BDRShield Reviews

I use BDRSuite for my customers. I do backups for them. One of the reasons we chose BDRSuite is because it's a hybrid solution. We perform backups using a local server at the customer site, and we also have an off-site server. This way, we have a backup copy stored outside the customer's site. In case the customer site burns down or faces any disaster, we can still restore the data. That's one of the primary reasons we chose Vembu BDRSuite.

Additionally, it's quite economically viable, and not that expensive. It provides the flexibility to use our own cloud instead of relying solely on the Vembu Cloud. Vembu Cloud is, of course, an option, so we don't have to store anything ourselves. But I prefer having my backup center where I store copies of my customer's backups. So, those are the two main reasons - it's economical and it offers the right backup solution.

It's a valuable asset for me as a business asset. I have a monthly income by selling it as a service to my customers. I'm very pleased with it.

It's important that you can do the full monthly backup for whatever you throw in it. It's fantastic that it actually works on every kind of system. I have the flexibility to offer this service to all my customers, no matter what they may have running, I can still offer them a backup. You can even do back over on Macintosh machines. That's quite valuable because, otherwise, I would sometimes have to say that I can't do it for a customer, but maybe somebody else could. I wouldn't want to give a customer to somebody else. So it's very nice that I can actually handle it all with one product.

Vembu has absolutely helped save money compared to the other solutions. It's a much cheaper solution than using other ones which are quite expensive compared to a Nimble.

I'm a small company, and it would be difficult to regularly change my customers' backup systems. It would be quite difficult. That alone would be quite expensive for me. The last time I checked, it would be a lot of license fees to use Veeam Backup for the same thing. I could do the same things that we use with BDRSuite but it would be horribly expensive if I want the same level of security.

The most valuable feature is the hybrid solution, where you have a local backup at the customer site, and you have Vembu BDRSuite storing a copy of the backup. 

This division or approach has proven to be fantastic because it's always difficult if you have to restore a backup completely from scratch. It's very cumbersome to set up a copy of the backup on a hard drive or similar media and transport it to the site to establish something new. 

Moreover, if you only have a local backup, it's vulnerable to complete destruction in case of a catastrophic event. So, this hybrid solution combines the best of both worlds.

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. 

However, I haven't had the opportunity to do the latter as none of my customers have required such immediate recovery. Thus, I have been using inexpensive hardware for backups at the customer's site to keep expenses low.

It is very important to us that Vembu provides multiple restore points for data recovery. Having multiple restore points is crucial because you may discover that some malicious employee tampered with or encrypted your data a month ago. In such cases, it's vital to be able to roll back the data to a point before the incident occurred. 

Often, these incidents come to light after some time has passed, making the availability of earlier restore points like a time machine to protect against data loss.

Another important factor to us is that Vembu provides incremental backup processing. Without incremental backup, the process would be extremely time-consuming. One of my customers, who is an engineering company involved in construction projects, has around sixteen terabytes of data. Since they work on these cases for extended periods, even the older cases get revisited for updates or renewals. With so much active data, performing a full backup every time would be impractical. 

Vembu's incremental backup is incredibly valuable and efficient. Compared to other backup systems I've used in the past, it is notably faster and more reliable.

Scheduling backups is quite important to us as well, and Vembu BDRSuite offers sophisticated options. I haven't come across any missing features. 

Adding and removing backup jobs with Vembu BDRSuite is quite straightforward, but the time taken depends on whether you are doing backups of physical machines, physical workstations, or virtual machines and hypervisor installations. 

In my case, I only do backups of virtual machines and hypervisor installations, and in those scenarios, it's very easy. You just point out the hypervisor, and it will do the backup of the virtual machines on it. You can select which virtual machines you want to back up, so it's quite easy. It becomes a bit more difficult when you want to choose physical backups because you need to assign Vembu BDRSuite to the physical machine, which requires some housekeeping work. Nonetheless, it's still relatively easy. It's not a big deal or rocket science, as far as I can tell. If you are even slightly familiar with backup systems.

The level of difficulty to add and remove backup jobs using BDRSuite depends on whether you do a backup on a physical machine, a physical workstation, or whatever you use to back up. In my case, I only do backups on virtual machines and hypervisor installations, it's very easy. You just point out the hypervisor and it does the backup of the virtual machines on it. You can select which virtual machines you want to do a backup on, so it's quite easy. It's very difficult to schedule backups and to have backups done. It's a bit more difficult if you want to choose a physical backup because that puts strain on the physical machine and you have to do some housekeeping work. But it's still quite easy, it's not a big deal if you are a little bit equipped with the backup systems.

The only thing I would like to see covered in future updates is the possibility to store yearly or quarterly backups. Currently, you can only set a straight timeline, like 35 days backward or 37 days. It means that if you create a backup each day, you can only have a consecutive set of backups. I would prefer a new user feature to create yearly backups, for instance, and store them in the image with the current backup data. 

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've been using BDRSuite for about ten years.

The only crashes I experienced were because I was a bit frugal on the hardware. I haven't had a lot of problems. In case there are problems, the support is fantastic. They have been absolutely great. I don't have anything bad to say about it in any way. It works.

I have small customers and one large customer with tons of data. It works well with tons of data to do a backup of the virtual machines. I think it will probably run into problems if the individual drives that it needs to back up are too big. At the moment, I only do backups on a virtual drive that is about ten terabytes in size, and it's hard to restore everything that would be necessary. It takes a long time to restore a ten-terabyte drive. But it's probably not due to them, it's probably an issue of organizing things better on the server side. I wouldn't recommend having ten terabyte drives.

I have contacted support several times. They are absolutely fantastic. It's very easy to get support. They reach out and solve the problems for you. It's very easy to get support as long as you can have them working on the issue directly. Sometimes there are issues with giving access to customer service

Positive

We chose it because it has the ability to do a hybrid backup. It means that you can have a server at the customer site to make quick restores and still have the security of having a backup copy of whatever you backed up at the customer site. You're going to have that stored at another place. In case of a complete burndown or whatever at the customer's site, you would still have the data. That was the main reason for choosing Vembu.

It's very easy to integrate Vembu with existing infrastructure. You can put a server by itself, so it doesn't interfere with the existing installation in any way. I haven't had any problems with that so far.

I am able to do the integrations myself.

It does not require much maintenance. You have to check the hardware and then see that everything goes well. I've set up some reporting, so I receive messages in case anything goes wrong or in case the backup fails. But it's very stable, it works well.

It's very cheap and it's absolutely competitive.

It is a good choice for a business with a tight budget. You can have a free version of Veeam, and you can get other backup programs for free as well. This is quite cheap. And, of course, there are some things in BDRSuite that are free as well. If you just want to make a hard copy of this server, that's free as well. I'd definitely recommend it as an economic solution.

It's quite cheap. I think I pay about two or three hundred dollars a year in license fees just to keep my backup running. It's very cheap compared to what I can charge my customers for the service. It's a very good deal. It's very cheap.

I would rate BDRSuite a nine out of ten. There are a few things they could do better, but it runs well. I'm very happy with it.

My advice would be to make a test case. Find out how much you will have to pay for it. You will need some proper hardware depending on which features you want to use so that you won't have performance issues. 

It goes well once you know what you want. The difficult part is figuring out what you want and what you need for any backup solution. Once you know that, it's very easy to implement it. Most installations today are based on hypervisors. And in that area, Vembu is very strong competition. You might find something similar but you'll have to pay for it.

It sits on a hypervisor and backs up two virtual machines. 

The main benefit is that it's inexpensive. We get a lot for a little bit of money. I'm very happy with the savings and with the features. It allows me to do everything I need.

I don't spend much time on it. I interact with it occasionally and check that everything's still going fine. It's very good in that aspect.

It provides multiple restore options for recovering data in a granular manner, which is pretty important because different issues require you to use different approaches. It's good to have as many options as possible.

Our backup strategy is pretty simple. We have just two virtual machines, but it's very good to know that all the other options are there to back up physical and cloud workloads, as well as endpoints, applications, and databases. I'm not planning to use any of them, but I'm very happy that it's there. If there is something that I need to do that doesn't fall under what I'm currently doing, I can always expand quite easily.

It provides incremental backup processing, which saves a lot of space.

The fact that it has a web portal is valuable. One feature that I haven't yet fully implemented, but we're looking forward to, is the heartbeat monitoring which checks the health status of virtual machines to back up.

The interface could be better because I have to fumble around to find things. I can't just sit down at the terminal and know exactly what to do. It could be just me, but I have used a number of different backup products, and I found them simpler. However, its features are very good, so I don't mind sacrificing a bit of extra time to do what I need.

The reason why I haven't implemented heartbeat monitoring is that I can't change the encryption. In order to do heartbeat monitoring, it needs its own default password for encryption, whereas I've got them encrypted with a custom password. I just wish that there was a way to add password history into a job so that it was possible to change it later on without having to delete or re-add. I might manually get around that.

It has been over a year.

Its stability has been alright. I haven't had any issues. The only thing that I ran into was that before we paid for the license, there were things that weren't available in the free version.

We have a small office. I'm the sole IT team in the office. We have two servers that are replicas of each other. Vembu sits on the main server which has got a little bit more power. It takes backups of two server virtual machines that we've got. It backs up to a local NAS as well as a disk. I was really impressed with it because there's a specific backup destination for this type of thing, which I hadn't seen in any other software. Basically, we're backing up to a disk that we swap out after the backup is done and take it off-site. I was just impressed that it exists in the software. We're doing this because of the bandwidth. It allows us to not have to spend an entire week uploading another copy.

In terms of the number of users, I'm the only one who actively interacts with it, but our company has about 25 people. It benefits 25 people.

It's absolutely scalable. If we ever open a new office, it would be easy. For our needs, it's as scalable as we could hope for.

I've interacted with them on one or two occasions. They were fast, and they got quite a few people involved right off the bat. I was impressed. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We never had multiple backup solutions. We have only used one software at a time. 

We previously used tools from other companies. We used to use Symantec. We also used Altaro. We also used a Chinese one. That one by far was the simplest one. Its interface was super simple. However, anytime it has to apply logic to things, you could almost expect it to break. It wasn't good for just setting up and forgetting about it.

We didn't go with Altaro because it was a lot more expensive. There is a free version for up to two VMs which cuts out about half the features. That's fine for a start, but when you want to upgrade, there is a big jump. If the first paid level gives you, for example, 100 virtual machines, which costs a thousand pounds a year, it's a big jump from paying zero to paying a thousand pounds. I don't have the exact number, but the reason we didn't go with it was the big jump between the free version and the first tier of the paid version, so I started looking for other products and came across Vembu. It did pretty much everything that I wanted on the free one, but it had good features in the premium version that would just make your job easier, and because the premium version was not expensive, it just made sense.

It's deployed on-premises. It's deployed on a hypervisor. When I first set it up, it was on a free account, and I didn't know the first thing about it. It didn't follow the tutorial or anything. I managed to get through it without too much difficulty. It wasn't the easiest thing. I didn't find the interfaces as intuitive as the other ones I've tried before. However, there are lots and lots of features there and lots of things you can do on the scheduler. I'm very happy with that.

I installed it myself. In terms of just installing it, it was pretty simple. There wasn't any way to incorporate the backup history that we've already got, but our backup strategy is to have a month of backup. So, there was a month when we had two different solutions in play. After that month, it was just a clean cut to them. It was easy to integrate.

In terms of duration, it's not a fair representation, but it took me about a week. That's purely because I was going through the manual trying to figure out what it can do, and I had the luxury of already having a solution running, so I could have some time with it. I'm sure I could have deployed it in a day or two.

It was just me who installed it. 

In terms of maintenance, I was wondering about that. I tried to go in and see if it needed to be updated because I realized that I have never done it, but I couldn't figure out how to update it. So far, it hasn't needed any maintenance.

It isn't tangible because we haven't had any outages yet, but I have noticed that I spend a lot less time worrying about the backup.

We're ISO 270001 and ISO 22231 certified, so backups are a big part of our overall management system. I used to spend a lot of time on backups and making sure that we could recover in case of a crash. My time investment in that has dropped by 50% percent.

The price point of this software is good, and I can do everything I need.

In terms of the affordability of the solution for businesses with a tight budget, we're on a small business enterprise package, which is half the price of the regular enterprise package. It's super affordable. The features you get for it are enterprise-level. I'm very happy with the pricing.

It's very cost-effective. If I had to manually do what the software does automatically, it would cost a little more. It's like a net positive cost.

In terms of cost-benefit, you get a lot for very little, and it's much cheaper than other products. I've used other products, and it's just as good as others or better than others in some aspects, so it's the one to go for if you aren't scared by it. It takes some time to learn the interface and get familiar with it, but you get a lot for what you pay.

Coming from a small business mindset, it's very cheap to get and try it. You can experience all of the automation features and figure out how much time you're saving by having it in place. It will be worth it. You can buy the pro version and try it because it isn't all that expensive, and it can't go wrong. Just deploy it for a couple of machines, and if it doesn't work, you haven't really lost anything.

I haven't tried to instantly recover data, but I believe that it enables you to instantly recover data.

We haven't created backup repositories in cloud-based object storage because of the size of the backups and our outgoing bandwidth. We might try that at some point next year once the bandwidth situation changes, but for now, we haven't stored the data anywhere other than within our office.

Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I use it to back up the virtual machines running on VMware ESXi. I also use it for backing up Windows Server. I don't use it for Microsoft 365. I have a daily backup, and I also have a monthly backup to capture all the data and changes.

I started with version 3.0, and now, it's version 5.3.

The backup window is very reasonable. Recovery is also easier. We have scheduled incremental and full backups, and it helps a lot with our infrastructure. I feel comfortable running this in the virtual environment.

We can instantly recover data. This instant recovery is very important because there are some files we need to recover immediately. We can easily recover a single file or folder. That's a very helpful feature.

It provides multiple restore options for recovering data in a granular manner. We have daily and monthly backups, and sometimes, we need to go back, not just to yesterday. We have multiple restore points, and we can just select one from the menu. It's a very easy and very important feature.

We are running the daily incremental backups. They've reduced the backup window. These incremental backups are very important because we cannot do the full backup during the weekdays.

When it comes to backup scheduling, similar to all backup solutions, it provides scheduling options. We just can't do backups manually. We have pre-configured it with the daily incremental and monthly backups.

It isn't hard to add and remove backup jobs using BDRSuite. You select a machine or a hard disk, and then you can go to the next step and schedule the backup. That's it. I don't need to open the interface every day. I schedule the backup, and I just receive the notification message in my mailbox. That's it. As long as I see a successful message, I'm fine. I just let it run.

Provisioning disks for restoration is easy. You can just select a disk, and you just recover. They'll provision the disk for you.

The most useful feature is that you can back up the virtual machines in different ways. You can back up from a vhost, and you can also back up from a Windows server. It doesn't matter what type of infrastructure or hypervisor is there. It's very flexible, which is its most useful feature for us.

The response time of the support could be improved a little bit. Sometimes, I need to wait for two or three hours to get support. With VMware, we can get urgent support in an hour.  Other than that, I'm pretty good with BDRSuite.

It has been more than three years.

It's very stable. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability.

I don't have too much experience with scalability because our infrastructure didn't change too much. 

I'd like to get quicker technical support for urgent issues. Sometimes, it took longer than I expected. For example, I expect support in one hour, but they may get in touch with me within two or three hours. That has happened twice last year, but it doesn't always happen. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We were previously using Veeam Backup. Their features are a little bit different, but they both are doing the same thing. 

We switched because my manager wanted to try this option. The Veeam Backup costs more than Vembu. They also don't support some editions of ESXi, whereas Vembu BDRSuite supports all the versions and all the editions.

It was straightforward. It was set up a long time ago. There was no big change after that. We just upgraded to the latest version.

I implemented it along with the support person. I searched on the web to select the vendor.

It doesn't require much maintenance from our side. There are just patch updates, and they don't happen during the backup window. They do not affect production. It's good.

I'm not sure. It might have been in less than a year. It's cost-effective. It didn't cost too much. We are completely satisfied with the cost.

It's very affordable. We are very satisfied with the cost. It's very affordable for us.

We didn't evaluate any other solution.

I'd advise running the trial of on-premise and online versions to see what's the difference. In the initial setup, you may need to adjust some services or the local backup storage called the repository. Test it first and make sure it's working. There are so many backup tools in the market. You can't just read the white paper to do the selection.

Overall, I'd rate BDRSuite a nine out of ten.

We offer the solution to our customers, primarily SMBs, for backup and disaster recovery. Deployment models include both cloud and on-prem. 

The solution enables us to recover data instantly; depending on the data type and volume, we can recover within seconds or minutes.

It's pretty easy to add and remove backup jobs using BDRSuite, which, in addition to the solution's features, reduces the time we spend on backup management.

The product is very reliable and works well out of the box; many of our customers are buying it.

BDRSuite features a good dashboard, and Vembu is working on making its product more user-friendly, improving the UI, and providing better integrations.

We tested the product's Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs or physical machines after a crash, and it provided immediate access.  

The solution's UI and integrations could be better. 

We've been using the solution for five years.

The stability is excellent. 

BDRSuite is scalable. 

Integrating BDRSuite with existing infrastructure is quite easy; it doesn't take much time, and we always offer support to our customers. Deployment usually takes less than 15 minutes, and the first backup can be scheduled.  

The solution requires minimal maintenance. 

The product is affordable, and we focus on SMBs for our customer base.

Our company believes everyone should have a backup solution, so we provide affordable pricing to small and medium businesses, bringing them easy access to a backup tool compared to more expensive competitor products.  

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Regarding backup and replication scheduling options, we offer weekly, monthly, yearly, and multi-year options so we can customize the scheduling policy according to customer requirements.

We still use other backup solutions besides BDRSuite; we use different products for different use cases.

We use the solution to create backup repositories in cloud-based object storage, including Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud.  

We use BDRSuite to back up our customers' VMs. We are a service provider, and each of our customers has different requirements. We host VMs based on the customer's environment. If the customer doesn't want a VM backup, we'll use the Citrix ADM. They will back up their own applications, and we'll send a new VM to them in the event of a disaster. 

We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer. 

We have many VMs in the old Citrix Foundry that have been running for a long time. The migration process is time-consuming and costly. VMware only supports VMware and Hyper-V but not Citrix. 

It's easy to add or remove backup jobs using BDRSuite. The solution has multiple options for backing up our customers' data. We require eight days of historical data, and our clients need incremental backups weekly, so we have one weekly backup and one daily. The backup will play each week, and they'll have a fresh running daily backup of seven days. 

We still haven't done a restoration in production, but we did a test restore, and it worked. The restoration took about four to six hours for one terabyte because we backed it up to a remote location. 

BDRSuite could improve support for XenApp Citrix Backup.

I have used BDRSuite for more than six months.

BDRSuite is stable. We're confident in the product. 

We haven't tried to scale BDRSuite, but it's scalable. 

I rate the support a nine out of tn. I'm satisfied with their support. They always respond within the window we agreed to in our support contract.

Positive

Before BDRSuite, we mainly used a Citrix XenServer Host for around 20 Citrix VMs. We adopted BDRSuite because there was no automated backup mechanism. We needed a third-party solution, and there was a lot of overhead for hardware. Our customer needed backups for two SAP VMs. We got the hardware, VMware, and whatever they need to design a full VMware backup solution. 

BDRSuite is easy to deploy and integrate with existing infrastructure. You can complete the deployment in less than a day. After the deployment, you need to install regular updates. Vembu puts out updates frequently. 

BDRSuite is cost-effective depending on your requirements and the other options available in your market. 

BDRSuite is a good option if you have a tight budget. It gives good value.

I rate BDRSuite an eight out of ten. 

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.

We use Vembu to back up and replicate virtual machines. We run virtual machines using VMware ESXi, and we back up and replicate our virtual machines.

The best thing about it is that it has been adaptable to our business model. We are in industrial networking, and they were adaptable to give us offline installers and offline licenses. That has been the biggest thing. They also allow us to order the licenses on a perpetual basis.

Backup and replications are most valuable. It seems that these servers are better because we can do application-aware backups on them. 

Windows 10 does not have application-aware backups. From my point of view, that's what's existing needs improvement. 

Something that I would like to see them do is an on-premise immutable solution.

It's probably getting close to about a year mark.

There are some bugs but not major ones.

From my point of view, it can handle as many VMs as I'm going to see. We have pretty small sites. We range from 3 virtual machines to probably 20, and I feel confident that it could handle as many as we needed.

There are five or six users who are currently using this solution. They are members of the network team here at my company. They are network engineers or network admins.

We have plans to increase its usage. Currently, we have a lot of existing sites that are using a different solution, and their licenses are still good. In the future I see us expanding more. As long as Vembu keeps the same business model, I do see us using the product more.

For the most part, they're responsive. There has never been a time when we opened a ticket and didn't hear from them for days. They're usually pretty quick to respond. We provide them with what they need, and they normally give us an answer whether we like the answer or not. Overall, they're responsive, and they at least give us an answer. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We previously used Veeam, and we made the switch due to the change in their licensing. They don't do perpetual licensing anymore. They're going to a subscription-based model, which doesn't fit with our business model.

It was straightforward. The setup is pretty intuitive. We don't need to follow a whole bunch of technical documentation in order to set it up at a site and set up the jobs. The user interface is friendly, and even for offline licenses, they provided a simple document on how to do that. That's straightforward as well. 

Its setup probably took 10 to 20 minutes.

We did it on our own.

So far, we haven't had any actual disaster situations where we've had to use the restore, but overall, we have got a return on investment. It's doing so far what we want it to do.

Its price is fair, and they still allow perpetual licensing, which is extremely important for us. They also have offline licensing.

I am not aware of any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. In terms of the affordability of the solution for businesses with a tight budget, you aren't going to beat it.

I didn't have any initial expectations of the solution based on its pricing. I found Vembu by just searching for solutions, and I didn't really have an expectation, but it can be said that Vembu has been better than my initial expectation. Its price is definitely fair.

I tested at least five or six different ones. We're in industrial networking, which is very different from a corporate IT network. First and foremost, the thing that I liked about Vembu was the licensing model, and the second thing was its simplicity. All we do is backup and replications, and they have a product that focuses on that without having this big ugly interface with multiple options that we don't even use.

I haven't fully tested all the other bells and whistles on it, but for backup and replications, it's simple, and it does the job. It does exactly what we want it to.

I haven't had to test restores a whole lot, but initially, I tested it, and the restores were fine. They were what I would expect. They were not crazy fast but also not slow. It has not increased or decreased the speed of restores from our previous software. It's about the same.

I'm glad Vembu exists because, for bigger companies like Veeam, it's good that there is competition. That way they can't fully control this market. Vembu is a solution that is more friendly to actual businesses and small businesses.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Vembu has been a great solution for my smaller clients who don’t need a lot of storage. The entry price is excellent for small businesses who want to use cloud backups.

I have 8 clients currently using Vembu Cloud BDR.

Moving to cloud backups eliminated the need for clients to change USB drives or worry about drives being stored offsite.

I can restore through the Vembu client or pull the file from anywhere via the browser. So far, it has been adequate in meeting my clients' needs.

There are a lot of cloud backup solutions that can handle documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and pictures, but they are more limited for those who need cloud backups for applications like SQL. 

I have had issues with new client registrations. There are frequent connectivity issues to the cloud servers. Multiple times, I have had to prove to support that it wasn’t a problem on my end. It always works out in the end, but it is troubling to have the same issues repeated across different clients. Issues eventually get escalated to the cloud team and are mysteriously resolved with no changes on my end. I don’t know if it is an AWS issue, capacity issue, or something else. However, it is concerning for clients when they get several failure notices for their backups, though through retrying the job was eventually successful.

It can still mature in some ways. The agent interface can be improved and the portal could be more informative.

I have been using Vembu Cloud BDR with clients since 2019.

I have had no issues doing restores. Throughput on restored data is an issue for some other cloud backup solutions. However, I have never had an issue with Vembu Cloud BDR.

We have always gotten to a solution eventually. Sometimes, it takes some time though. 

I had an issue that had to be escalated to the cloud team that was only available 9 to 5 local India time. Having to stay up for a support call at 2 AM (my time) was frustrating. I had to pursue it to prove a new client registration issue was not a problem on my end. Not being believed by support and having to go to that extreme should not have been necessary. I was correct in the end, as they eventually found an issue on the Vembu client provisioning side. I think the whole situation could have been handled better.

Most of my issues were resolved, but there is rarely anything on my end that needs to be fixed. Most resolutions say something like, “We detected a problem on our servers and took steps to resolve the issue.” Then, things start working again. While we get a resolution, I don’t have much visibility into what was done. Since we generally get there eventually, I will rate the technical support as seven out of 10.

Neutral

Mozy used to be the major player in this market space. Mozy’s demise, with its purchase by Carbonite, left a void for a solution that could handle SQL cloud backups and meet small business needs. Vembu Cloud BDR has been filling this void for my small clients for a few years now.

I have clients that have used many solutions. For those who switched to Vembu Cloud BDR, most are coming from Carbonite (originally Mozy) or Backup Exec with local storage.

It is straightforward when it works. I have had issues a couple times with new client registrations.

Deployment takes less than an hour.

My implementation strategy is to register the cloud account, install the client agent, configure the jobs, and then run.

I deploy and maintain the solution.

Backups are like an insurance policy. You pay for the protection and hope you don’t need it. You don’t really expect a return, just security if needed.

The pricing is good. The tough part is estimating storage needs.

We used to be able to license regular PCs at no cost. We just paid for storage. The recent addition of the workstation license has changed that. For clients who use Vembu Cloud BDR for backup of remote user laptops, they now have licenses that they need to buy in addition to their server license.

The solution has excellent affordability for businesses with tight budgets.

I checked up on just about every cloud backup solution that I could find. This solution provides SQL application backups with a good entry point for small businesses.

It is a good value. While there have been some issues, that happens with any solution. Vembu Cloud BDR is a good entry product for small clients and can also scale to larger environments. I have not seen anything that diminishes its value.

Restore speed has been fine. Luckily, I have not had to do a complete restore, only occasional files or an SQL database.

Most clients were using local USB drives for backup storage prior to moving to Vembu Cloud BDR. Speed of restores was not an issue coming from a local source. The only clients who have seen an increase were those that previously were using another cloud backup provider that has notoriously slow restore throughput.

I will increase usage as client needs dictate.

I would rate it as eight out of 10.