BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

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. 

We are using it for the backup of our VMs and restoration activity. We are deploying some new technologies for which we would be able to use the features of Vembu.

It has been very helpful for data backup and restoration and license management. License management and everything else works smoothly, which is very useful for us.

Its restores are nice and reliable. They are fast and smooth. As compared to other tools, they are 80% faster. The speed of the restores also depends on my network. We have less than 10 gigs of speed.

It provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files. They have many options to restore the data. We tested them during the DR last December. Having multiple ways to restore the service and data is very useful.

Its download VM feature is useful in migrating physical machines to our VMware environment. There were no challenges in doing that through the GUI. It was user-friendly.

The ability to map a drive and restore a separate file is most valuable. The restoration activity is good.

The data integrity check features are useful during the restoration activity. At the time of restoration, we are also checking the DR plan.

We haven't yet checked its compatibility with the new technologies in the market, such as Nutanix. It would be good if any new technology can also accommodate 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. 

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

Its stability is good. Its reliability is good when we have VMware and Linux VMs. It works smoothly.

Its scalability is dependent on the number of licenses that you purchase. Currently, we have 10 to 15 engineers and project managers who use this solution.

It is being used extensively. We are using only Vembu for the backup part. So, our core data depends on this solution. We have around 20 VMs, and we are taking backups of almost 100 GB of file server data. We might increase its usage in the future. Some of the people approached us to go for a new tool, but I explained to them the features that it offers. We don't have any plans to move to another solution.

Vembu team is giving excellent support to us. They provide 24/7 support. We can reach out to them at any point in time. They are able to address and give proper support for our queries. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

My organization was using another solution previously. I have used Symantec backup and other tools in my previous organization. All these tools are more or less the same.

It was already installed when I joined this organization.

We have seen an ROI in terms of reliability. When we invest in a backup solution for infrastructure backup, it should work at critical times. With Vembu, I am able to restore data quickly without any issues.

Its price is reasonable as compared to other solutions. There are no additional costs.

While increasing the count on the server-side, we have to take care of managing or optimizing the license.

We have not used Vembu's instant boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs or physical machines after a crash. We have also not used Vembu for the backup for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or AWS.

I would rate Vembu BDR Suite a 10 out of 10. It is a good tool for backup, replication, and restoration. Everything is good in this solution.

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'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.

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.

I've actively been using the Vembu product for backups. It is being used to back up the Hyper-V environment that I have. If the hypervisor has hardware problems, e.g., all the storage dies, you can run up a new Hyper-V server, then restore the VMs onto it. It doesn't take that long. So, you are up and running within several hours of restoring it. Also, you can restore individual files. Therefore, it's a full VM-based image backup as well as a file level backup, if you want to restore the files that way. There is also an option to restore AD users, computers, and contacts, in addition to Exchange databases at the brick level.

I'm mainly working with home-based customers. I don't have any business clients yet.

It's on-premise, not cloud-based at the moment. I'm planning to possibly have replication to an external site since my Internet link is much better now. That will be done in the future. I'll probably replicate to a private cloud somewhere.

The main thing is recovery. I have had a lot of hardware failures quite recently due to power fluctuations and overheating. Therefore, I am using it on a lab environment where I test things for customers. It has helped to reduce time. For example, one of the hypervisors died, so I loaded up another non-clustered machine and just restored the previous night's backup, then the VMs worked fine. 

I am able to run Vembu on Windows NAS, which is beneficial. It does install on a Windows-based NAS. You can have the server running from the location where you are storing backups. You don't need a separate server for it in this case. This is only available with the licensed version.

The image backup on VM is the most valuable feature.

You can restore to another location or another physical/virtual machine. You can do P2V as well as V2V. That is what I have found most useful.

The encryption feature seems okay. When you change versions, then I have found it to have problems. An example: I was on version 3.9, and I had an encrypted VM. It was restored from version 4 onto a newer Hyper-V server. So, I went from maybe a 2008 to 2012, and it was restored and then it didn't restore, and because of those changes, it didn't like the encryption. But, generally if the version and the hypervisor version are the same, then you shouldn't have any problems with it.

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. That was the only downside.

I have been using it close to two years.

The stability has been okay. If you put too much load on it, then it does become a bit unstable. The server that you are using does matter. Whenever I've tried to contact the tech support, they say upgrade to the latest version. The problem with that is the old backups need to be all done again because it appears that on each version upgrade the old backups no longer continue. They need to be done as a full backup again. 

I haven't had too many issues with failed backups. There were some backups failing, but I found that was just before the drive failures. So, there were multiple drive failures which caused the problems, but the product itself has been okay. 

At times, when I have done a restore or mount multiple images at the same time, it has become a bit unstable. However, I just needed to restart the Vembu service, then it started working again. 

It's fairly straightforward to restore and do backups. It keeps on running. There is not much in terms of maintenance required. It has recovery points that you can retain, so it's pretty much a send and forget solution. You can have it running indefinitely.

It appears to be scalable. If you have a cluster, it will back that up. Also, if you run out of storage space, then you can add more storage to it. So, you can add an additional storage pool from a USB, then allocate that to be used. For example, if you run out of space on one NAS, but that NAS has access to another volume, you can add that as another storage pool so you can have multiple storage pools. 

The technical support's response time was okay. I had to wait several hours for a response, but that was probably because of the time difference. All in all, it was quite acceptable and sort of normal.

I've been using Veeam for quite some time with other customers. I don't know of other customers who use Vembu, but it's very similar to Veeam. I'm finding it quite similar to Veeam, which is good. Because if anyone wants to move to Vembu, and they've used Veeam, they will pick it up quickly.

I came across Vembu when I was searching for alternatives for Veeam with any type of image backup for Microsoft Hyper-V. I came across Vembu who had at the time was giving backups for up to three VMs on the free version. I was sort of growing with my VMs. I had three, but I soon crossed that amount. That's how I came across Vembu: I found there were cost limitations and was looking for an alternative to Veeam that did the same sort of thing.

It was fairly straightforward to install and get running. However, installing the agent on the hypervisor was a bit tricky, because the version that I was using is just a core version. So, it's has no GUI. In that version, there were some special instructions, which we did have thankfully, and there were a few extra steps that I needed to take to install the agent. What normally happens is the agent can be pushed out from the BDR Server, but that wasn't working on the core version. The initial setup was not relatively easy, but not relatively hard, it was just in-between.

The deployment took an hour and a half. 

The implementation strategy was to try and get the BDR Server running to sort of simplify things. Then, we could have another server just as a backup server. 

I deployed it myself. I did use some documentation that they had. So, it was more or less trial and error. I was running a Windows OS on the NAS, and they didn't exactly say that they supported it. They just said, "If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, then you'll have to get the full OS because mobile NASs come with a Windows Storage Server." They didn't really certify to run on that. However, in the end, it did work quite well.

When one of the VMs dropped off, I was able to recover fairly quickly. Therefore, I have noticed a return on investment. It has helped to reduce at least a day's worth of downtime. Which, if I didn't have the image backup, I would be loading all those VMs again. Some of them did take time to build. So, a case per a day if not more, because the other option was just to rebuild the whole environment from scratch if I didn't have those image backups. So, about every six months, I am saving several hundred dollars of downtime.

I was using their free version, which had limitations, so then I went to the licensed version.

It has actually benefited my operation a fair bit. VMware requires a special hardware while Hyper-V runs on pretty much anything. It doesn't require any special hardware, so it saves a bit of money. Because Vembu does Hyper-V backup, there is no limit on how many VMs you can have. The newer version has a 100 VM limit on the single license, which has been greatly beneficial, because on one host a 100 VMs is a fair bit. 

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.

At the moment, I am doing Vembu for one host. My costs are about $25 USD a month for a single host up to 100 VMs. It's just the license per host with one CPU, but if I did choose offsite cloud replication, they do charge for the data. They charge per gigabyte, or something like that. They have plans. 

When they changed to the newest version (4.1), they have more VMs allowed on the free version. Before, there were only three VMs allowed on the free version, and if you needed to back up more than three VMs, you had to get the paid version. Now, you can have up to 10 VMs on the free version. This was when I was just crossing over to 10 VMs or was very close to it. If I had known, then I would've not paid for the monthly licensing cost. I've since crossed 10 VMs, so this doesn't matter to me, but it will matter to someone who only wants to back up a few VMs. E.g., if they had five VMs and were forced onto the licensed version, then in the update, the free version could back up 10 VMs.

I know that the normal Windows Backup won't backup the VMs if you're using it in a HA Failover Clustering environment. If you're using it in a clustered high availability environment, it will back up the VMs. That is the main difference I found. But, in terms of backing it up, Vembu does support the HA Failover Clustering, so it can back up when you have VMs on a Cluster Shared Volume. It can back up those VMs unlike the built-in Windows Backup, which doesn't support that.

I evaluated Altaro but there were some requirements that you needed for install on the Windows-based NAS. That was my main issue at the time. Because of the way I planned to have the backup solution running on the Windows-based NAS, a few of the solutions wouldn't install or had problems.

A lot of the other people that I know use Veeam, StorageCraft ShadowProtect, and Kronos. Not too many people that I know use Vembu, but I found it to be the equivalent of Veeam in some ways. It does work very similarly in its functions.

The pros for Vembu vs Veeam are Vembu's license cost for a host seems to be much cheaper and Veeam might not run on certain hardware. The Veeam Backup & Replication Server has some hardware requirements that I could not get to install on the net, but Vembu installed quite happily.

The cons for Vembu vs Veeam are Vembu's licensed model is a bit complicated, and if things go wrong in Vembu, there is less support out there. You do have to contact Vembu's support to have a look at a problem, whereas with Veeam, there is quite a bit of knowledge out there in terms of online forums. 

I have learned just how important backups are. 

My advice would be try and implement it on virtual environments. Don't implement it on a physical environment because the licensing costs would be much higher. You will have less options for recovering VMs. It would be wise to have a cluster. Also, the BDR server should be well spec'd. You can run on the minimum spec, but it is recommended that it has some definite amounts of RAM on it. 

I am planning to use Vembu to work in VMware, but I have not done that yet. After I pick up some customers, I might try to push it out to them in their VMware environment. At the moment, it's just Microsoft Hyper-V.

I don't really use the deduplication feature.

I would probably rate the solution around seven and a half out of 10. It missed out on a few scores because each time when you upgrade the version, you have to do all the backups again. That's why I didn't give it a 10. If it didn't need to do all the backups again when changing the version, then I would have given it a 10 easily.

In the near future, if Vembu stays the way it is now with its licensing costs and everything else, then I will continue to use it and expand on it. I will try and push it out to some of my customers as well. A lot of customers just use Veeam or Kronos at the moment and may switch for the cost savings.

We have, in-house, around 70 end-users and around 30 branches. Currently, We are using Vembu to do the daily backup of our in-house end points. 

As data is increasing day by day, taking and managing backup is a hard job. As IT personnel, we were looking for a solution where we could do auto backups for all our machines and restore them at any point in time as required. 

Vembu came to us and solved our problems in the backup space. In the next phase, we are looking to deploy it for our remote branch users. It's a great solution.

It made it easy for us to handle the daily backup of endpoints. Earlier, we had to manually do everything, and that was also not in real-time and involved engagement of one IT person's time. 

Vembu saved us time and manpower. It helped our organization to secure valuable data within the organization. 

Concern related to the data of individuals has been resolved as personal data is removed from the backup. Only data related to the company is taken. This also has reduced the storage space required.

The auto-scheduling of incremental backups and multiple retention points features has helped us to get the backups of endpoints without any intervention. Multiple retention points help us to restore data from multiple points and states. 

The reporting is great for noting the success and failure. If it fails it gives the reason why it failed and we can take action accordingly and resolve the issues. 

Mail notification helps us in monitoring the backups daily. All failures are sent through to us so that we can check and take action as required.

The backup and restoration should be faster in newer releases. 

The dashboard should more interactive. 

Responsiveness to any command has to improve. Currently, it takes some time to respond the commands like abort or suspend.

They need to centralize the configuration and management features for File folder backups from endpoints. This should be in the next releases.

The reporting feature is good, however, it can still be improved upon.

We are eagerly awaiting these features in the next releases. We hope we will get them soon. 

I've used the solution for the last two years.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is great.

Positive

No, we were not using any backup solution earlier.

The initial setup is very simple.

We had help from the vendor team for the installation process.

Our ROI has been very good.

Vembu is a good value for money solution.

Yes, we evaluated Retrospect.

They need to keep improving the solution so that we can reduce the time taken for backups and restorations.