BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

The biggest improvement has been the ability to allow us as an MSSP to continuously gather extra revenue from this software, so we can use it to back up our clients' data offsite. This is one of the reasons why we enjoy the product and we've enjoyed using it for this long.

When it comes to backup software, one of the biggest things that I use to enjoy about StoreGrid, this changed recently, was the support.

I enjoy the ease of the UI and how simple it is to use compared to other products.

They had a good product and tried to change things by going to a different product. They should have tried to stay with a product that is a proven solution and successful.

One of the biggest things that they lack at the moment, which their competitors currently have, is a hardware device that we can deploy at a client's location. We can have local backup stored on the device and replicate over to our cloud. That's basically one of the biggest concerns that we see for their company that we currently think they are lacking compared to other competitors.

Two or three years ago, they had an amazing support team, especially for the StoreGrid product, which is something that we're currently using. But around a year and a half ago, they brought out a new product called BDR, which from my understanding is horrible. We tried it and didn't like that the support just started going down a bit. They started transitioning more to the BDR side and left the StoreGrid part out.

The system is very stable. It's ideal for our day-to-day basis. I've been using StoreGrid ever since I started working here over five years. It's a good product. We haven't upgraded to the latest patch they've released, and the product still works fine. Overall, we think the actual system software works great. 

I have encountered some stability issues, but certain things are awkward to do when it comes to restoring and pulling data, e.g., cracking Exchange databases, pulling emails, and restoring mailboxes.

I would give technical support a five out of 10, because we've had issues in the past where calls haven't been answered. I do call them a lot and the majority of the times, I'm going to the United States, although I know this company is based out of India, and they have offices here. However, when I call during the weekends I've had the following issues:

• Calls which aren't being picked up.
• Phone rings for hours.
• Calls go directly to voicemail.
• Emergency over weekend where they didn't get back to me for over 32 hours.
• Often takes over two days for me to get somebody on support.

Originally, it seemed like they were staffed for the actual support need, but now it doesn't appear like it. Only in the past few months have I seen minor improvements. I do understand that in the past year or so, there have been some changes.

However, when it comes to knowledge, they're always willing to help; I would say they're always on top of things. As for being knowledgeable, I would rate them as an eight out of 10.

I didn't previously use a different solution. I really don't remember because when I took on this position, the solution was already out here. From my understanding though, we did use a similar solution. It really comes down to pricing.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It's fairly simple and easy, and they make our lives a lot easier when dealing with the licensing and actually purchasing licensing, keeping them in the vault, keeping them in our bank. It gives us an additional way to resell and earn a little extra here and there from other clients. When we do build out servers, backup servers, for them and we have them out on site, we can obviously use the licensing to license their system to obviously mark up and make some money.

Somebody already took on that decision prior to my being here.

Give it a chance. It's a decent product, although not the best of its kind. It is lacking in certain aspects. A piece of hardware being deployed out at a client's office would be ideal. There are a lot of products out there, and it's in the middle of the pack.

The solution is used for:

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

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

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

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

The most valuable aspects include:

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

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

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

The solution must improve:

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

I've used the solution for six months.

We have a multi-tenant environment with multi-cloud, but we are only using this for our local data center backups. This is a small setup with around 50 to 60 VMs.

We are able to back up our local virtual machines. Without backup we could end up in very critical situations.

It backs up our virtual machines with the CBT, Changed Block Tracking. This is a common feature. We don't have a complex hierarchy here because we have a local data center with minimal use. 

The compression ratio is fine and the deduplication is as well. We are not using the encryption feature yet, as we only deployed it recently. We may use it later on.

The reports are at a basic level and there is room for improvement there. It only has historical reports and VM backup job-level reports.

I have been using BDR Suite for about three or four months.

The stability is okay, it's running fine. Up to now we haven't had any negative issues.

Technical support is good. Whenever I raise a ticket they reply in a timely fashion.

Our basic goal is the backup of our infrastructure. We chose this platform because it's cost-effective.

The initial setup is very straightforward. The solution is very easy. It's not a complex one where we need to follow detailed diagrams. I installed and tested everything and it's running fine now.

Initially, I had some issues but I fixed them myself. When I deployed this tool it was having issues with some virtual machines, specifically with Windows 2019. Fortunately, I was able to fix that issue by updating the Windows version to the latest software.

The whole setup took one or two days, including the installation and configuration of servers. 

Fixing the issue I mentioned took some days because I need to update the servers. Otherwise, the overall deployment did not take a long time.

In terms of a deployment plan, before deployment I considered my whole environment and then I started the deployment. Our IT team is just three or four people and I did it myself.

I didn't need too much help for Vembu, other than for licensing. They helped me on the licensing purchase.

The pricing is very good compared to Veeam. Veeam is very well-known software for backup and replication, and comparing Vembu to that, from the financial aspect, Vembu is very good.

I deployed Veeam and it worked very well, but the problem was that its price was very high. As a result, I searched for another solution and found Vembu. I deployed it and we have been happy with it. For us, the major difference was the pricing.

Our environment is at a very basic level. We don't have multi-level vCenters or cloud. Vembu BDR Suite is working fine for us. Right now we have only three hosts with virtual machines and it's okay for us. 

Overall, this suite is very good. It has features which we use like a backup proxy and test processing. It delivers an enterprise-level data protection solution and helps us reduce our budget. It's cost-effective.

I use it as a backup solution for our VMware system.

I get my backups done. If I don't get my backups done and something goes wrong, I lose my job. The benefit of using it is that I keep my job.

Vembu helps me deliver an enterprise-level data protection solution and reduce budgets.

The cost is one of the most valuable features.

The problem that I had getting this up and running was that when I put in a backup plan, and wanted to run that backup plan, that plan had to go onto the server that it's going to do the backup on, and it had to pass on credentials. It would be nice, when you create the credentials for logging on to the server, if it would immediately verify that those credentials work. What ended up happening is I'd have to wait until nighttime to really figure out whether those credentials were valid or not. That prompted me to call support.

We've been using Vembu, as a company, for about three months.

The stability has been okay.

The scalability is fine.

I'm the only one in our organization who uses the solution and I'm responsible for its maintenance.

The problem that I really had — and it was not the product — is that when I called in, the phone system is a negative five on a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst. They wanted me to leave a message. When there is a problem with the product and you call in, you want to talk to somebody or wait to talk to somebody, not leave a message. If our system is down and someone says to me, "What's going on? Our system is down. Our company's not running. What are you doing?" the conversation would go something like this:

"I'm waiting for a phone call back." 

"You're waiting for a what? A phone call back? You get on that phone and get those guys on the line." 

And he would use some other choice words before the word "phone."

Their response was quick, but I'd rather wait on hold. I'll listen to music. In that same scenario where someone asks me what is happening and I say, "Oh, I'm on hold. I'm waiting for support to respond to me," they would say, "Oh, okay. That's good. You've got it under control." It's all perception. Have you ever run a program and it just sits there and sits there and you have no idea how long it's going to take for the update to finish? A minute becomes an hour. It was like that. Their phone system is horrible, terrible.

The support itself was good. The technician was good. However, they all seem to be from India and language could be a problem, although I have not found that to be an issue so far. I would like to see more support from the U.S. I'd rather speak to someone from the U.S. than someone from another country. That's just a preference: "Made in the USA."

The initial setup was pretty easy. I'm going to reconfigure it to be loaded onto the actual VMware machine, but I just don't want to do that at this time. Right now it's running as a software product. I want to run it closer to the VM machine itself, as a fixture associated with it.

The deployment took about an hour. Our implementation strategy was simply to get it to work. We needed the backup.

I did it myself.

It does what it's supposed to do.

The pricing is fair.

I did some research and I looked at some reviews.

I bought it for doing a backup using VMware vSphere and just started with VMware. But I use another product with our legacy system, a product called Acronis. If I were to compare Vembu with Acronis Backup I would say it's comparable, but it's more cost-effective.

If you need phone support, don't buy the product.

I would rate Vembu, overall, as a five out of ten. It would be a ten if they fixed the phone system. I have to hammer that in.

The primary use case is for backup.

I am using the latest version.

What we like best about the system is the use of its operation and the backups versus what we had to do earlier. We use it to back up our virtual environments, mainly VMware.

Everything is happening in the background without running any commands. It runs seamlessly in the back, so this is a great achievement. This is also a great convenience for this organization. Previously, somebody had to do it manually all the time.

We are now using it 24/7 because it is serving as an online backup, and very soon, the DR will activated on the product.

We invest in the backup so the continuity of the data is not affected.

It takes the sever directly from your VM environment.

The compression, encryption, and deduplicatuion are quite useful.

We are still exploring its features, but we want to see more features that we desire over time.

It is fairly stable.

At the moment, we have an administrator whose responsible for the device.

I am the only person handling the device. It is very straightforward, We have just one person in the organization, a consultant, and I don't go to the site on a daily basis.

I am happy with the technical support. Whenever I have contacted them, I have received the results that I was looking for.

This is the first time that we used this type of solution. We were quite happy with what we received.

The initial setup was quite good. There were no major hiccups.

Even the support teams supported us, which was quite helpful. The deployment took a few minutes. 

I am the consultant. I recommended this solution to my client.

I think this solution will help us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduce budgets. We will be moving more into that very soon.

The pricing could have been cheaper.

With another client, we had looked at Veritas. wihich is also quite stable. Between this solution and Veritas, I found this solution to be more user-friendly in terms of its interface.

Go for it. This solution suits organizations where there is no dedicated IT manpower. It can be managed by somebody, like a consultant, who can handle the entire thing. 

We are quite happy with the latest version and how it works. We are convinced that this is the right product.

I haven't used it with Microsoft Hyper-V.

We do cloud hosting for our customers, and we do reselling when they want to do VMware on their premises.

The backup of VMware ESX is the most important to us. That's what we use. We use it to back up all of our private cloud, and it's backed up hourly.

We sent a letter complaining about how the lack of customer service has caused us problems. We're actually dumping Vembu and we're going with Veeam, and we're asking for our money back. The thing that needs to be improved most is their customer support. The product itself is fine, but the customer support is basically nonexistent.

Instead of helping us meet new challenges it has actually caused us problems. We wanted a backup solution so that we could quickly back up and recover all of our customer virtual machines. In case something happened to the hardware, we could quickly recover it on different hardware. We looked at different solutions such as Veeam and Vembu. Vembu was recommended to us and we found it to be cheaper than Veeam but, unfortunately, because they're based in India, not in North America, the customer service doesn't even provide phone support.

We had a lot of problems getting it configured in the first place. They also wanted us to allow them remote access to our machines without us watching what they're doing, which is a huge security risk for us. We said we couldn't do that, and they said they don't offer any phone support whatsoever.

The product itself actually works mostly well. One of the features of the product is Application-Aware and that does not work properly. When we tested it with the Veeam product, it did work properly. We tried to get it to work, to get support to help get it working. It went back and forth for about two weeks through email, trying to get help to get this feature working, and it just did not work.

With the Application-Aware setting, the stability was near zero on a scale of one to ten.

As far as scalability goes, everything seemed okay. I would rate it around a seven out of ten.

I would rate technical support at one out of ten. I don't even know why they have a tech support phone number because I was told in an email from a manager that they don't provide tech support over the phone. Every time I call the tech support phone number, I'm told I have to send an email to support@vembu.com. I said that I would pay extra for premium support but they said they don't even offer it.

The initial setup was complicated because of the Application-Aware feature not working.

For someone who doesn't want the Application-Aware feature to work, everything else is up to par. The licensing is straightforward. They license it per CPU. 

One thing to note is that when you configure which virtual machine you're going to back up, if it's on one physical machine, they license it there. If it automatically fails over to a second machine, the license doesn't automatically move over with it. If they could make that a little more streamlined, that would be an improvement.

We did test Veeam. Vembu vs Veeam came in as a lot less expensive, but I guess you get what you pay for. That’s why we have already sent an email to Vembu saying we want our money back.

We looked at a few other products, but we didn't try them all out.

We've already gone ahead and purchased Veeam, and already tested the Veeam phone support while just on a trial. Someone picks up the phone right away and helps you resolve it. They do remote access, but they let you be on the call when they're doing remote access. They never access your machines without your permission, etc., whereas Vembu was the opposite.

My advice would be not to go with Vembu if you're in North America because it's too hard to get ahold of anybody in India.

We were a reseller, but we've canceled that. We've told all our customers that we're not reselling Vembu because of the problems with the tech support and the problems with the Application-Aware feature not working.

I would rate Vembu at three out of ten because for simple configurations it works fine, but overall, their tech support is very poor. Conversations with tech support and the way they handle tech support are very poor. One example is that I was told that they want to access our servers, but that I wouldn't be allowed to be on the phone and watch what they're doing. I can't be sure that they're only accessing what they're supposed to be doing. The other thing is, they don't offer any extended or premium support. Vembu is for a low-end, small company which doesn't want to do much.

We use it to back up a test lab type of environment. It's a virtual environment where we use Hyper-V.

The way it improves our organization is that we haven't worried about looking at backups in about a year or so, it's just been running on its own. It also delivers an enterprise-level of data protection and helps with our budget. I estimate we have saved $3,000 - $4,000.

The most valuable feature is the Hyper-V backup - it's just one click. I don't have to worry about it.

There's a feature that does syncing with AWS Cloud backup online. It's not that straightforward to get it set up.

We haven't encountered any issues with the stability of the product.

I haven't tested the scalability yet.

Tech support has been pretty good. I've reached out to them a couple of times and they answered my questions. The support has been pretty decent.

We previously used Veeam. Vembu is much cheaper than the competitor, than the Veeam suite. That's why we went with it.

It was very easy to set up. It took us about 30 minutes to deploy it.

I prefer the way Vembu is licensed. When you look at Veeam or any other product, they price per node. Vembu is licensed per host. You just buy a host license and it backs up unlimited VMs within that host. The others charge per VM.

We evaluated Veeam, Comet, and Windows' built-in backup.

Look at the options out there. If you're looking for a cheaper solution go with this. If you're looking for more features and integrations with other solutions, then you would have to go Veeam.

Although we use it with Hyper-V, I don't know if it enables high-availability. We currently just have the one user, the test environment backup.

I rate Vembu a nine out of ten. The one point off is because the cloud sync options are not that straightforward to set up.

The primary intended target for it was VMware backup and utilizing it in a VMware environment. It is a production, Active Directory, file server type of environment.

I am using the current version.

It hasn't improved the way our company functions from an operational standpoint.

The compression, encryption, and deduplication features are fabulous and great stuff.

What would have been most valuable for me, would have been the convenience and ease of doing the VMware backups along with the ability to provide a low-level, file level, restore all capability without having to structure the detailed Windows Backups association. So, an ease of setup with a granularity of a restore all capability without having to use a standard Windows Backup. I would need to upgrade my VM environment for this to work currently.

I investigated Vembu probably for the first time a couple of years back. I evaluated it in just a quick and dirty manner without any real followup on it. Subsequent to that, I have been more actively utilizing it for about a year.

It seems to be stable. No concerns about that.

Two people are required for deployment and maintenance of this solution.

My impression of the scalability is good. My scalability requirement isn't what some others might be, but the solution appears to be fully scalable.

It is being used in probably 80 percent of our environment. It's not a large environment. We probably won't scale out to the remainder. Eventually, the environment will be drawn in to the point where it's probably 100 percent of the environment that will be covered under Vembu, then that environment will be relatively stable. It won't change past that.

There are just a couple of us actually utilizing it. We're relatively small, so there are really just a couple of users for admin in there. It's a support environment.

From both the sales and technical support standpoint, they have been great. They have helped out to the extent that they can, but it hasn't been enough. There are things that they can't do and it's going to have to happen on my side (in my production environment). It was not clear from the evaluation level, when we ran through evaluation on it, that this was going to be an issue when we got to production.

Previously, it was a bit different because our environment had been a hosted environment. There was a different tool being utilized by the hosted provider. Our implementation of Vembu was a standup as we brought something in-house.

The initial setup was straightforward.

There were issues with the implementation because of incompatibilities between the tool implementation and our current VMware installation. So, it was an implementation issue that doesn't allow me to use it for VMware backup in the manner in which we would want to use it. That wasn't clear from the evaluation stage nor was it clear from the first utilization of it because it worked in the environment that it was being evaluated in. Based on that, we went ahead and made the purchase of the full implementation. At that point, it became clear that there would be limitations in that implementation that could not be overcome without doing upgrades to the production environment.

The evaluation and deployment took a couple of months.

To get through the evaluation did require support from from them. They were supportive and did provide that support.

There was an implementation strategy with some specific needs that were fulfilled by Vembu. It was an implementation strategy that included a consolidation and transition at the same time. It was a bit of a complex strategy and Vembu fulfilled it. Vembu was the tool of choice because of its ability to do that and because of the features in the suite. What was disconcerting was that it was able to do that part of it, but then when we went to put it into full production, then we encountered these other difficulties that hadn't been planned for or counted on.

To continue to do backups, we fell back to Windows Backup mode. We are still using the tool, but not in the manner in which we would have wanted. The tool purchase doesn't cover all options of the tool, e.g., if I go in and buy it, I have to buy it licensed for VMware Backups, not Windows Backups. At this point, what had to happen was they had to allow it to operate in Windows Backup so I could continue to back up the VMs, but in a trial mode. The trial mode has been extended once, and now we're reaching the limit of that extension again. Because I still haven't been able to update the production VMware environment such that the tool will operate in it in the manner in which I want it to operate, I'm stuck having to go back again to say, "Sorry, I need to extend this trial on it again." Even though I've paid, I'm still only able to operate in a trial mode. So, it's been difficult for us. 

I've purchased and been licensed for one aspect of it, which is my preferred method, but the pricing and licensing will not work for the short-term and I can't draw back.

Yes, we did survey others. We didn't match up evaluations. We just didn't have a lot of resources for it. There was a desktop environment to a test evaluation.

We primarily went with Vembu for its flexibility and features.

You should never evaluate in your production environment, but make sure your evaluation is done as close as possible to your target.

We are not using it with Hyper-V.

I would rate this product in the high eights or nine (out of 10).