BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

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.

Currently, we use Vembu for weekly backups of our virtual infrastructure and monthly backups for separate, confidential data.

We use it only with VMware.

If our country is hit by a meteor, I have secured data in another country on the other side of the world. Then, I can start the restore process immediately with this solution.

There is an option to back up a specific folder from a specific source, not the whole virtual machine. 

The encryption is a must in these days. You can't do anything without encryption of your traffic or data.

The compression is unusable in every scenario because the data that we backup is too different, according to each type. Therefore, the compression is not applicable everywhere. So, we don't use the compression at all.

They can work on their cloud solution. In these days, the data becomes too much and you have to back up a lot of data to the site. They could offer cheaper storage to their clients with the cloud, making this a single source of truth solution. In our project, we are using two service providers: One who offers our storage and another who offers the software. If they work on their cloud solution and can offer their clients lower prices for this type of storage, this would be a really good improvement.

It's pretty stable. We haven't had any issues with the software, like crashing or freezing.

I don't have any of the reservations about the scalability because we currently use it on a single machine. 

We have about three users who are part of the IT department, including two senior administrators and me, as IT manager.

Our account manager has provided us with great information and support. He is always on time. I haven't needed to wait more than two hours to read the answers to my questions.

Three years ago, we started the project to duplicate our infrastructure in every single aspect and needed to create daily backups of our virtual machines.

We picked Vembu two years ago, but switched to another solution which comes with integrated backup for virtual machines. This year, we start another project, which is to create offsite backups somewhere in the world. There were some requirements: the backup storage to be encrypted, the transfer to be encrypted, and not be so expensive. So, I looked at Vembu and Vinchin again. We were only satisfied with this tool (Vembu) when we started talking about money, because it was cheaper and could easily encrypt our non-dedicated storage.

The initial setup was as easy as one, two, three. I downloaded the software, then ran the application. They have a perfect documentation section on their website where you can find what you need: this tutorial.

Our deployment was about an hour.

We always start any project with a deployment strategy. This includes some type of testing. We go in with the result that we want and compare the software with our requirements. If it fits, then we start to reach the end result.

Currently, our whole offsite backup project, including Vembu, is about $500 per year to back up everything that we have. It is a lot of data, about 50 terabytes.

I find the licensing model to be valuable. The payment model is done with a set price or per virtual machine, and it is also done annually or on a permanent basis. You can choose whichever licensing model you prefer.

For our company, the current price of Vembu against Veeam is a few times cheaper. In our infrastructure, if we picked Veeam, we would have to pay about $20,000 per year. Now, we are currently paying about $2,000 per year for Vembu. You can do the math. The price is great.

Money always matters, so it could be cheaper, but this is not realistic for the market.

When we started to look for this type of software, we had to choose between Veeam, Vembu, or Vinchin. Vinchin is a new player on the market. 

We integrated a service provide into our own solution. This is why I picked Vembu at first, because it can be integrated with a third-party service provider and was the only software able to be integrated into our solution. Vembu offers a cloud offsite service, which is a type of Vembu storage where you can store your backups if you don't have other options.

Vinchin is easier to use with simpler interfaces. However, when you read the features, because it is new software in the market, there were not some functions built-in, like encryption. Vembu encrypts the traffic when it transfers it to its destination. According to our Vinchin and Vembu comparison, Vembu is pretty complicated against Vinchin, but Vembu is easier to install and update.

Reasons why we went with Vembu:

1. The price. 
2. The integration option. 
3. They offered a lot of additional features that we don't use currently, but you never know what you will need in the future.

The software is currently satisfying our needs for us. We aren't using all of Vembu features at the moment.

We use data reservation in our offsite data backup.

It is compatible with almost everything that exists on the market. It's compatible with VMware and Hyper-V. With VMware, it works very well. We haven't had any issues so far. 

I would advise to try it and not to look at the prices of the top players on the market, though do look at alternative software. Sometimes, you need to try more than one or two solutions, then switch to whichever one is better. Pretty often, we speak to some not-so famous product or company to complete our approach.

I would rate the solution as a 10 out of 10.

We use it to back up ESXi clients, so mainly Linux based or Unix based servers on our ESXi host.

We use the solution to back up our virtual environments (VMware). It has been good for our organization so far.

It makes it possible for us to back up our Unix machines without installing a host, client, or any client software. It gives us some peace of mind in regards to those servers getting backed up.

The number one feature is that we can back up our servers without having to install a client. It is the only reason why I have this product.

The user interface isn't that good. I don't think that the product is user-friendly. Comparing it side by side to Acronis, I would say to Vembu, "Hey, you could make your user interface a little easier."

Vembu will tell you the next scheduled backup, but it doesn't show you the last successful backup. I would have them include a column under "List of Backup Jobs" and have two other columns which say, "Last Successful Backup" and "Next Scheduled Backup", because you don't know now if it's backed up successfully. It just says, "The next scheduled time is this." You don't know from looking at that pane of glass when the last time it actually happened without digging further into reports.

Two years or more.

It is stable. I haven't had it crash or break on me.

I don't think we've actually had a reason to restore a machine as it's never failed. We've never had a server fail. The only thing that it has done for us is give us peace of mind that our server is backed up.

Everybody is impacted if one of these servers failed. The only way we could get it back up and running was to restore it from a Vembu Backup. It would impact everybody if the servers went down, so approximately 3,000 users would be impacted if the backup wasn't successfully happening and we needed to use it.

We haven't had reason to scale it up to back up anything else. We aren't really using the product to its fullest capabilities. I think it has a lot more that it can do.

I am the only user using it, as we only use it for backing up our servers.

I do have plans to increase usage.

Every time I have called, I've had good tech support.

I didn't use a previous solution. I selected this solution because it was the only one I could find for the cost that did what I needed it to do.

It was pretty easy to set up. The initial setup was probably only 15 minutes.

Our implementation strategy was to make it so we could back up our VMware clients. That was the whole purpose of the software. We don't use it for our Windows Servers. For that, we use a different product. However, we couldn't use the other product on the Linux and Unix space machines because the other software requires that a client be installed.

We bought it directly from Vembu and installed it ourselves.

This solution helps us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduces budgets. We are saving $6,000 every three years versus having another product.

Backups are an insurance thing. This is a life insurance policy to make it so if our servers failed, we would have something to get them back. Since we haven't had a server fail, it is just like life insurance. While it has cost us money, it has given us peace of mind that if we needed it, then it would be there.

The pricing is very good.

Our license is about to expire on it.

We did evaluate some other products before choosing this one. 

We also use Acronis Backup Advanced. The way that Vembu backs up to a backup drive, it uses a pool of drives to back up. Whereas, Acronis backs up to just a single file. You can see that individual file on its own. You can browse to it and see that the file that has been saved. It also says the last successful backup it did. 

Vembu's user interface isn't as easy to use compared to Acronis Backup Advanced, which has a better interface for me to be able to see what's happening.

I haven't found a competitor who does as good a job for the money.

This is a good product to choose if you are in the same situation as we are in.

It does do compression and that works fine.

We don't use Hyper-V.

I would give it a five out of 10, because I think that it could use some polishing on the interface for the client.

We use it for backing up physical Windows Servers and one hypervisor server. The main draw for us was the ability to back up hypervisors, Hyper-V, specifically.

Overall, it's unattended, so we don't have to manage it. Once it's set up, we get notifications of a failed or successful backup every night, or for whatever schedule we have it set on.

We've had a couple of instances where an employee might have accidentally deleted a file, a network file, and one of the servers that we back up is that file server, and we have been able, with no problem at all, to quickly log into the web-based interface and restore files again in a matter of minutes; just individual files from any specific backup. That's an example of what we've been doing with them.

The most important feature, in terms of the hypervisor, is the ability to restore a virtual machine in a matter of minutes. We can take the backup of a virtual machine and we can restore it to the actual Vembu Backup server as a temporary solution, in a matter of minutes. We can just spin up a VM in no time; different hardware, even different processors. It's pretty dynamic in that sense.

The file restoration comes in a close second, but the biggest deal was to be able to restore virtual machines, very quickly and easily.

Since we got it up and running it has been unattended. I got the schedule set up and I got the integration Service Packs sent out to all the servers, and I have not touched it since July. It's pretty stable.

Once you have all your servers in the Vembu BDR software, and they're being monitored and backed up, it's very stable. As I said, it has been three months and I've not even looked at it. I get those emails about a successful or a failed backup, and I've not even had a failed backup yet.

Scalability depends on your resources internally. It all depends on the hardware you're backing it up to, the amount of RAM and storage space that you have. So scalability is subjective.

As long as you can scale internally, it can scale with you. All you have to do, on their end, is purchase more licenses for whatever server you're going to be backing up. Right now I have eight physical servers and one hypervisor with two processors. That's how the licensing works for me. If I were to add another server, I would just purchase another license. So it's easily scalable.

The tech support is the one thing - that is not a system issue - but which is a little bit difficult to work with. They've been great when I get them on the phone, but they work in different time zones. We're in Mountain Standard Time in America and the tech support works out of India, and something like 9:00 pm here is 9:00 am for them. So every tech support issue that I've had to contact them on has always been late and night. It's not a game-changer, but it's definitely not the best solution.

The customer support has been great when we get together. They have a weird way of doing it where they'll do a TeamViewer session with you and have you leave the TeamViewer session running until they remote in. I'm not comfortable with that, so I've always been on the line with them. As far as interacting with customer support, it's been great, it's just getting together with them at a specific time that is an issue.

We bounced around between file-based backups with CrashPlan and we also used the Veeam physical server backup, the free edition. And we dabbled with the Veeam hypervisor backup as well.

The main reason we switched was the affordability of it as well as the ability to back up and restore hypervisors in a matter of minutes. And the ease of use was also a factor. It seems much less cumbersome than some other applications I've used. It just does the job and it's something that we don't have to worry about. Once it's set up and working, it's just working.

It was very easy to deploy. I had no problem at all. I had no problem in deploying the actual BDR software, and then I had no problem pushing out the integration service to the servers that I was going to back up. It went very smoothly.

We have not used it long enough for me to be able to tell you our ROI.

The product's pricing is of good value. It was much more affordable than the alternative solution to it, which was Veeam. That would be the closest competitor, and between those two, Vembu was much more affordable. It seemed reasonable for what we needed to do.

If all you're backing up is physical servers, there are probably better solutions or solutions out there that are probably less expensive. But to get everything under one umbrella, especially with the hypervisors, if you have any kind of virtual environment, this is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned.

One that we evaluated was the Veeam Backup software solution. That's very popular for virtual machines, specifically, hypervisors, Hyper-V and VMware. In that box, there's a one-footer. We evaluated Veeam and we evaluated CrashPlan for a time, and we also dabbled in something called Five9 software. It's a virtual machine management platform that, as a side job, does backups for your virtual machines. We only dabbled with that for just a little bit. We just checked it out. It was nothing that we were actually considering.

Plan accordingly. Know exactly what you're backing up, not even considering the licenses - the licenses are the easy part. Just know what you're backing up and what you're going to need to restore in the event of an outage, because if you don't have the hardware to support five virtual machines that you need to restore, you're out of luck. Plan for space and for resources to restore your virtual machines too, in the event of an outage.

We've used it in production now for about three months. There was some testing and playing with it prior to that. I know that there are plenty of improvements that they're working on. None of them really reflect the kind of work environment that we have here, so as of right now, it does exactly what we need it to do.

Overall, I would rate Vembu Backup at nine out of ten and that's only because of the tech support. As I said, that's specific to me. Somebody in India wouldn't have that same problem. Or somebody in a different time zone or who has a different work schedule, it wouldn't be a problem. But for me, the only deficiency would be that tech support time-zone issue. But other than that, it's been easy to deploy, easy to manage. I don't have any problems with it so far.

Our whole environment is virtualized except for a couple of servers which are still physical. So I primarily use this for backing up my physical servers. I do an image backup as well as a file-level backup.

The main improvement is the compression, the space. I back up one particular server with close to 1.2 TB, and the way the software compresses it is close to 600 or 700 TB. Vembu compresses it to close to 450 gigabytes, that's gigabytes. So that’s really amazing, the way in which the backup compression happens. It creates a lot of space in my storage. I’m saving almost 50 percent of my file storage space, SAN. that’s one of the key features of this.

One thing I’m very much impressed by is the compression ratio. The rate at which it compresses the data during backup is really very good. In fact, I’d say it’s better than Symantec Backup Exec. I have Backup Exec, in my environment, and I have Veeam. Symantec is now Veritas, so I have played with all the backups, but the way in which this handles the compression is really one of the key features.

It’s also very, very stable. I haven’t made any changes to it. I just installed and it’s working. I restored a couple of times, and everything seems to be fine.

I do have one suggestion for them. The process is a bit cumbersome when you remove an agent, delete that job, and add the agent to the same server. Even though the agent is already installed in that server, the system does not recognize it. We have to uninstall the current agent, restart the server, install the push agent - a new agent - and then restart the server. I think they should try to avoid that. Symantec doesn’t work that way. You push the agent once, the agent stays in the server for good.

It’s very stable. I don't have any issues because it’s automated. The moment a backup is completed we all get an email. First thing in the morning, we check those emails and it’s on top of it.

I’m not going to scale with this because I’m primarily using it for physical servers.

Maybe my next project will be, when my Veeam support runs out, to try using Vembu - because Veeam is very expensive - for backing up my virtual servers and let's see how things are going to work.

Support is very good. When you call them or send out a support email, immediately someone responds. It’s really good. They come back with an answer immediately. There has never been a time where they said they wanted to do some research on it. The moment I send them an issue, the guys fix it immediately.

Before Vembu I was using Symantec (which is now Veritas). The main reason I switched is the price point, the cost. Vembu cost me one-third of what Veritas was charging me for backing up the three servers.

The setup is straightforward. The only problem is, if I delete the server from my backup list and I want to add the server back, that is complex.

It is very cost efficient, effective. I’d say it's one-third the cost of Veritas when compared to the server backups. I even tried image backups on Acronis, but Acronis is very expensive. So these are some of the key reasons why I opted for it.

Licensing is straightforward, it’s simple, they should keep it the way they have right now.

There is no need for any advice. A person who has infrastructure and backup experience should be able to do it. It doesn’t require any special knowledge for the configuration part or reinstalling.

I rate it at eight out of 10 because of the complexity involved in reinstalling that agent.

Buy, install it, use it, back it up, that’s it. It works fine.

We use BDRSuite to back up our customers' VMs. We are a service provider, and each of our customers has different requirements. We host VMs based on the customer's environment. If the customer doesn't want a VM backup, we'll use the Citrix ADM. They will back up their own applications, and we'll send a new VM to them in the event of a disaster. 

We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer. 

We have many VMs in the old Citrix Foundry that have been running for a long time. The migration process is time-consuming and costly. VMware only supports VMware and Hyper-V but not Citrix. 

It's easy to add or remove backup jobs using BDRSuite. The solution has multiple options for backing up our customers' data. We require eight days of historical data, and our clients need incremental backups weekly, so we have one weekly backup and one daily. The backup will play each week, and they'll have a fresh running daily backup of seven days. 

We still haven't done a restoration in production, but we did a test restore, and it worked. The restoration took about four to six hours for one terabyte because we backed it up to a remote location. 

BDRSuite could improve support for XenApp Citrix Backup.

I have used BDRSuite for more than six months.

BDRSuite is stable. We're confident in the product. 

We haven't tried to scale BDRSuite, but it's scalable. 

I rate the support a nine out of tn. I'm satisfied with their support. They always respond within the window we agreed to in our support contract.

Positive

Before BDRSuite, we mainly used a Citrix XenServer Host for around 20 Citrix VMs. We adopted BDRSuite because there was no automated backup mechanism. We needed a third-party solution, and there was a lot of overhead for hardware. Our customer needed backups for two SAP VMs. We got the hardware, VMware, and whatever they need to design a full VMware backup solution. 

BDRSuite is easy to deploy and integrate with existing infrastructure. You can complete the deployment in less than a day. After the deployment, you need to install regular updates. Vembu puts out updates frequently. 

BDRSuite is cost-effective depending on your requirements and the other options available in your market. 

BDRSuite is a good option if you have a tight budget. It gives good value.

I rate BDRSuite an eight out of ten. 

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 to backup VMware virtual machines, so I'm backing up my VMware environment. My product is for Windows Server Backup.

We are a small business. We don't use the enterprise version of the solution.

It has improved our business continuity.

We have used this solution to recover from a few incidences. 

The firewall backup is the most valuable feature. We need it sometimes when we recover a single file.

The compression is the most useful feature for me.

The product's stability needs some improvements. 

The support is a bit slow in resolving an issue. It takes a long time to recover.

One year.

The solution is 90 percent stable. It is running well. The availability is good.

Two or three employees are needed for deployment and maintenance of the solution.

I only have two servers. I don't test other servers.

We don't count our users for this solution as it is a backup service.

I would rate the technical support as eight or nine (out of 10). I would like them to improve their response rate.

This was our first product.

The initial setup was neither simple nor complex; it was intermediate. It took four hours to set up/deploy. We implemented it into a very simple environment (Windows Server Backup).

We deployed it ourselves.

We have seen ROI with Vembu. The solution is worth it based on the few times that we used it for recovery.

We tested three products. One of the other products that we evaluated was Altaro.

We chose Vembu because the compatibility was better.

I would definitely recommend Vembu. We have been mostly satisfied with the solution. We plan to keep using it.

Overall, I would rate the product as a nine (out of 10).