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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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Disaster Recovery (DR) Software category, the mindshare of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Live Recovery is 9.0%, down from 11.6% 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
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures data availability and enables efficient migration between data centers
In our organization, we have deployed VMware Live Recovery for disaster recovery purposes. We have two data centers, and VMware Live Recovery is used for data replication between these centers. It is used to ensure data availability and for migration purposes when the primary data center is down…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is very reliable and works well out of the box; many of our customers are buying it."
"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."
"Vembu provides us with a way to instantly recover data. It offers instant data recovery through a local backup server deployed at the customer's site. We can quickly recover data either by copying it back to the main server or if the backup server is powerful enough, we can also directly start a virtual machine from the backup."
"There is an option to back up a specific folder from a specific source, not the whole virtual machine."
"The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup."
"It suits our needs, is versatile, and the functionality is there."
"The Vembu BDR product is very intuitive and easy to use."
"Adding and removing backup jobs using BDRSuite is easy and also includes great documentation."
"I give VMware Live Recovery a rating of ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the integration part, along with the subsequent hardware."
"It is a very stable solution...I was involved in VMware SRM's deployment phase two years ago, and it was an easy process."
"The solution helps to improve business continuity processes. Its automatic failover and failback policies have been wonderful."
"The solution runs well in the background, just in case we need it."
"The product is evolving and the vendor is committed to change."
"Our systems fail over using SRM. So, we do a big bang DR, which is biannual, and we fail over our fairly massive Epic electronic health record (EHR) and our core applications. It takes us about 30 minutes to fail over using SRM, which is pretty good. In most hospitals that have Epic installed, Epic does the audit to make sure that we can fail over if something were to happen. Normally, sites will have a DR solution specific to the EHR, but right now, our pain point is the third-party tier-one clinical applications."
"VMware SRM's most valuable features are its convenience and its use of stretched clusters."
 

Cons

"There was one issue though with the hardware IDs. When I went to a different version of Hyper-V, the hardware IDs weren't restored and the machine got two new IDs. The preliminary unique IDs weren't restored, so I had to reactivate programs."
"The system died twice and it was apparently the result of corrupted disk sectors. I tried to work with tech support to fix it, but they essentially gave up. So twice, I had to rebuild our server."
"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."
"The support is a bit slow in resolving an issue. It takes a long time to recover."
"The API uses a common data image to store the data for the sets, but unfortunately, it's limited to consecutive sets only. That's the only limitation I have observed so far."
"I don't know if it exists, but it would be helpful to get email notifications when there are issues with the backup. I'm sure it probably exists, but I just don't know how to do it. They also have an Azure proxy feature where you can restore to Azure. It's not really well documented. I think they should document how to do that a little better."
"The solution's UI and integrations could be better."
"The process is a bit cumbersome when you remove an agent, delete that job, and add the agent to the same server. Even though the agent is already installed in that server, the system does not recognize it. We have to uninstall the current agent, restart the server, install the push agent - a new agent - and then restart the server. I think they should try to avoid that."
"In general, the drawbacks of VMware SRM, where improvements can be made, stem from the fact that it is an expensive and complex product."
"The two vCenters have to be synchronized, which sometimes gives us problems because Keberos does not tolerate more than five minutes in time difference."
"Timing issues arise due to replication lags in multiple areas. When this happens, we encounter errors."
"The technical support is not very good and needs to make an effort to improve."
"What I think can be improved is the data replication aspect."
"The back sites sometimes are very, very complicated."
"You cannot use VMware SRM in conjunction with storage replication software."
"We've had configuration issues on occasion. We start to fail over, and then we have to call it off because the configuration is not right, or the data stores aren't configured correctly in the secondary data center. Oftentimes, it is just the experience level of the team, and we have to bring in the vendor to help and validate our configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty reasonable."
"We chose this solution because it was cheaper and easier to use than Veeam and other solutions of this type."
"Pricing is fair enough. What was not clear enough in the documentation on the website was that that you're licensing per CPU socket and you are only licensing on the restore sockets, not the backup sockets. It's a bit technical, but it was very well explained during the demonstration that we had during the evaluation period."
"For our company, the current price of Vembu against Veeam is a few times cheaper. In our infrastructure, if we picked Veeam, we would have to pay about $20,000 per year. Now, we are currently paying about $2,000 per year for Vembu. You can do the math. The price is great."
"The pricing and licensing structure are spot on. I don't think there's anything out there in the market that does either the licensing structure or the pricing structure better."
"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."
"The licensing model is quite complicated; it's not simple. An example: If you have a physical server, you have to pay more for that license than you do for a host. It could be running several VMs and that could be a server VM as well. Then, for web station machines, there is no license for those machines and they have no desktop OS - the free version has all this functionality. Their license model needs to be looked at and simplified."
"It is affordable. It has value with respect to the features included in the software."
"There is an annual license to use this solution."
"We have a standard enterprise license for the solution."
"The cost of SRM is a little bit high, especially for smaller companies."
"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."
"Licensing costs explode after 75 VMs."
"Mature products like VMware SRM often have higher costs."
"The software is expensive. There is a one-time cost involved in purchasing the license."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight to nine out of ten."
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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%
Educational Organization
2%
Financial Services Firm
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?
We use a three-year license, and the cost for VMware Live Recovery can be high. Previously, when acquiring a license for Ethiopian drug supply chains, the price was significantly high, especially a...
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery?
The licensing area needs improvement as the cost per virtual machine is high. If they offered discounts or minimized their prices, it would be more beneficial.
 

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: March 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.