BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

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

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.

Backup of the VMware server is the most valuable feature.

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.

I have been using the solution for four months.

The solution is stable.

We can scale by adding additional licenses. 

Our server handles up to 10 million users.

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.

Negative

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.

The initial setup should be more user-friendly. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

The license is per unit and is expensive.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using it for about a year.

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

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

Scalability is good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate it as nine out of 10.

We 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.

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

We are a business school.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One month ago, we subscribed for one year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The initial setup was very straightforward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate Vembu an eight out of ten.

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.