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Managing Member at Offsite Data Protection Services
Real User
I can use it to restore a client's data on the spot
Pros and Cons
  • "I am very pleased with the compression, especially with some of the larger SQL databases that need backup. The amount of compression is impressive."
  • "The reporting can use some improvement. I still use the old StoreGrid Cloud while I'm migrating the rest of my clients over. I am able to export all of my clients' usage for the month, which I then import into my billing program. It helps me speed up the billing process. Also, I can generate a report that gives me statuses of everyone's backup, which I don't get from Vembu Backup Online either. I would like to have something similar where I can export everyone's usage at any time for all their backups, so I can use that to import them to my billing program."

What is our primary use case?

I have approximately 50 clients for whom I provide backup services using Vembu software.

I don't have a virtual environment.

How has it helped my organization?

I use the encryption, and I think my clients feel secure knowing that.

I have a couple of examples where I was able to restore a client's data on the spot. This definitely was a success for me, where my client saw how the solution actually works in cases where they would need to retrieve their data when a failure happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it has happened a couple of times.

What is most valuable?

The only things that I use it for are file backup and SQL backup. I don't do much beyond that. It is pretty much straight file backups and restores. What I like about these features are the ease of installation and automatic scheduling. I do like the email feature where I am able to email the client and myself directly after each backup whether it's been successful, partially backed up, or failed.

I am very pleased with the compression, especially with some of the larger SQL databases that need backup. The amount of compression is impressive.

What needs improvement?

The reporting can use some improvement. I still use the old StoreGrid Cloud while I'm migrating the rest of my clients over. I am able to export all of my clients' usage for the month, which I then import into my billing program. It helps me speed up the billing process. Also, I can generate a report that gives me statuses of everyone's backup, which I don't get from Vembu Backup Online either. I would like to have something similar where I can export everyone's usage at any time for all their backups, so I can use that to import them to my billing program. 

I would also like to be able to have a report where I can check the status of everyone's backup. Right now, I have it programmed to where I get an email for every backup sent to me. Then, I read those emails and chart them on an Excel spreadsheet separately: success, failure, etc. I keep a weekly log of that. If I had a report, it would make this process a lot easier.

I used to be able to manage the amount of space allocated to each client. Right now, I can't. I have to send in a request if I want to add space to this one or create space for another.

Buyer's Guide
BDRSuite Backup & Replication
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about BDRSuite Backup & Replication. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution since 2009.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I like the stability. I have been pleased with it.

I have had some things that I've contacted technical support about and they have corrected them. I was surprised because I was running across multiple problems frequently. It's been pretty good lately, but the problem was with the cloud.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very simple to add new backups.

I am the only person using it in my company.

I have about 50 clients that have on average about one to two backups. There are almost 100 individual backup schedules which are running.

I support an environment of approximately five to seven terabytes.

I would like to add more clients going forward.

How are customer service and support?

I am very pleased with Vembu's technical support.

I have asked Vembu technical support how to handle the following scenario and haven't gotten a good answer:

I have a couple of clients who are pretty large (a couple of terabytes). If I ever had to restore that, it would take quite a long time. I would like some suggestions on where to maybe physically backup on their location. Then, am I sending that up to the cloud? If I were to restore, could I restore right from their location locally? Since that would be much quicker.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This was my first backup solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward: Creating a client and logging into that client on their workstation, then being able to download the software to that machine and setting it up whether it's a regular file backup or SQL. This has become very simple for me after doing it so many times.

The initial setup does not take very long. The only thing is that it is taking me a while to migrate my clients from StoreGrid Cloud over to Online Backup because of access to my clients. Once I get in, the actual setup probably takes me 20 minutes to a half an hour per client.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation is pretty much the same for a lot of my clients because they are from the same type of industry. I have a lot of dentists. I'm pretty familiar with the software that they use. I know when I go in there what to expect and what I should be backing up.

I have a gentleman who gives the IT support to a lot of dentists in my area. As he goes to the different locations where he might either be replacing a server there, or if it's a new client of his, then he'll contact me and I will remote in. I will install the backup software on their server, and we set it up that way for the most part.

What was our ROI?

I have seen ROI with Vembu.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is reasonable. I am okay with it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did look at other backup solutions as well. I don't remember who they are.

What other advice do I have?

It is an easy solution as far as its installation, scalability, and dependability. I have a regular full-time job as well as doing this. I can count on this solution working properly, and it allows me to be able to have another side income without a whole lot of hands-on everyday maintenance to it.

I have not used Vembu with Microsoft Hyper-V.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sree ramya - PeerSpot reviewer
Sree ramyaProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Thanks for the great review Matthew Pechia. We're excited that our product has met your expectations and has worked out well in your client's environment.

We have noted down your complexities & would like to let you know that our team is constantly working on improving the Reports and Vembu Portal for easy billing and managing the client's information, and the same will be available in our upcoming releases.

We are continuously making enhancements to Vembu BDR Suite so it covers most of the use-cases in any data center.

For further updates or queries, please get in touch with our team through vembu-support@vembu.com.

IT Director at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Cheap, easy to install, agentless backup with responsive support
Pros and Cons
  • "Their support is great. I think they work 24 hours a day. I get a very quick turnaround time from them no matter the day or time that I send them an email."
  • "I saw that it's not possible to have the last full backup duplicated on our site. Therefore, if I have a lot of information on the main site, I would not want to copy any information to those site servers. It would be nice to be able to make a copy of the last full backup."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the Enterprise version for backup. With the license that we have now, I'm using the NetworkBackup application. This includes having email backup with MS Exchange Server, which is very helpful because we can restore by mailbox or mail. We don't have to restore the entire server.

We also have FAS, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and MySQL databases. It is very easy to use with them.

I have some virtual machines. I use an VMware ESXi server to back them up.

How has it helped my organization?

I have a strategy in the company where everyone needs to bring all their important files on the server. People should not be keeping their folders on their computer because of two types of situations:

  1. In the last two months, there were situations where the local hard drive failed, people were very happy to have their files on the server. 
  2. There have been three times where people modified the file, then asked me if it's possible to get back the file that they had before, so I used the backup. 

I just started backing up to virtual machines. They are very good if something happens. I can restore to another site. There are a lot of options to restore with virtual machines, such as, mounting on another server to open mount locally and extracting some files. I was very surprised because it seems like we have a lot of options. 

What is most valuable?

I was very happy seeing that the incremental backup was very nice because the modified files are taken from the number of times it was modified. Thus, if I have a file I modified two years ago, I don't back it up each time.

It backs up from the latest version. I can write there that I need the last three modified images of the file. One image could be from a year ago, another one or two days ago, and the third from three years ago. It does not delete by date.

It is easy to use. There is an offsite DR solution where I can keep an offsite copy of the backups. 

The transfer is encrypted. I checked the storage pool's compression and not a lot of space was used. I was expecting more, which is why I think the compression is good.

What needs improvement?

I saw that it's not possible to have the last full backup duplicated on our site. Therefore, if I have a lot of information on the main site, I would not want to copy any information to those site servers. It would be nice to be able to make a copy of the last full backup. 

I have sent a lot of missed scheduled emails, but maybe I'm doing something wrong. I will try contacting support to see what I can do better. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I started two months ago. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nothing has happened other than expected until now. We have had no errors.

A system administrator and I are doing deployment and maintenance. He checks the tasks every day.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's 100 percent scalable because we can add as many servers as we want. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support is great. I think they work 24 hours a day. I get a very quick turnaround time from them no matter the day or time that I send them an email.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

A long time ago, I used Symantec Backup. I cannot compare the two solutions.

I was trying to find a backup solution two months ago. I googled for the best backup solution vendors in 2020. I saw Vembu. It was listed as very easy to use and cheap for what it's doing, as a platform. I started a trial (pilot). When I checked the license prices, it was free which was in my budget. I was really happy to find that someone from a management location could do backups using the service.

The price for Vembu was very important and key to our decision-making. Also, Vembu support was very important. When I didn't know how to do anything, I wrote to support and the response time was quick. Basically, it was cheap, easy to install, the agentless backup was very nice, and support was very responsive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very easy. It integrated easily with Windows, Linux, and NetApp backup.

The deployment took about one hour (max) per server.

What was our ROI?

This solution helps us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduces budgets. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

With the free version of Vembu, you receive three virtual machine backups. However, if you buy the NetworkBackup Enterprise version, you don't have access to the features seen in the free version. This is a situation that Vembu should solve. This caused a misunderstanding between sales and us. I was hoping if I buy the licenses, then after the trial I would not have to purchase virtual machine licenses. Maybe they should offer these three virtual machine backups as part of the Enterprise license.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I tried to install two other solutions. However, I found Vembu very nice because in its trial period, it includes all the features. During the trial period, I was able to check exactly what happens if I use another type of solution from Vembu, and it was easy to test.

I chose this backup solution because it fits what I need.

What other advice do I have?

Try it and see what it can deliver. It is very easy to test and check the licenses. 

The only situation that was not what I expected: I need to have a full copy of the backup, plus a live session of the back up which involves a lot of copies. I need a lot of hard drive capacity offshore and offsite.

I don't know how to check the deduplication.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
BhavaniShanmugam - PeerSpot reviewer
BhavaniShanmugamProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Thank you for the feedback.


Your request for the feature to have only the latest full backup in your site (hard-drive) is added to our Roadmap. However, you can currently achieve this requirement by choosing the backup to tape option that allows you to archive full backups on tape drives.


To check the storage reduction, you can view the reports on the BDR Backup Server GUI (Available on v4.2 and above). You can also navigate to the backup storage location and check the properties of the sgstorage folder to know the space used by backup data and compare it with the original data size.


For further updates or queries, please get in touch with our team through vembu-support@vembu.com.

Buyer's Guide
BDRSuite Backup & Replication
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about BDRSuite Backup & Replication. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Manager at Kuwait Medical International
Real User
Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy, but the application stability needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The scalability is good. It can scale. Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy."
  • "There are bugs. For one month, I encountered a big issue where my storage pool could not be identified. My backups were stopped because they were not able to locate the storage pool. So, I removed the settings and started the backups again. The application is not stable. It needs some debugging and testing on the build side of production."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for VM backups.

We were using an older version and just upgraded two weeks ago.

What is most valuable?

The virtual machine backup is important for stability and scalability since our servers are on virtual machines. 

Another good thing is that it has cloud backup.

What needs improvement?

There are bugs. For one month, I encountered a big issue where my storage pool could not be identified. My backups were stopped because they were not able to locate the storage pool. So, I removed the settings and started the backups again. The application is not stable. It needs some debugging and testing on the build side of production.

We use Vembu with Microsoft Hyper-V. While the installation is not a problem, there is a problem with the operation side of things. It should be automated. There is something wrong with the structure affecting the product because the backup should not be disturbed. We found without any changes to the network structure then the backups would be affected and I could not fix it by myself. I did not contact support for this, as it was probably due to the new update, but I am unsure. Now, I am monitoring this issue.

For how long have I used the solution?

Six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Its application stability needs improvement. I have seen issues recently with it. Backups must have a very stable application. If your backup system is crashing, that means you cannot trust it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. It can scale. Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy.

We have nine locations. We do have plans to increase usage of the solution. 

The IT department has five people who are administrators. One person configures the backups and others monitor the backups.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This BDR is the first proper solution that we are using. We previously used manual backups.

How was the initial setup?

Initially, we had some problems when we tried to do the setup ourselves, but then the support helped us. They had a direct session with me and helped me with the installation. After that, it was fine.

The deployment is easy and fast. A location can be deployed in a day.

For each version, we have a dedicated BDR server and local storage. I schedule the backups. From there, we upload to the cloud storage. Therefore, each location will have their own BDR that will back up to the cloud.

The initial deployment to the cloud is important because once the backups are into operations making changes is not that flexible.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This solution helped us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduced our budget by 50 percent. We spent $3,000 on Vembu's licenses where other solutions were almost double.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The competitor for Vembu is Veeam, who is very popular and famous. Vembu is good, but still has a long way to go. We found Vembu BDR to be more affordable.

Veeam is good for very high-end servers.

What other advice do I have?

Right now, we are satisfied with Vembu's operational performance and requirements. It is just a simple backup solution where we can backup all of our VMs.

Vembu allows you to implement a variety of different requirements.

I would rate the product as a six (out of 10). It needs some more work to be done in regards to product stability and functionality.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
BhavaniShanmugam - PeerSpot reviewer
BhavaniShanmugamProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Thank you for the feedback, Waqar.

We are currently working on improving the stability of our backup server by separating the resource utilization of different modules. So each module (backup, processing the backup data, retention, etc.) runs on a separate machine with just the resources needed for them and this will be generally available in one of our upcoming major releases.

There are always some situations that may throw errors due to possible issues in the environment. If you encounter any issues, we request you to contact our support team through vembu-support@vembu.com. We will assist you to resolve the issue with highest priority.

Systems Engineer at GVir Informationsmanagement
Real User
The encryption feature is important for us because of the very strict data protection rules in Europe
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is easy and very nice."
  • "The network solution is the most important feature, because we have our own backup server and are doing file backups for our customers."
  • "We have not been able to move our backups from one drive to another one. We can only create a storage pool. However, if we want to change a drive, it is not possible to delete one drive as long there is data on it. For this, we have to call the support. While they can solve this, it is not out-of-the-box."

What is our primary use case?

We back up all our customers' files. We back up only files, and maybe some databases. However, primarily, we are backing up files on our own server.

We are currently using the updated version of this product.

How has it helped my organization?

We can create a backup contract with our customers and software using this solution. We can backup the software here in Austria, because we have new rules here in Europe, since last year, which are very strict for data protection. 

What is most valuable?

The network solution is the most important feature, because we have our own backup server and are doing file backups for our customers.

The compression, encryption and deduplication features are important. If we can save space, it's okay. The encryption is also very important, because it is in our contracts. It is a must. We have to use it for our customers.

What needs improvement?

We have not been able to move our backups from one drive to another one. We can only create a storage pool. However, if we want to change a drive, it is not possible to delete one drive as long there is data on it. For this, we have to call the support. While they can solve this, it is not out-of-the-box.

If there is a failure, the logging for the backups could be better.

Sometimes, I miss some features from the old solution. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using the older version of this product six to seven years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very good, but it is not perfect. Sometimes, we have to restart the server, because of updates. I have to sometimes manually restart the services. When it is running, it's perfect and nice. 

When we have to restart the server, then we have some troubles with the services from Vembu. We have to manually restart the services, and afterwards, it's okay.

The software solution is okay. While it has some bugs, it has been okay in most cases. 

It takes me two to five hours to do maintenance per week.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have small customers. For them, high availability is not a priority, only file backup is important. They are very small. They have around five employees. Also, because our customers are not asking for this, we do not offer high availability. We do not have the resources for it, and our servers are probably not big enough for this type of solution. We only offer the simple file backup.

Our biggest customer has about 20 employees. However, they have a huge amount of data.

We have three users in our company, but we represent about 30 companies. All three employees in our company are systems engineers. We do the backups, deployments, and maintenance.

At the moment, we do not accept new customers because we do not want to grow. We are happy with what we have. We have a lot to do. We have had good customers for a lot of years, and that's perfect.

How are customer service and technical support?

They have very good support. I always get an answer quite fast when we have trouble. When we write an email, on next day, we will have an answer. This is really good and unusual. I like the support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we had only local backup solutions at our customers on tapes. We had trouble all the time with tapes. This was more than 10 years ago. Then, we switched to drives to create the backups at our customers' sites, but all the time these drives were defect. So, we implemented a big server in our company, where we only have to do maintenance on one big device, not on all the small devices at our customers. We searched for a solution, and Vembu was our first choice.

The current version of Vembu is much better now than the previous version. The newer version is nice. It may not have as many features as the older solution, but it is faster and better to administrate. It is a good solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy and very nice. 

The deployment was not a big project. The backup service was running in a few hours. Then, we have only to implement clients at our customers. 

The process is quite fast. We set up a back up server, then alert the clients. We use a Windows Server with a lot of storage capacity. There is no need for an implementation strategy.

We had an old solution with the old clients. We moved them step-by-step as individual customers to the new solution over half a year. 

Only from within the organization was it a little tricky, because we had to implement new contracts for our customers. It was technically a little different with the old solution. We did need a new server. Also, we had to move all our customers to the new solution step-by-step.

What was our ROI?

The return of investment was very fast, within half a year. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The best thing about the product is the license management. It is a true managed service provider solution. It has a good price. The licensing is quite flexible, which is one of the most important things for us. 

The high availability is too expensive for our customers.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did a lot of evaluations before choosing a product. We tested about 20 different products. Vembu was the best. Some of the other solutions were also very good, but were extraordinarily priced (too expensive). Others, I didn't like the licensing, software, or were only cloud solutions. 

Vembu has the flexibility with its licenses and is a real managed service provider solution. My feeling is that Vembu understands what a service provider needs, not only local administrators. It is one of the reasons that why we chose Vembu.

We haven't found another solution for its price with all this features.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the product. I already recommend it to our partners. It is a really good solution. I like the product. It has good support. For small companies, it's the perfect solution.

We do not use virtual environments. We have done this in the past, but we do not implement virtual clients anymore since we have only small customers and virtual appliances are now on cloud spaces. So, we do not have virtual servers at our customers.

We have used Hyper-V, but it was not beneficial.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Sree ramya - PeerSpot reviewer
Sree ramyaProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Hi,
Thank you for the feedback. Glad to hear that Vembu BDR Suite works well for your environment.
Moving backups from one drive to other is already in our roadmap and will be available in our next major release.
For further updates or queries, please get in touch with our team through vembu-support@vembu.com.

reviewer2157123 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a retailer with 1-10 employees
Real User
Improved our organization by ensuring our data is secure during a disaster, but the UI needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Backup of the VMware server is the most valuable feature."
  • "Scheduling backups is challenging due to the poor quality of the UI."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for the backup and recovery of our VMware data.

How has it helped my organization?

BDRSuite's data protection policy is excellent. A trusted source recommended the solution to me, and I have confidence that my organization is in capable hands by using it.

It is important that BDRSuite provides multiple restore points for recovery data in a more granular manner. For instance, if we identify an injection in our file by examining our log for the relevant time frame, we can restore our system and import our data to a different aspect. Therefore, it is crucial for the engineers to understand how to use the backup system, as restoring the data guarantees that there is no malware present.

The incremental backup process works perfectly because the backup system checks file access, which helps us maintain a smaller disk size.

BDRSuite has improved our organization by ensuring our data is secure during a disaster.

What is most valuable?

Backup of the VMware server is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement?

The instructions are hard to follow and could be simplified.

Scheduling backups is challenging due to the poor quality of the UI. I would rate the UI a three out of ten, as it has significant room for improvement. The graphical interface, including its design, icons, layout, colors, and fonts, is not comparable to Google's. In my opinion, the design is the most significant feature that needs improvement.

The price has room for improvement.

The 15-day trial period for BDRSuite is insufficient to fully experience the solution and make an informed decision about its use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We can scale by adding additional licenses. 

Our server handles up to 10 million users.

How are customer service and support?

The individual with whom I have been in contact is competent, but the support team responsible for reading emails is inadequate. They are unable to comprehend the problem and as a result, there is a lot of unnecessary communication back and forth, which is a waste of time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Negative

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I employed BASH Programming to export all the data daily, and I synchronized it on a server using a daily cron job to back up the system. However, BDRSuite is a more convenient option since it enables us to restore files at the file level. We can simply open the backup, choose the desired file, and send it to the server.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup should be more user-friendly. 

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The license is per unit and is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a five out of ten because I have not had to deal with a disaster situation yet.

To ensure the security of their data, individuals using BDRSuite should obtain certification. Although I have not personally verified this, a friend of mine used BDRSuite for their data center and found it to be secure. BDRSuite is a competitor of Zoho which is comparable to Google in terms of functionality. However, some users may find issues with the user interface and design, particularly those who prioritize aesthetics and ease of use. While technical users like myself will have no issues, others may find BDRSuite to be somewhat complicated upon examination.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user881130 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Provides automated backup of multiple virtual machines but setup can be problematic
Pros and Cons
  • "The automated backup of multiple virtual machines. We can back up two hypervisors, one is Microsoft Hyper-V and the other one is VMware Hypervisor."
  • "It is very easy, unless you know exactly what you're doing, to corrupt the virtual machines and they get locked up. Just brief detail: When you are creating a system, if you don't have absolutely every other little background processes in place, it creates Snapshots of the virtual machines. Once it does that, it then won't be able to have a backup. From that point on you have to destroy the virtual machine, which is completely counterproductive on a large system. There is a fundamental flaw in the setup that can be very dangerous, potentially."
  • "It would be good to have a volume licensing discount. We're a managed IT service provider, so we're backing up not just our own systems but all our clients'. In that regard, as we grow, we're putting business through Vembu. There is not any specific partner incentive at all. So that would be nice to see."

What is our primary use case?

Backing up virtual machines, we use it for Windows Hyper-V platform in one data center, but we've also got future plans for a VMware Hypervisor platform in another data center. So thinking ahead, we chose Vembu.

How has it helped my organization?

It hasn't improved things, per se. It's an essential service, done automatically. I would say it is an essential backup system that matches the alternative solutions at the moment in a relatively cost-effective way.

What is most valuable?

The automated backup of multiple virtual machines. We can back up two hypervisors, one is Microsoft Hyper-V and the other one is VMware Hypervisor.

What needs improvement?

It is very easy, unless you know exactly what you're doing, to corrupt the virtual machines and they get locked up. Just brief detail: When you are creating a system, if you don't have absolutely every other little background processes in place, it creates Snapshots of the virtual machines. Once it does that, it then won't be able to have a backup. From that point on you have to destroy the virtual machine, which is completely counterproductive on a large system. There is a fundamental flaw in the setup that can be very dangerous, potentially. So that needs to be avoided; whoever writes the software for doing that needs to make sure that that cannot happen.

I have fed that back to the developers. I don't know whether they're going to make that change, but they can't put that responsibility onto customers. It's their software that needs to be able to not allow that to happen. I've not had any response to say, "Yes, we'll do it." So that's a little bit of a fault as well. When we do give feedback we don't get any commitment. Like this survey, we're being asked the questions, but when we give feedback, we don't actually get any response at all.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

When it's backing up, it's okay. We've used it to restore the system and that restore system worked. We get an email report on various operations, so we know if something has failed or not. It's operating fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've not encountered any trouble with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their tech support is okay, but they don't respond in time to sort out the problem. We sorted it out ourselves. We fed back the answer. There wasn't any thank you. There wasn't any acknowledgment. There wasn't even any appreciation of what we'd actually done, something like, "Yeah, yeah, you shouldn't have done that." That kind of thing. Very basic support. There is a willingness to help and respond, but in actually solving the problem, they're not very good at all.

Then, once we did solve it, there was no understanding of what had been done, so it's at that level that it is lacking. This issue was over New Year's time. I was actually on holiday in India. I had to waste a whole day rebuilding a system from a corrupt backup. And again, no support from the Vembu guys, at all. Once we showed them what had been done, again, no acknowledgment that they'd safeguard this in the future.

It has been several months now and I'm not in a position to be chasing them to improve the product in that way. So it's still there, in potential, for future Vembu customers to hit the problem that we had and they might not be as tolerant or be able to fix it. We're an IT company ourselves, so we do understand the nature of the software that they're running and the problems, but there are major flaws in the design at set up time.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We haven't actually switched. We do use Microsoft Azure backup systems. We've used our own online backup systems. We've used in-built data center backup solutions a well, so there are a number of solutions. All of them have their weak points. The Vembu one is working and it's stable.

How was the initial setup?

We had problems, initially in setting it up. There was a major bug and the backup process, it corrupted one of our virtual machines which was a live customer system. That wasn't very good. Now that has been sorted and we know how to avoid it, but at the beginning, it wasn't a good system. It has been fixed and it has been working fine since.

It was supposed to be straightforward but it caused major technical issues that were difficult to fix. They were actually unfixable, the problems. We had to basically destroy live production systems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is a good value.

Licensing seems okay. I suppose the more volume you put through the system, it would be good to have a volume licensing discount. We're a managed IT service provider, so we're backing up not just our own systems but all our clients'. In that regard, as we grow, we're putting business through Vembu. There is not any specific partner incentive at all. So that would be nice to see.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Microsoft Azure. I can't remember the others but there were a few; the data center ones, but I haven't got specific names. The in-built ones in VMware.

When you do a search on Google about half a dozen pop up and we looked at some of them. With some of them were put off by their business models. So even before we evaluated them, their business models weren't acceptable. The nice thing about Vembu is the subscription, on a monthly basis. It fits into our business models.

What other advice do I have?

I would tell others looking into implementing this solution exactly what steps need to be done in the setup. I've actually documented it, and I've passed that on to the Vembu guys. Take that, and make sure that things are set up very clearly, not, "There you go, it's very straightforward, it'll take you five minutes." It's not like that at all. The marketing of the setup is so misleading. It can cause a lot of problems. They need to be more honest in the way things need to be set up. That would be okay, that doesn't put people off when you have to go through a process. But just saying it's straightforward and it's simple is a bit of a lie, especially if it causes a lot of problems. So there needs to be more documentation on exactly what to set up in what order, and how to do it and what not to do.

Regarding technical support, sometimes, if you pick the wrong time of day to get through you get this constant "We value your business, we're busy at the moment..." and you can be on the phone for ages because it gets redirected to America. You get the feeling that they're not actually busy, they just have some automated lady giving you a message. Again, that engenders mistrust in the technology. It needs to be not advertised as 24/7. It needs to be advertised with the specific hours that support can be provided. That would help a lot, not just saying 24/7 and then not actually providing it.

It goes to America, but it is actually answered in India. It's all confusing. If it's 3 o'clock in India, we understand that they'll be asleep, so why not say we operate at these times, and people will understand that, rather than pretending redirect to an American number, where you're expecting somebody to pick up the phone. But they're picking it up from India at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's forced us to be hanging on to the phone for a long time, while nobody has got any intention of picking up the phone.

In terms of my rating of the solution, I have to do so on two levels. The first is the implementation and that would be a two out of 10. It was bad. But in terms of once it's operating, I would give it a nine.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user634275 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user634275Senior Product Analyst at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor

We would like to thank you for your comprehensive feedback and also needless to say that this detailed feedback will help us understand where we stand and what we need to do in terms of our offering. We are continuously making enhancements to Vembu BDR Suite so that it covers most of the use-cases in any data center. Right now, our R&D team is working on an approach to backup Hyper-V VM having checkpoints without affecting the production environment and the same will be available in any one of our upcoming releases. With regards to your feedback regarding our support team, we have taken this to support head and he has assured of FTR for such issues and also a proper RCA as well. While the support team does operate 24*7, there might have been few rare occurrences thus causing a reason for your concern. We have taken note of your entire feedback and we also thank you for taking time to write us amidst your hectic schedule.

Application Support Specialist at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
The agentless backups are key, and I can spool it back up at either of our locations
Pros and Cons
  • "The agentless backups are the big selling point on this, as well as being able to send out across sites so that I can do a restore at either of our two locations."
  • "The only place where I would really want to see improvement, out the gate, is more granular scheduling... If I want to do an offset or to only do two backups on Friday and Saturday - versus whole hourly incrementals during the week - I don't have that granularity right now."

What is our primary use case?

We're doing onsite local backups as well as offsite DR of our VM infrastructure.

How has it helped my organization?

Realistically, it is no different than the previous backup solution we were using, other than it costs less. As far as workflow is concerned, it hasn't really changed.

We use it to back up our VM infrastructure, but as far as benefiting the organization, it's just a guarantee that, if we go down, I can spool it back up at either location. That's the biggest benefit to this sort of backup solution, instead of files on another drive.

This is a part of our enterprise backup solution. It has saved us a considerable amount of money.

What is most valuable?

The agentless backups are the big selling point on this, as well as being able to send out across sites so that I can do a restore at either of our two locations.

The compression is good. As far as the encryption is concerned, I'm glad that it's there for site to site. We don't necessarily need it just because of the way that we're connected, so it's not really a selling feature, one way or the other.

What needs improvement?

The only place where I would really want to see improvement, out the gate, is more granular scheduling. With the previous solution that we were using, you could pick different times based on different days. Right now, with Vembu, I just have every X number of hours on these days, but if I want to do an offset or to only do two backups on Friday and Saturday - versus whole hourly incrementals during the week - I don't have that granularity. That would be something that I would be looking for.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With the exception of when we required that initial hotfix, it has been extremely stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is part of the reason why we got it. The opportunity to push the offsite data recovery to multiple sites, instead of just, one was a big selling feature for us. Currently, we are a two-location organization, but we want the opportunity to be able to scale up and pop another one of these units down to another location and have them replicate freely between.

How are customer service and technical support?

The tech support is phenomenal. We were not expecting a fix to happen as quickly as it did. The response time, through everything I've experienced so far with them, has been within an hour.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did use a different solution previous to this. It was an onsite and cloud-based solution. With the cloud-based component, we switched because of the cost savings with Vembu, because we have two sites that we can leverage. The two sites are for disaster recovery, which is far cheaper than doing a cloud-based backup.

How was the initial setup?

We had a few issues with the initial setup that were solved by support. The actual installation of the software was simple enough. However, there was a bug. We required a hotfix to get two of our larger backups going. But that was remedied within a few days by their engineering team and it has been working flawlessly since. With the exception of just waiting for that to go, it was fairly painless.

The deployment took roughly a week. But we were also figuring out a bunch of different backend stuff as well, so it wasn't a week on the software package in particular. It's a part of a larger backup solution. To get the entire thing up and going was about a week.

In terms of implementation strategy, we did build-outs on separate servers so that we would have dedicated servers that would be doing the backups, instead of having the BDR suite reside on our VM infrastructure. The reasons for that strategy were

  1. to limit overhead on our current infrastructure and 
  2. if any of our hosts went down, our backup would not be part and parcel of our host network. 

It was completely segregated, just to keep the business continuity intact as much as possible.

We were in trial for about a month, and the actual deployment has been in place for about a month.

What about the implementation team?

We did it all in-house.

What was our ROI?

Our return in investment for this solution, including all the additional hardware that we chose to purchase for it, including hard drives and the server host that it runs on, as well the subscription, means it will be about a six- to seven-month return on investment for us.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The subscription model that we're signed up for is very good. The only thing that is something of a sticking point is the fact that you can't do PO-based licensing. It's all just credit card. That required a little bit of a sell for management because typically everything we do is PO-based and our previous solution was PO-based. That would be the only thing about the subscription service that we didn't really enjoy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were really only looking at Vembu. It was brought to our attention by a reseller we had used for another product, as the backup solution that they typically push for clients. We thought we would take a look at it and, after we ran our trials, we found that it would work for us.

What other advice do I have?

Have a separate backup appliance, if you can, a separate, physical backup appliance so that if your host goes, your backup doesn't go down with it at the same time.

As far as the encryption is concerned, I'm glad that it's there for site to site. We don't necessarily need it just because of the way that we're connected, so it's not really a selling feature, one way or the other.

We don't use Hyper-V. Our Vembu is working with EXSi. I have not had to do a full server restore, yet. But I have had to do restores of incremental points in time, for certain files. We have tested the restore feature of the entire guest VM. If I have a server go down, I have a lot of people who can't do work. So a fast restore is critical.

It's just our core IT team that is actually using the solution. There are three people who have direct access to it, but we serve a larger number of users in our organization. However, they don't see anything as far as backend or backups are concerned. As far as they know, nothing's changed, nothing's different, it has no effect or impact on their day-to-day operations.

For deployment and maintenance, now that it's set up, there's not much to do on it, aside from doing checks every so often to ensure that the backups are still happening.

There is a potential use case to increase usage, such as doing some critical workstation backups with it. However, we are not doing that at this time.

I give the solution an eight out of ten. Everything has some room for improvement. The more granular backup scheduling is one of them. There was a slight hiccup that we weren't really expecting, when we were first looking into this, where you can't do a restore while a backup is in process. That was a bit of an annoyance at first, but once we got an explanation from their technical team as to why it's designed and built out like that, it made more sense. It's just one thing that I realize they can't fix but it would be a nice to have.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
BhavaniShanmugam - PeerSpot reviewer
BhavaniShanmugamProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Hi Blake,

Thank you for your feedback.

Based on your suggestion, we’ve taken the “granular scheduling” as a feature request and added to our roadmap. Based on the number of customer requests we receive, we'll prioritize the feature on the roadmap if required.

Also, the PO based license purchase is already available with Vembu. You can reach our sales team vembu-sales@vembu.com for further details.

reviewer1343418 - PeerSpot reviewer
InfoSec Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Provides us with the ability to back up Red Hat Virtualization, but that ability is not native
Pros and Cons
  • "It was very difficult to find a product that supports Red Hat Virtualization natively and to take a snapshot of the VM or a full backup or a dump from the machine. The option that Vembu proposed, to take the machine as an image, take it from the system, is also good."
  • "They said they can support Red Hat Virtualization and we assumed that they support any compatible system but we found we need to do a network backup or a network image, which is not what it said on their website. I have had many discussions with them about where this component is. Initially, I was searching for a component which would back up Red Hat Virtualization. They said they support this in the same way they support Hyper-V and VMware. I haven't found the feature in their portal or in any of their software. They haven't made a special agent for it, in the way they did for Hyper-V."

What is our primary use case?

We were looking for a backup for Red Hat Virtualization. We don't need any advanced features from a backup solution yet. We don't have VMware or Hyper-V, we only have Red Hat Virtualization.

We are a service provider and we have many customers but we are only using this solution for one of our customers. They have a small environment with four servers.

How has it helped my organization?

It was very difficult to find a product that supports Red Hat Virtualization natively and to take a snapshot of the VM or a full backup or a dump from the machine. The option that Vembu proposed, to take the machine as an image, take it from the system, is also good. It has enhanced our backup system. Before, it was very difficult and we did it manually. Now, it's easy to take an image from Red Hat.

BDR Suite helps us deliver an enterprise-level data protection solution and reduce our budgets. It is about half of the cost of other products we looked at.

What is most valuable?

  • It's easy to install.
  • It's simple to configure.

What needs improvement?

They said they can support Red Hat Virtualization and we assumed that they support any compatible system but we found we need to do a network backup or a network image, which is not what it said on their website. I have had many discussions with them about where this component is. Initially, I was searching for a component which would back up Red Hat Virtualization. They said they support this in the same way they support Hyper-V and VMware. I haven't found the feature in their portal or in any of their software. They haven't made a special agent for it, in the way they did for Hyper-V.

When we were in negotiations and discussing this with their pre-sales, we said we haven't found any documents from them talking about how they support Red Hat Virtualization. At the end of the day they said, "No, we deal with Red Hat Virtualization in the same way that we take an image of a file through the network." It's not native in the solution itself. For VMware they have a special agent. But for Red Hat, it's just a network backup, the same as files. When I asked about a license to support Red Hat, they said you just take the network backup and it will do the same job.

For the moment, that is fine for us. We will take the image. But it is not what we expected from the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started with it just before the [COVID-19] lockdown in April, but we haven't worked much with it yet.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have yet to test the stability of the solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have also not yet tested the scalability.

In the future we may increase usage if we find it's good for backup. We plan to take the DR solution from them.

How are customer service and technical support?

We haven't had to contact technical support yet.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used many solutions in the past. We switched to Vembu because of the Red Hat Virtualization. Our old solutions don't support it.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. There were no difficulties and no advanced settings that you need to learn before you do the setup. We had it deployed within minutes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have an enterprise license. We found it very simple and straightforward. For our needs, the price of the backup system is not too much.

However, the prices are not clear in the portal. Not all the items are listed.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We checked out Veeam and Acronis but both were very expensive compared to Vembu.

What other advice do I have?

I can recommend Vembu for those who need just file backup.

It's a straightforward solution. It was easy to install and deploy for many machines, taking backups from files and servers in the same way. They offer 10 GB for cloud that you can use for free.

We haven't tested its compression, encryption, or deduplication features yet. So far, just our system admin is using and maintaining the solution.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
BhavaniShanmugam - PeerSpot reviewer
BhavaniShanmugamProduct Analyst at Vembu Technologies
Vendor

Thank you for your feedback.

Regarding the RHEV VM Backup, upon review of our communications to you, we couldn't find any mention of Vembu supporting Agentless backup for RHEV VM backup, instead, we have recommended only Vembu Client Agent-based backups for each VM.

Maybe it was just a case of misunderstanding. For any clarifications, you can reach our team through vembu-support@vembu.com.

Buyer's Guide
Download our free BDRSuite Backup & Replication Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free BDRSuite Backup & Replication Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.