Share your experience using IDERA SQL Safe Backup

Primarily, we use Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery to support our clients, small businesses. We provide online backup services, but we also provide full backup in terms of virtualizing their servers, or if they have virtual servers, full protection of a virtual server. This includes full protection and recovery of virtual servers and data files.

The fact that Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery has the ability to recover data from any point in time is brilliant. We've had clients who want mailbox recovery. Rather than having to recover an entire mailbox or recover a mailbox with data from three years ago, we've been able to search for individual emails and search for emails for a specific date and time. I had a demonstration with a client this week where I was showing them how we can help them with that, and they were impressed when I searched for their company, which organizes their emails by companies. They asked if we could go back to the earliest date they started dealing with this company, and when they saw that, they were amazed.

We love the speed of the restore functionality. It has also helped us drive some business, as we've managed to persuade clients to increase their upload and download bandwidth. The restore process is nearly instant, provided that sufficient bandwidth is available. Overall, this feature has been fantastic for us.

What we really appreciate about Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery is its easy and quick setup. The interface is very user-friendly. For us, as tech people who are always having to learn new interfaces, we found that their interface is straightforward. Their process is straightforward, and their sizing document, which helps to size the backup solution properly for each client, is really useful and helpful for us.

We love the Unified Dashboard provided by Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery. The Unified Dashboard also provides backup and recovery for Microsoft 365, O365, or Copilot 365. You can go from online backup or what they call their Cloud Failover, which is a local appliance that replicates to the cloud, to the Microsoft 365 backup. Managing all three of these in one portal and dashboard is really great. We're not having to switch dashboards as we do with other vendors who have different offerings.

The single issue I think Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery can do better is streamlining communication with their tech support. A couple of times, I've reached out to tech support on one issue, and someone else reached out to me on the same issue, seeming as if there was not much internal communication. But outside of that, their solution does what we want it to do, what we are asking it to do, and we don't have any issues.

We've been using Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery for just about 10 years.

In terms of stability with Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery, I have not seen any issues with performance, lagging, or crashing. 

While we were working on their online backup-only service, we encountered an issue a couple of times. They utilized a local caching system to create backup copies, which were then pushed to their cloud. This caused us some headaches initially because we weren't making accommodations for it. As a result, the backup would stop occasionally due to insufficient local space needed to create a cache or shadow copy before transferring the data to the cloud. Once we understood the issue, we took steps to resolve it on our end and collaborated with them to find a solution. That particular challenge was likely the one nagging problem we faced with the first few servers that we couldn't initially grasp. It wasn't until we went back to them and asked what was happening that they explained the situation, and their assistance helped us work through the issue.

We have not had any clients who truly tested their scalability. However, we've gone from one server to multiple servers and have seen no hiccups with Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery. We've gone from restoring data to spinning up a complete virtual machine and have not experienced any issues. To talk about scalability would be disingenuous because we've not had to test it and see it fail.

The main issue I have with their tech support is the time zone differences. It can be frustrating because there are times when it's morning or daytime for me, while it's an unusual hour for their tech support team. However, despite this challenge, we manage to connect and work together effectively during shared sessions.

I’m hesitant to give a perfect score because it might give them an inflated sense of self-worth, but overall, I would rate them a ten. I have no issues at all with working with Infrascale; they have been great to work with.

Before we started using Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery, we used AppAssure, and before that, we were using something else. They both promised but didn't deliver. This was one of the reasons we were just testing the waters with Infrascale by going with their cloud application backup instead of trying to use it the way we wanted, which was full server protection. We've used other solutions where licensing has been an issue, getting everything to run has been another issue, and we've found that Infrascale works for what it says it's going to do, across the platforms that they say it works for.

The initial deployment of Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery involved a learning curve. We also did a transition with them; when we started out, not only were we doing online backup, but we had a co-location setup where we were renting space from a telecom provider, and we put some servers in a rack because we had clients who were sensitive about their data going outside of the British Virgin Islands.

Initially, we wanted to place our backup in non-US locations, considering Canada and Europe, but they hadn't built their data centers in those jurisdictions yet. The deployment for that was easier than anticipated. There was some learning, and we had to purchase special digital certificates to put on their plans, but once we got it up and running, it was just download, configure, and complete. Their team was available to help us deploy. When they spun up their data centers in Canada and parts of Europe, we revisited the conversation and realized it would be more economical for us to shut down our local co-location and migrate. That involved migrating terabytes of data from our local appliance to Canada, and their team was exceptional in completing this. The primary issues we faced were bandwidth issues from our side.

The migration process took about six to eight weeks, though it may have actually lasted closer to ten weeks. This timeline was partly due to our need to educate our clients and gradually bring them on board. As each client agreed, we proceeded step by step to ensure everyone was comfortable with the changes. One major challenge we faced was bandwidth issues, which caused delays during the migration. We worked diligently to resolve these problems, but they certainly affected our timeline. Overall, while the migration could have been completed sooner, we prioritized ensuring that all clients were well-informed and supported throughout the process.

In terms of maintenance for Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery, it's largely taken care of by them. Every now and again, we have to touch a server to update a local agent, but that's by choice because updates can be automated. Some of the servers are sensitive, and we just want to touch those servers to update the agent. We receive email alerts saying when an agent needs to be updated.

For the migration from our side, two of us were on the team, but only one of us was ever needed at any point in time to look at what was happening and interact with Infrascale's support, so the heavy lifting was done by them.

I would always prefer better pricing, but I find that their pricing is appropriate. It's in keeping with what we are offering and how it allows us to resell with enough margin. We recently renewed one of our agreements with them, and even though we were going to renew anyway, they added more margin in terms of a discount for us for renewing early. We appreciate these gestures because we see that they're not taking their partners for granted, and we've been with them for a while, and they are still trying to give us more value.

We use multiple Infrascale solutions. We use their desktop and server backup and have started using their M365 line of solutions. We began with them just using their online backup, which is just flat files, not an application. We've progressed from flat files to backing up Exchange and SQL, to protecting full laptops for some of our users, to protecting full servers, and now, we're even protecting cloud applications. We have traversed the range of solutions with them.

We are an official Infrascale partner, and we appreciate that. We love the branding feature where the software shows up with our logo, and we use the naming convention they use. Instead of Infrascale, we use Ubiquity. This includes Ubiquity Disaster Recovery Service, Ubiquity Online Backup, and Ubiquity Cloud Application Backup service. We love the co-branding aspect of the partnership.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

I use Zerto for backup and restore.

With both Veeam and vCenter, the restoration process took a considerable amount of time. Zerto bragged about how their restoration was much faster, and it was true. It seemed unrealistically faster when they described and said that they could restore a VM within minutes. With vCenter and Veeam, when we restore a VM, depending on the size of the VM, it can take hours. Zerto proved true, and we have tested it numerous times now. We have done restorations via Zerto, and it truly does a full restoration of a VM within minutes. That was the problem we needed to solve, and they provided the solution. We are very pleased.

We are able to do a restoration so quickly because it backs up in near real-time. Of course, nothing is going to be in real-time, but it is as near real-time as possible. Instead of copying a larger amount of data, it is able to copy just delta data which is in a compressed form so that replication is more frequent. If we need to do a restoration, we will be missing less data.

Its interface is like any enterprise-grade utility. It is complex and not easy to use, but it is learnable.

We were able to see its benefits after some time. That was mostly because we did not have a good opportunity to test it in production. The initial onboarding came with an opportunity for us to do a test backup and restoration, but that was test data. You find the true value of this platform when you use it in a production environment where a stakeholder is involved and there is data that if you do not restore will lead to problems.

We use Zerto to help protect VMs in our environment. The restoration time is in minutes versus hours. That goes a long way towards our RPO. With our previous platform, it took two hours, and with this platform, it takes five minutes. It has also had a positive effect on our RTOs.

Zerto has helped us to reduce downtime with a restoration time of five minutes versus two hours.

We have not had to use it for restoration because of ransomware. We were using a couple of VMs to test migration to a new database. While testing that migration, we caused damage to the VMs. We then used Zerto to restore them prior to that damage, and it was fantastic. The restoration was quick and effective, and we were back in production in minutes versus hours.

Zerto has reduced the time spent on DR testing but we still do the same number of DR tests throughout the year to make sure. It just takes a lot less time.

Zerto has improved our confidence tremendously, and it has reduced the RPO of any potential restoration needs.

I find Zerto's ability to restore a virtual VM much more quickly than Veeam or vCenter's restoration capabilities to be incredibly valuable. 

I cannot think of any features that Zerto does not have. They probably have a lot of features that I do not even use. I am primarily interested in Zerto as a backup and recovery mechanism, and it does a phenomenal job of that. It is an enterprise-grade tool, and enterprise-grade tools tend to be complex. They can be a little difficult to use at first until you learn them. It is not reasonable to suggest making it easier to use because it is an enterprise-grade tool, and it is very robust. Therefore, it is not going to be easy to use. I just have to spend the time to learn it and become good at it. I am very pleased with it as is, but the ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially.

I have used Zerto for just over a year.

It is 100% stable. We have had no downtime with it, and we are pleased with its uptime and stability. We have great confidence that it will be available and usable when needed.

I have not personally contacted Zerto customer service, but Todd, my sysadmin, is the primary point of contact for Zerto. He has contacted them for issues or day-to-day troubleshooting. When there is an upgrade to be done, he always reaches out to them to get guidance and ensure that he is doing the upgrades correctly. They are very good to work with.

Positive

We were using Veeam. There were no security concerns. It was more about performance. The restoration took approximately two hours with Veeam compared to five minutes with Zerto. The benefit was obvious, but there were no concerns about data security in the backups, protection mechanisms, or air gaps on either platform. It was just about the performance.

Neither one is easy to use. They are both very similar. Veeam is probably a little bit more complex than Zerto. Zerto is already doing a slightly better job than Veeam in ease of use, but they are both very complex and difficult to learn at first until you learn them.

Anything new is always going to have a level of difficulty. It was difficult, but Zerto's onboarding development team helped us every step of the way. As we crossed bridges and had problems, that team jumped right in the middle of it and helped us resolve each and every problem until we were a hundred percent satisfied.

To fully set it up, from the kickoff call until I was satisfied that it was fully functional, it took about two weeks. There was probably a month's worth of preparatory work done in advance of the actual kickoff call and deployment, including some information gathering. You could include those 30 days prior as part of that work. Technically, it was about two weeks from the kickoff call to fully deployed and fully functional.

It is a one-person job. One person primarily takes care of it, but we have three of us who are kept abreast and familiar with the process so that we do not have a single point of failure. It is definitely something that one person can handle.

In terms of maintenance, it requires periodic patching and upgrades.

It is an enterprise-grade product. When you buy enterprise-grade tools, you have to expect to pay a higher price. It goes back to the idea of you get what you pay for. If you want an old cheap tool, you pay cheap prices to get it. If you want a good-quality tool that is robust and does a good job for you, you have to pay a higher price to get that, and Zerto is no different. We pay a little bit higher than the cheap tool price, but we get our money's worth. I am not dissatisfied with the price.

I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten. There is nothing that is absolutely perfect, but Zerto does a pretty good job of getting as close to perfect as they can.