BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

I'm using the backup from Vembu for my home lab where I have ESXi. I'm backing up VMware servers. That's all I use it for.  I have Oracle Databases running in these VM machines and I do testing, patches, upgrades, etc. I want to be able to back them up and, if need be, restore them so that I don't have to rebuild them.

I'm running it in a Windows Server in a VM machine. I have ESXi 6.7 running on a Dell PowerEdge R720 and I have a Windows 10 VM running in that. And in that I have the Vembu BDR running as my backup server.

It helps me with restores. I can repeat a test multiple times: Do the test, the restore, and then test again. It saves me time because I don't have to rebuild the VMs every time; rather, I just do a restore. I would estimate it's saving me four to eight hours every time I have to do a restore.

I also had a disk crash and the restore was important because I didn't have to rebuild it. So it helps with data recovery as well.

It gives me peace of mind because I don't have to do the rebuilds. In a home lab, documentation is not usually at the forefront of your thoughts. You are just trying to get it built and tested. Having the ability to back it up and restore without having to remember all the options were that you had installed and what was the data like before, it gives me peace of mind that I have the restore.

The two features that I use are the backup and the restore.

The only thing with room for improvement, as everybody says, since I'm in a home lab, would be the price for the CPU; the cost. If I were to add another CPU, I would start to get into an expense where I would question, "Do I really want to continue backing this stuff up?" But from what I could tell, this was definitely the least expensive option to go with.

I have been using it for about eight months. I bought my first license in April and then I had to buy another one because I added another ESXi server. I have two licenses and they're both for five years. My intention is to be using it for five years and I won't be switching out.

I'm on the most recent version because I just upgraded when it came out.

It has been very stable. There haven't been any issues.

I have it licensed on two CPUs, one CPU in each machine, and it has not had a problem with the 40 VMs that I have.

The only way I would be increasing usage would be if the cost would allow me to add it to another machine. The other machine I'd like to add it to has two CPUs in it, so I would be doubling my license cost. Right now, that's not an option.

For the issues that I've had, the tech support has been very good. I've had no complaints and they've been very responsive. I've only had three or four issues, and they have all been resolved. That has been a very good experience.

The last reason I had to contact support was for a restore that I needed to do. I also moved ESXi servers, so I had to have some assistance because the backup was done on one ESXi server and then I moved it to another ESXi server. I needed to do the restore and tech support assisted with that.

There has never been a situation where I had tiered tech support, where the first person I got didn't know and handed me off to the next person who handed me off to the next person.

Veeam was what I was using before I went to Vembu. 

The wording, when you start Googling this stuff, gets kind of questionable because it says "unlimited free VMs." That really isn't true. You can only do a couple before you can't do anything with it. Veeam was the one I was using first. But when I hit my third VM, it wasn't working anymore. You could only actually do three and you would have to roll out one before you could roll in one. 

The initial set up was very easy. It was just like installing anything on Windows 10. It took about 15 minutes.

The first time around I did it myself. I did move it from one VM machine to another VM machine and I had assistance with that from Vembu, and that assistance was very helpful. That was part of standard tech support.

As far as competitors' prices go, Vembu was definitely better than all the competitors I found.

I would guess it has saved me 30 to 50 percent. The problem is that I'm a single-person home lab, so I have no idea what kind of licensing things happen for a corporation which is looking to buy 500 CPUs. If you were to do that and you were to look at the cost per CPU versus my cost per CPU, theirs might be 50 percent less than what I'm paying.

Veeam was one of the solutions within a list of solutions I evaluated. Cost was definitely one of the big differences, but I didn't use Veeam long enough to go down that path. When I hit the third VM, which was within the day that I started using it, I stopped using it.

Make sure you plan out your backup server for the long-term. When I did this I moved my backup server. When I moved it from one machine to another machine and the IP address changed, there were some headaches. I had to get the knowledge documents and I had to get tech support involved to help me outside of the knowledge document. So try to plan out, for as long as you can plan out, that this is the server, it isn't changing, etc.

It has worked as expected. It's straightforward for backing up and it's straightforward for doing the restores. Other than the navigation and what buttons to push, there's really no learning curve here.

I'm not using the encryption. If the deduplication is in use, it must be so by default because I have not done anything with it.

For what I need it to do, and compared to the other products that are out there, this is the most cost-efficient and best solution for my needs.

The primary use for this solution is to replace the old-fashioned backup solution that we had that was based at the application level. I was doing backups of an SQL database or mailboxes from Exchange, but we needed a more modern solution where we could back up the entire virtual machine.

The solution is used for taking a backup of the virtual environment, and the benefit of this is that the speed is a lot higher. The product is taking a full backup during the weekend and takes considerably less time than our old solution. During workdays, it's doing an incremental back up every three hours, and that is also a lot faster. It also gives me a lot of options on which restore point I should use, in case I need to restore something. So these are huge benefits for the organization, speed and multiple restore points, that we didn't have in the past.

Another benefit is that the whole process is running at the ESXi level so the users do not really experience any delays or any lack of performance. We just keep them going, using the infrastructure, the VMware infrastructure. In the past, that was not the case because, during the backup process, it was slowing down the server because the server itself was executing the backup. Now, another server and another hypervisor are executing the job and the end-user does not experience anything as a result of the process. It is going on in the background. No delays at all.

In terms of data protection, we are not using disaster recovery because we are not licensed for it. But given the fact that we can afford the few hours the restore is going to take us, it is reducing costs, and the maintenance we used to have of switching tapes and external drives. All that kind of stuff that we had in the past has now been eliminated.

The most valuable features for me are that I can back up the entire virtual machine, but when restoring I can restore at the file level.

One issue that we are facing is that, during the evaluation period, we had some jobs that were replicating three virtual machines from one ESXi to another. Then, during the license purchase and activation, that Replication functionality was disabled because we are not licensed for it. As a result, we have one job left, the replication job that we were running, but since we don't have access to that area of the product we now, we are unable to delete that job. I need assistance on how to unlist that job.

Otherwise, we have no issues. It's functioning as expected and we're getting the results that we were expecting from the product.

A couple of times, the Vembu server was stuck and we couldn't access the web interface of the server and we had to restart the server. But that was during the migration progress where a lot of the equipment was updated and changing, so we cannot blame the product itself. Since the environment stabilized, we haven't faced any issues at all with the product.

We haven't encountered any issues with scalability. We gave it fewer resources than the server needs. Initially, we configured it with 16 gigs and then we cut it in half, giving it just 8 gigs, and the system is still performing and acting stably and within our needs and expectations.

Our building hosts around six companies. Currently, the product is used only for one hypervisor and one of the companies but the plan is to expand: First, the licensing for more hypervisors, and second, to expand the enterprise solution because we might need to use the Replication function that we are not using at the moment.

Their technical support is excellent. The speed at which those guys are replying is like chatting through email. They reply immediately and, in most of the cases, they have the answer available right away. It is very acceptable and we appreciate that.

We were using Symantec Veritas Backup but it was an old-fashioned solution - at least the version that we were using. It was doing backups on the level of application, taking a backup of a database or directory structure or the like. We switched to Vembu because it allows us to back up the entire virtual infrastructure and then we minimize the downtime in case of an emergency or a failure.

The initial setup was straightforward because it was an appliance. We downloaded an already-installed and already-working virtual machine which is acting as a backup server. There were minor issues to connect it to our local network and set up some iSCSI drives and volumes, etc., but it was next to nothing when compared with having to install it from scratch.

We downloaded the virtual appliance, activated it, and then configured the network interfaces. After that, we connected the server to our hypervisors and the system was up and running. The deployment took four hours.

We didn't use a third-party service provider at all. We directly contacted Vembu, and the back-office and support personnel were very helpful. Every issue was solved within hours.

In terms of money saved, it's hard to say because we need to calculate the man-hours that we spent on monitoring the old system, and the employees that had to visit the computer room and replace or change tapes, etc. So it's not that clear. But the fact that we were using an old solution for about 12 or 13 years, I expect the amount of money we will save is going to be huge.

We have only been using the product for two months in production now, so the return on investment is not easy to see in that short period. But I believe that it's not going to take more than the next six months to see a return on investment, considering the man-hours that we are saving, that we aren't spending any more monitoring an old backup system.

Pricing is fair enough.

What was not clear enough in the documentation on the website was that that you're licensing per CPU socket and you are only licensing on the restore sockets, not the backup sockets. It's a bit technical, but it was very well explained during the demonstration that we had during the evaluation period. The technician explained exactly how the licensing is working. That was information that I couldn't find on their site and it needed to be explained by their representative.

We had in mind to use another solution that was not based on Snapshots. It was based on replicating on the sub-second level of the VM virtual disks. Although it was compelling, and we considered that solution, it didn't have that direct access to information that the Vembu side was giving us.

To get a quotation on that product you needed to find a representative near you and have them do a quotation for you. It was not that direct and immediate. On the other hand, Vembu had all the pricing and documentation listed on their site, so we had all the information we needed. It was within the budget and we decided to test it. That's why we chose Vembu as our solution.

Although Vembu doesn't seem to be very fast for some environments, for example, banking, because it's based on Snapshots, which is a rather slower procedure, it has been just fine. But I would evaluate another solution that is not based on Snapshots. I can for sure recommend Vembu if high-availability is not a requirement.

We are using the compression that is embedded in the system. We downloaded the Linux virtual appliance, Linux Ubuntu, and this appliance is now part of our live organization, it's a live system. The embedded compression system is very satisfactory and we didn't have to alter anything within it. 

We didn't need to activate encryption because our infrastructure is only available within our local network, it's not available outside the firewall, and the destination drive is actually an iSCSI volume that is only accessible through the Vembu backup server. That's why we didn't need to encrypt our backups and possibly add delays to the whole procedure.

We don't use Microsoft Hyper-V, we only use VMware ESXi. The virtual environment that we're backing up through the Vembu solution is one ESXi that hosts three virtual machines. It's an end-to-end VMware solution. During the evaluation period, we also had the option to use the Replication function. We tested it and it's an option for the company to purchase, to upgrade the license to activate it, but this is going to be decided in the future.

The number of end-users using the functionality of the backup solution is around 70, but the end-users don't know it is being used. There are just two system administrators who use the Vembu console as administrators. One is full-time and the other one is part-time, so we need one-and-a-half people to run it. The maintenance is so minor. We just follow up on the emails the server sends saying that we successfully finished a job or that there was an issue. We then visit the web interface look at the reason for that failure - because the server was busy or the like. The maintenance is very easy.

I rate it at eight out of ten because, during the evaluation period, we had a server that was sizing at about 1.8 TB and the product took about 26 to 27 hours to restore it. So the slow restore is an issue. Eventually, we minimized the amount of data. Now, we are less than a terabyte, around 800 gig, so we expect the restore to take less time. But it's the slow restore that makes me give it an eight.

Our daily scheduled backups are only with Vembu. We are using the disk based solution only.

We are a business school.

We have restored with the full backup. It was completely fine using Quick VM Recovery. The time frame depends on the size of the server, e.g., if it is 100 GB, then it will take an hour. Restoring would not be possible without Vembu.

Because all our servers are hosted on VMware, the VMware backup is the most valuable feature. The integration and backup with VMware are very good. 

The compression is fine because it is compressing the full backup files. For example, if our full backup is 100 GB, then it can be reduced down between 40 GB to 80 GB.

There are some limitation in Vembu that can be improved. When you take the backup from any server, the full incremental backup is limited. For example, if you run a weekly full backup and monthly backup, they cannot be run at the same time. I should not have to create a new job, but in this scenario, I am creating two jobs. The limitation is created because if I select monthly backup, then I cannot select weekly backup.

We have only been working with Vembu for a few months.

The performance is good. There are no issues with performance.

Backups are run at night, then we check them in the morning. We don't do active maintenance.

If we have multiple jobs running at the same time, then the performance will be reduced, e.g., if you run four or five jobs at once. If only one job is running, then the solution can be very fast.  

It is deployed across our entire network, but we have a very small environment.

Their technical support is good and helpful. Their response time is as we expect it to be. If I raise a case, they will come back to me within half an hour to an hour at maximum.

Previously, we used Veeam Backup, but we replaced it with Vembu. We switched because Vembu is more cost-effective. So, price was a factor.

The initial setup is straightforward and doesn't take much time.

It takes two people to deploy it, e.g., a backup admin and I deployed it.

This solution has help us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduced budgets.

With our manual backups, we can combine two or three jobs into one, taking three hours. We are reducing our time spent on backups by approximately two-thirds.

One month ago, we subscribed for one year.

At another organization, I have worked with Dell EMC NetWorker and Commvault (about two or three years ago). Dell EMC NetWorker can do the weekly and monthly backups that Vembu cannot.

We are not using the deduplication feature. I am not 100 percent sure how the deduplication works on Vembu.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of 10. The product is good, but they need to resolve the multiple policies issue that is currently restricting us on the server.

We use it purely for Hyper-V backup. It's used to protect our entire server estate.

Our previous backup solution was cloud-based rather than being on-premise, and quite often our backups could lag three or four days behind. We are now looking at having a restore point as low as 30 minutes, where the backup has never been more than an hour behind the live solution.

We use it to back up Hyper-V, and the key benefit of that is purely one of data security and dependability.

The most important features are the backup and the availability of the Universal Explorer.

The in-transit compression is great.

The deduplication could be better. It doesn't give the level of deduplication that I would get with a product that's stored in a more standard file format. I would prefer to be able to use a non-deduplicated store on a third-party deduplicated medium. But as far as the compression and the general structure go, I have no problems with them at all.

Having some flexibility for the backup to be stored in a non-deduplicated fashion so that we could store it on more high-efficiency storage would be helpful; either that or improvement to the data deduplication. The amount of storage it requires for the backup store is excessive, compared to other solutions.

It is absolutely stable. We've had no issues. It's never missed a backup and we've had no issues with data stores, even when we had an issue with the hardware which one of the data stores was on. That was very quickly recoverable and we didn't miss a backup. We've not missed a backup since installing it a year-and-a-half ago.

We're a very small business. We've only got two Hyper-V hosts that it's covering. I imagine the scalability is probably quite good, but I have no other comment on it.

Technical support is fantastic. Responses are normally received within about an hour to an hour-and-a-half. Where something has required escalation, it's been completed within a few hours. We've had very little contact with support, but where we've needed it the response has pretty much been a fix the first time.

We used Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, backing up to Azure cloud and we switched for two reasons: 

1. Vembu is less expensive.
2. It gave us more control as to where we keep that data.

The initial setup was absolutely straightforward. We had an issue, but that was caused by a problem in our Hyper-V environment, rather than Vembu itself. That was dealt with within a couple of days by Vembu support.

The deployment took about three days. It was really fast.

In terms of our implementation strategy, we were moving from Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager to Vembu. We are quite a small business so we only have two Hyper-V hosts to configure. The strategy was to install, test, and then remove the Microsoft product. It was a very straightforward plan, a very straightforward strategy. And the aim in doing so was to enable a more rapid recovery time.

We did most of the work ourselves. We didn't use a reseller at all, it was so easy to deploy.

It's only saving us about £2,000 to £3,000 a year. But in our IT, that is a help. Our IT budget is only about £250,000 a year so it's saving us one to two percent of our IT budget.

Regarding return on investment, the value of a backup system comes up when you actually need to restore it, so up until the point of restoration a backup system is purely a cost on your P&L, rather than being of any asset value. We've not had the requirement to restore, so the only cost-benefit we've had is in the cost savings over our previous solution.

The pricing and licensing structure are spot on. I don't think there's anything out there in the market that does either the licensing structure or the pricing structure better.

We evaluated Veeam but we selected Vembu because the feature set was what we needed. We didn't need to use Veeam's full recovery, full replication suite. Because of that, our costs are about a quarter of what they would have been with Veeam.

Go ahead and give it a try. It's worth the evaluation and certainly, with the restore options and the Universal Explorer option, it's competitive with things like Trilead and Veeam in terms of backup. Personally, I don't think it's as good as Veeam if you are looking at replication and high-availability but, other than that, for straight backup, I don't think there's anything in the market that's better.

There are only six of us in our IT department who use it. Nobody else has any real comments on it. It's something that sits there and does its job, and does it well. In terms of deployment and maintenance, two of us are responsible for ensuring the backup is operational and maintained.

It's used to protect our entire server estate. It's not a very big server estate, but it is the entire estate. There are no plans to extend its usage. There's nothing to extend it to.

I would give Vembu a ten out of ten. I've evaluated other products. I don't think anybody else has any advantage, certainly in terms of backup, over what Vembu provides. If I were to mark it down to a nine, it would just be for the lack of flexibility on the backup storage option.

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.

Neutral

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'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.

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 offer the solution to our customers, primarily SMBs, for backup and disaster recovery. Deployment models include both cloud and on-prem. 

The solution enables us to recover data instantly; depending on the data type and volume, we can recover within seconds or minutes.

It's pretty easy to add and remove backup jobs using BDRSuite, which, in addition to the solution's features, reduces the time we spend on backup management.

The product is very reliable and works well out of the box; many of our customers are buying it.

BDRSuite features a good dashboard, and Vembu is working on making its product more user-friendly, improving the UI, and providing better integrations.

We tested the product's Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs or physical machines after a crash, and it provided immediate access.  

The solution's UI and integrations could be better. 

We've been using the solution for five years.

The stability is excellent. 

BDRSuite is scalable. 

Integrating BDRSuite with existing infrastructure is quite easy; it doesn't take much time, and we always offer support to our customers. Deployment usually takes less than 15 minutes, and the first backup can be scheduled.  

The solution requires minimal maintenance. 

The product is affordable, and we focus on SMBs for our customer base.

Our company believes everyone should have a backup solution, so we provide affordable pricing to small and medium businesses, bringing them easy access to a backup tool compared to more expensive competitor products.  

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Regarding backup and replication scheduling options, we offer weekly, monthly, yearly, and multi-year options so we can customize the scheduling policy according to customer requirements.

We still use other backup solutions besides BDRSuite; we use different products for different use cases.

We use the solution to create backup repositories in cloud-based object storage, including Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud.