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BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs VMware Live Recovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BDRSuite Backup & Replication
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (7th), MSP Backup (1st)
VMware Live Recovery
Ranking in Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is 1.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Live Recovery is 9.4%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Redha Benlaksira - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it lets customers choose to restore their data to an hour or a day ago
BDRSuite is better than competing solutions because it can protect, back up, and recover data. A feature called live migration allows you to recover the same data in different environments. For example, I can back up the data from a VMware machine and restore it to a Hyper-V. You can also create repositories and back up environments to a cloud platform like GCP and AWS S3 buckets. BDRSuite allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on an EC3 instance or Microsoft 365 mailboxes, SharePoint, etc. The solution allows us to recover data instantly. We can recover all our data in under 15 minutes. In a virtual environment, we can recover a virtual machine and all its data in under 15 minutes. It's the same for a NAS, SAN, or DAS disk. The ability to boot instantly enables customers to maintain their business operations without interruption. BDRSuite's ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it gives customers the option to restore their data to an hour or a day ago. They can choose a full, incremental, or synthetic backup. Incremental backup makes sense if you are backing up the same data daily and you want to save space and network resources. It only backs up the differences or updates in every block. I've worked with lots of backup solutions, and BDRSuite is the easiest to use. It's simple to install and create backup jobs. It doesn't require many tasks to install the solution. You can easily back up and restore from one console
Siva Kuppala - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplified management and automated recovery process, which reduces the need for manual intervention during a disaster
Automated recovery is one good feature, SRM also offers simplified management. It has a centralized interface for configuring, testing, and executing disaster recovery plans across multiple sites. This means management from a single point, even for many sites. Recovery plans can be different for customers. So, another important feature is the policy-based protection within SRM. Recovery plans can be customized based on business requirements, including Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). These objectives might differ between industries – healthcare might need a more aggressive RPO, for instance. Additionally, SRM offers failback capabilities and reporting features for compliance.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"While BDRSuite offers a variety of functionalities, our primary focus is its disaster recovery capabilities, which we find to be the most valuable aspect of the software."
"The scalability is good. It can scale. Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy."
"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 made it easy for us to handle the daily backup of endpoints."
"When you're looking at your dashboard, you can see all your active jobs. You can see exactly if they're successful or failed and you can actually drill down and see what caused the problem. The fact you can see that right away is nice."
"The ability to map a drive and restore a separate file is most valuable. The restoration activity is good."
"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 Vembu BDR product is very intuitive and easy to use."
"We feel the ability to move virtual machines while they are still running to be the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can independently run the disaster recovery without disturbing the production instances."
"The non-disruptive testing feature is a mature technology in the solution"
"The initial setup is easy depending on the environment you are working with."
"Its capability to schedule, write and configure the recovery and scheduled steps, such that you don't have to come in and start manually trying to recover the entire machine. You just push a button to recover the VMware and everything is done."
"In terms of resiliency, the most valuable aspect of SRM has been its effectiveness."
"Automated recovery is one good feature, SRM also offers simplified management. It has a centralized interface for configuring, testing, and executing disaster recovery plans across multiple sites. This means management from a single point, even for many sites."
"It is easy to implement for my clients."
 

Cons

"Our initial experience with BDRSuite highlighted the need for improved user onboarding materials."
"The initial setup process can be more simplistic and quicker."
"It is not a well-known software. People do not know about Vembu."
"They need to improve their marketing because not many people are aware of it. People ask me what is Vembu, and I have to explain to them it is a good tool for backup and other things."
"Vembu software runs on a Windows Server. The Windows Server has to be connected to the internet so it can connect with Vembu’s servers. It has to connect with Vembu. For some reason, if it doesn't connect, it stops working, and I don't know why on earth they do that. They require it to connect to the internet and connect with Vembu for it to continue to function. If the internet is down or if the server can't reach the internet, it stops working after a few days. That's not great because there are some people who want to do backups but they don't want to have their server accessible on the internet."
"We are still exploring its features, but we want to see more features that we desire over time."
"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."
"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."
"The improvements should be as per customer requirements."
"In my view, if VMware comes up with an appliance-based solution like vCenter Server (which was also Windows-based), it will be much easier for deployment. I"
"Lacks stability and as a result requires continuous monitoring."
"Flexibility to choose different PITs would be nice."
"VMware SRM lacks certain functions that other platforms have, such as better prioritization of allocation of resources and Boot profiles."
"It would be good if this solution could integrate configuration management software such as Chef Infra."
"The solution must provide better integration with third-party vendors."
"What I think can be improved is the data replication aspect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Take a look at the pricing and licensing closely. When we installed the BDR disaster recovery server, which is the duplication of the backup data on one server onto a second one where the backup data resides, it was not clear that this DR server needed two other licenses. These licenses were to back up the copy of the first backup server that had two licenses for the two physical host that it was backing up in the first place. Moving files around to a second DR server, why would I need an extra two licenses? I don't know if it's to make money, but it was not very obvious and I had to abort the project from there because I didn't plan to pay for extra licenses to copy data of the first two physical servers. I also didn't understand why it was needed. Hopefully, they will improve the explanation in the documentation for this."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"I selected this solution because it was the only one I could find for the cost that did what I needed it to do. I haven't found a competitor who does as good a job for the money."
"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."
"The product's pricing is a good value. Vembu is cost-effective versus using VMware Essentials. Regarding licensing, make sure you find the right workstation or server that you're going to install it on, and know the number of sockets it has, since the price depends on that."
"We were able to take advantage of a promotional pricing campaign."
"It's more affordable than Veeam, so smaller companies can afford to have a solution like this in place, which is very nice."
"The price of VMware SRM depends on how many VMs the customer has to move. There is a difference between the standard and enterprise license. I'm presenting the standard license to my customers because the total of VMs is not more than 50. The customer needs only the standard license and the cost is very effective for him."
"The level of licensing required for this solution is dependent on the server instances in use."
"After Broadcom acquired the solution, the licensing cost increased drastically"
"Compare to hardware-based replication, I think software based replication is best and cheap."
"VMware SRM is quite expensive."
"VMware SRM is a little bit pricey."
"We have a standard enterprise license for the solution."
"The software is expensive. There is a one-time cost involved in purchasing the license."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
87%
Retailer
3%
Financial Services Firm
1%
Hospitality Company
1%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I had a small problem integrating VMware and Hyper-V when customers used a free VMware license to create VMs. This is a problem because many customers use the free version of VMware. There are also...
What do you like most about VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
Setting up VMs can be done quickly. It is easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
The solution is pretty expensive after the changes, and it depends on the size of the customer if it's worth it. Larger enterprise customers can automate several features, making it cost-effective.
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
The licenses need to be easier to quote. At the moment, it is complicated with all the changes. The pricing structure is pretty expensive, especially after the recent changes, and it's important fo...
 

Also Known As

Vembu BDRSuite
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, Datrium DRaaS , VMware SRM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
Certainty Home Loans, VPay, ZEON
Find out what your peers are saying about BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs. VMware Live Recovery and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.