses to understand it; you can't just show somebody. If I'm on leave, or I'm leaving the company, I can give anybody in my position a quick rundown.

The company I'm supporting now is not a corporate company or a listed company. The company I used to work for was a listed company and they were forced by the auditors to use a certain type of backup solution but it was expensive. When I started with this smaller company, they didn't have any backups. If something happened they would lose all their information. I was browsing the web looking for an economical but effective solution to meet the needs of this organization. I was surprised, as I had never heard about Vembu. But I checked them out and that's where the journey started with Vembu.

It's cost-effective for us.

The initial setup is straightforward. And what was nice was that I had somebody on the line to talk me through it, just to make sure. You're allowed to play around with it to get more familiar with it. Coming from a Veeam background I tried not to compare it with that. I had to work with it to make 100 percent sure that I appreciated Vembu.

I figured out most of the things by myself because it's straightforward. It's very easy if you have some form of IT or backup background. It should not be a challenge or an issue. Maybe if you're brand new to computers it could be a challenge but if you have some experience with running backups it's easy to work with.

The deployment was done within two days because we don't have a big setup. It was just me involved in the setup, from our side, and for maintenance I have an IT assistant. If I'm not there, he can handle it as well.

My experience working with the Vembu person during the setup was good. They are very proud of the product. They want it to work.

It's still too early for us to see ROI. 

But the annual cost is so low that it's going to be difficult to calculate a return on investment. But if we are going to do backups of Office 365 and those types of things, the business might see ROI, because then you're working with a lot of user information as well, and they can see the reports.

It's more affordable than Veeam, so smaller companies can afford to have a solution like this in place, which is very nice.

For three licenses we pay not even 3,000 Rand per annum, which is a bargain with what you're getting. It's not expensive if you compare it with the counterpart.

I didn't evaluate any other options other than testing Veeam for a month. I know that product and it's fantastic, but when it came to going from trial version to live version, it was a bit expensive. I went for Vembu because I could pay a third of the price and get the same service.

When I look at a product like this there are a couple of basic things it must do: 

• I must be able to access it easily, deploy it easily
• It must be secure. 
• If I want to make changes, updates must be easy as well. 
• It must be integratable, compatible with different operating systems. 

Vembu ticked all the boxes.

Do you know when a business starts to appreciate a backup solution? When it loses information and needs to recover it. If your senior management is not very risk-minded or they tend to see these things as a waste of money, the moment they lose information and you can restore it within no time, they start to respect the product and they are more than willing, when you go to them for upgrades or improvements, to actually pay for them because they know you're adding value to the business. It's not just an expense.

For a small company like ours, I would rate Vembu at eight out of 10, because while the dashboard is very nice, there are some things that the major backup solutions provide as a stock-standard, like the graphing information. Most backup solutions offer it standard. I also give it eight out of 10 because I want them to improve, but it would be nice to move closer to 10. It may take them a while to get there, but with Vembu I can sleep. I don't have to worry and that's good.