BDRSuite Backup & Replication Reviews

Currently, we use Vembu for weekly backups of our virtual infrastructure and monthly backups for separate, confidential data.

We use it only with VMware.

If our country is hit by a meteor, I have secured data in another country on the other side of the world. Then, I can start the restore process immediately with this solution.

There is an option to back up a specific folder from a specific source, not the whole virtual machine. 

The encryption is a must in these days. You can't do anything without encryption of your traffic or data.

The compression is unusable in every scenario because the data that we backup is too different, according to each type. Therefore, the compression is not applicable everywhere. So, we don't use the compression at all.

They can work on their cloud solution. In these days, the data becomes too much and you have to back up a lot of data to the site. They could offer cheaper storage to their clients with the cloud, making this a single source of truth solution. In our project, we are using two service providers: One who offers our storage and another who offers the software. If they work on their cloud solution and can offer their clients lower prices for this type of storage, this would be a really good improvement.

It's pretty stable. We haven't had any issues with the software, like crashing or freezing.

I don't have any of the reservations about the scalability because we currently use it on a single machine. 

We have about three users who are part of the IT department, including two senior administrators and me, as IT manager.

Our account manager has provided us with great information and support. He is always on time. I haven't needed to wait more than two hours to read the answers to my questions.

Three years ago, we started the project to duplicate our infrastructure in every single aspect and needed to create daily backups of our virtual machines.

We picked Vembu two years ago, but switched to another solution which comes with integrated backup for virtual machines. This year, we start another project, which is to create offsite backups somewhere in the world. There were some requirements: the backup storage to be encrypted, the transfer to be encrypted, and not be so expensive. So, I looked at Vembu and Vinchin again. We were only satisfied with this tool (Vembu) when we started talking about money, because it was cheaper and could easily encrypt our non-dedicated storage.

The initial setup was as easy as one, two, three. I downloaded the software, then ran the application. They have a perfect documentation section on their website where you can find what you need: this tutorial.

Our deployment was about an hour.

We always start any project with a deployment strategy. This includes some type of testing. We go in with the result that we want and compare the software with our requirements. If it fits, then we start to reach the end result.

Currently, our whole offsite backup project, including Vembu, is about $500 per year to back up everything that we have. It is a lot of data, about 50 terabytes.

I find the licensing model to be valuable. The payment model is done with a set price or per virtual machine, and it is also done annually or on a permanent basis. You can choose whichever licensing model you prefer.

For our company, the current price of Vembu against Veeam is a few times cheaper. In our infrastructure, if we picked Veeam, we would have to pay about $20,000 per year. Now, we are currently paying about $2,000 per year for Vembu. You can do the math. The price is great.

Money always matters, so it could be cheaper, but this is not realistic for the market.

When we started to look for this type of software, we had to choose between Veeam, Vembu, or Vinchin. Vinchin is a new player on the market. 

We integrated a service provide into our own solution. This is why I picked Vembu at first, because it can be integrated with a third-party service provider and was the only software able to be integrated into our solution. Vembu offers a cloud offsite service, which is a type of Vembu storage where you can store your backups if you don't have other options.

Vinchin is easier to use with simpler interfaces. However, when you read the features, because it is new software in the market, there were not some functions built-in, like encryption. Vembu encrypts the traffic when it transfers it to its destination. According to our Vinchin and Vembu comparison, Vembu is pretty complicated against Vinchin, but Vembu is easier to install and update.

Reasons why we went with Vembu:

1. The price. 
2. The integration option. 
3. They offered a lot of additional features that we don't use currently, but you never know what you will need in the future.

The software is currently satisfying our needs for us. We aren't using all of Vembu features at the moment.

We use data reservation in our offsite data backup.

It is compatible with almost everything that exists on the market. It's compatible with VMware and Hyper-V. With VMware, it works very well. We haven't had any issues so far. 

I would advise to try it and not to look at the prices of the top players on the market, though do look at alternative software. Sometimes, you need to try more than one or two solutions, then switch to whichever one is better. Pretty often, we speak to some not-so famous product or company to complete our approach.

I would rate the solution as a 10 out of 10.

We have a multi-tenant environment with multi-cloud, but we are only using this for our local data center backups. This is a small setup with around 50 to 60 VMs.

We are able to back up our local virtual machines. Without backup we could end up in very critical situations.

It backs up our virtual machines with the CBT, Changed Block Tracking. This is a common feature. We don't have a complex hierarchy here because we have a local data center with minimal use. 

The compression ratio is fine and the deduplication is as well. We are not using the encryption feature yet, as we only deployed it recently. We may use it later on.

The reports are at a basic level and there is room for improvement there. It only has historical reports and VM backup job-level reports.

I have been using BDR Suite for about three or four months.

The stability is okay, it's running fine. Up to now we haven't had any negative issues.

Technical support is good. Whenever I raise a ticket they reply in a timely fashion.

Our basic goal is the backup of our infrastructure. We chose this platform because it's cost-effective.

The initial setup is very straightforward. The solution is very easy. It's not a complex one where we need to follow detailed diagrams. I installed and tested everything and it's running fine now.

Initially, I had some issues but I fixed them myself. When I deployed this tool it was having issues with some virtual machines, specifically with Windows 2019. Fortunately, I was able to fix that issue by updating the Windows version to the latest software.

The whole setup took one or two days, including the installation and configuration of servers. 

Fixing the issue I mentioned took some days because I need to update the servers. Otherwise, the overall deployment did not take a long time.

In terms of a deployment plan, before deployment I considered my whole environment and then I started the deployment. Our IT team is just three or four people and I did it myself.

I didn't need too much help for Vembu, other than for licensing. They helped me on the licensing purchase.

The pricing is very good compared to Veeam. Veeam is very well-known software for backup and replication, and comparing Vembu to that, from the financial aspect, Vembu is very good.

I deployed Veeam and it worked very well, but the problem was that its price was very high. As a result, I searched for another solution and found Vembu. I deployed it and we have been happy with it. For us, the major difference was the pricing.

Our environment is at a very basic level. We don't have multi-level vCenters or cloud. Vembu BDR Suite is working fine for us. Right now we have only three hosts with virtual machines and it's okay for us. 

Overall, this suite is very good. It has features which we use like a backup proxy and test processing. It delivers an enterprise-level data protection solution and helps us reduce our budget. It's cost-effective.

We are using the Enterprise version for backup. With the license that we have now, I'm using the NetworkBackup application. This includes having email backup with MS Exchange Server, which is very helpful because we can restore by mailbox or mail. We don't have to restore the entire server.

We also have FAS, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and MySQL databases. It is very easy to use with them.

I have some virtual machines. I use an VMware ESXi server to back them up.

I have a strategy in the company where everyone needs to bring all their important files on the server. People should not be keeping their folders on their computer because of two types of situations:

1. In the last two months, there were situations where the local hard drive failed, people were very happy to have their files on the server. 
2. There have been three times where people modified the file, then asked me if it's possible to get back the file that they had before, so I used the backup. 

I just started backing up to virtual machines. They are very good if something happens. I can restore to another site. There are a lot of options to restore with virtual machines, such as, mounting on another server to open mount locally and extracting some files. I was very surprised because it seems like we have a lot of options. 

I was very happy seeing that the incremental backup was very nice because the modified files are taken from the number of times it was modified. Thus, if I have a file I modified two years ago, I don't back it up each time.

It backs up from the latest version. I can write there that I need the last three modified images of the file. One image could be from a year ago, another one or two days ago, and the third from three years ago. It does not delete by date.

It is easy to use. There is an offsite DR solution where I can keep an offsite copy of the backups. 

The transfer is encrypted. I checked the storage pool's compression and not a lot of space was used. I was expecting more, which is why I think the compression is good.

I saw that it's not possible to have the last full backup duplicated on our site. Therefore, if I have a lot of information on the main site, I would not want to copy any information to those site servers. It would be nice to be able to make a copy of the last full backup. 

I have sent a lot of missed scheduled emails, but maybe I'm doing something wrong. I will try contacting support to see what I can do better. 

I started two months ago. 

Nothing has happened other than expected until now. We have had no errors.

A system administrator and I are doing deployment and maintenance. He checks the tasks every day.

It's 100 percent scalable because we can add as many servers as we want. 

Their support is great. I think they work 24 hours a day. I get a very quick turnaround time from them no matter the day or time that I send them an email.

A long time ago, I used Symantec Backup. I cannot compare the two solutions.

I was trying to find a backup solution two months ago. I googled for the best backup solution vendors in 2020. I saw Vembu. It was listed as very easy to use and cheap for what it's doing, as a platform. I started a trial (pilot). When I checked the license prices, it was free which was in my budget. I was really happy to find that someone from a management location could do backups using the service.

The price for Vembu was very important and key to our decision-making. Also, Vembu support was very important. When I didn't know how to do anything, I wrote to support and the response time was quick. Basically, it was cheap, easy to install, the agentless backup was very nice, and support was very responsive

The initial setup was very easy. It integrated easily with Windows, Linux, and NetApp backup.

The deployment took about one hour (max) per server.

This solution helps us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduces budgets. 

With the free version of Vembu, you receive three virtual machine backups. However, if you buy the NetworkBackup Enterprise version, you don't have access to the features seen in the free version. This is a situation that Vembu should solve. This caused a misunderstanding between sales and us. I was hoping if I buy the licenses, then after the trial I would not have to purchase virtual machine licenses. Maybe they should offer these three virtual machine backups as part of the Enterprise license.

I tried to install two other solutions. However, I found Vembu very nice because in its trial period, it includes all the features. During the trial period, I was able to check exactly what happens if I use another type of solution from Vembu, and it was easy to test.

I chose this backup solution because it fits what I need.

Try it and see what it can deliver. It is very easy to test and check the licenses. 

The only situation that was not what I expected: I need to have a full copy of the backup, plus a live session of the back up which involves a lot of copies. I need a lot of hard drive capacity offshore and offsite.

I don't know how to check the deduplication.

Our primary use case is for VM backups.

We were using an older version and just upgraded two weeks ago.

The virtual machine backup is important for stability and scalability since our servers are on virtual machines. 

Another good thing is that it has cloud backup.

There are bugs. For one month, I encountered a big issue where my storage pool could not be identified. My backups were stopped because they were not able to locate the storage pool. So, I removed the settings and started the backups again. The application is not stable. It needs some debugging and testing on the build side of production.

We use Vembu with Microsoft Hyper-V. While the installation is not a problem, there is a problem with the operation side of things. It should be automated. There is something wrong with the structure affecting the product because the backup should not be disturbed. We found without any changes to the network structure then the backups would be affected and I could not fix it by myself. I did not contact support for this, as it was probably due to the new update, but I am unsure. Now, I am monitoring this issue.

Six months.

Its application stability needs improvement. I have seen issues recently with it. Backups must have a very stable application. If your backup system is crashing, that means you cannot trust it.

The scalability is good. It can scale. Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy.

We have nine locations. We do have plans to increase usage of the solution. 

The IT department has five people who are administrators. One person configures the backups and others monitor the backups.

The technical support is good.

This BDR is the first proper solution that we are using. We previously used manual backups.

Initially, we had some problems when we tried to do the setup ourselves, but then the support helped us. They had a direct session with me and helped me with the installation. After that, it was fine.

The deployment is easy and fast. A location can be deployed in a day.

For each version, we have a dedicated BDR server and local storage. I schedule the backups. From there, we upload to the cloud storage. Therefore, each location will have their own BDR that will back up to the cloud.

The initial deployment to the cloud is important because once the backups are into operations making changes is not that flexible.

This solution helped us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduced our budget by 50 percent. We spent $3,000 on Vembu's licenses where other solutions were almost double.

The competitor for Vembu is Veeam, who is very popular and famous. Vembu is good, but still has a long way to go. We found Vembu BDR to be more affordable.

Veeam is good for very high-end servers.

Right now, we are satisfied with Vembu's operational performance and requirements. It is just a simple backup solution where we can backup all of our VMs.

Vembu allows you to implement a variety of different requirements.

I would rate the product as a six (out of 10). It needs some more work to be done in regards to product stability and functionality.

We use it to back up ESXi clients, so mainly Linux based or Unix based servers on our ESXi host.

We use the solution to back up our virtual environments (VMware). It has been good for our organization so far.

It makes it possible for us to back up our Unix machines without installing a host, client, or any client software. It gives us some peace of mind in regards to those servers getting backed up.

The number one feature is that we can back up our servers without having to install a client. It is the only reason why I have this product.

The user interface isn't that good. I don't think that the product is user-friendly. Comparing it side by side to Acronis, I would say to Vembu, "Hey, you could make your user interface a little easier."

Vembu will tell you the next scheduled backup, but it doesn't show you the last successful backup. I would have them include a column under "List of Backup Jobs" and have two other columns which say, "Last Successful Backup" and "Next Scheduled Backup", because you don't know now if it's backed up successfully. It just says, "The next scheduled time is this." You don't know from looking at that pane of glass when the last time it actually happened without digging further into reports.

Two years or more.

It is stable. I haven't had it crash or break on me.

I don't think we've actually had a reason to restore a machine as it's never failed. We've never had a server fail. The only thing that it has done for us is give us peace of mind that our server is backed up.

Everybody is impacted if one of these servers failed. The only way we could get it back up and running was to restore it from a Vembu Backup. It would impact everybody if the servers went down, so approximately 3,000 users would be impacted if the backup wasn't successfully happening and we needed to use it.

We haven't had reason to scale it up to back up anything else. We aren't really using the product to its fullest capabilities. I think it has a lot more that it can do.

I am the only user using it, as we only use it for backing up our servers.

I do have plans to increase usage.

Every time I have called, I've had good tech support.

I didn't use a previous solution. I selected this solution because it was the only one I could find for the cost that did what I needed it to do.

It was pretty easy to set up. The initial setup was probably only 15 minutes.

Our implementation strategy was to make it so we could back up our VMware clients. That was the whole purpose of the software. We don't use it for our Windows Servers. For that, we use a different product. However, we couldn't use the other product on the Linux and Unix space machines because the other software requires that a client be installed.

We bought it directly from Vembu and installed it ourselves.

This solution helps us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduces budgets. We are saving $6,000 every three years versus having another product.

Backups are an insurance thing. This is a life insurance policy to make it so if our servers failed, we would have something to get them back. Since we haven't had a server fail, it is just like life insurance. While it has cost us money, it has given us peace of mind that if we needed it, then it would be there.

The pricing is very good.

Our license is about to expire on it.

We did evaluate some other products before choosing this one. 

We also use Acronis Backup Advanced. The way that Vembu backs up to a backup drive, it uses a pool of drives to back up. Whereas, Acronis backs up to just a single file. You can see that individual file on its own. You can browse to it and see that the file that has been saved. It also says the last successful backup it did. 

Vembu's user interface isn't as easy to use compared to Acronis Backup Advanced, which has a better interface for me to be able to see what's happening.

I haven't found a competitor who does as good a job for the money.

This is a good product to choose if you are in the same situation as we are in.

It does do compression and that works fine.

We don't use Hyper-V.

I would give it a five out of 10, because I think that it could use some polishing on the interface for the client.

We use it to backup VMware virtual machines, so I'm backing up my VMware environment. My product is for Windows Server Backup.

We are a small business. We don't use the enterprise version of the solution.

It has improved our business continuity.

We have used this solution to recover from a few incidences. 

The firewall backup is the most valuable feature. We need it sometimes when we recover a single file.

The compression is the most useful feature for me.

The product's stability needs some improvements. 

The support is a bit slow in resolving an issue. It takes a long time to recover.

One year.

The solution is 90 percent stable. It is running well. The availability is good.

Two or three employees are needed for deployment and maintenance of the solution.

I only have two servers. I don't test other servers.

We don't count our users for this solution as it is a backup service.

I would rate the technical support as eight or nine (out of 10). I would like them to improve their response rate.

This was our first product.

The initial setup was neither simple nor complex; it was intermediate. It took four hours to set up/deploy. We implemented it into a very simple environment (Windows Server Backup).

We deployed it ourselves.

We have seen ROI with Vembu. The solution is worth it based on the few times that we used it for recovery.

We tested three products. One of the other products that we evaluated was Altaro.

We chose Vembu because the compatibility was better.

I would definitely recommend Vembu. We have been mostly satisfied with the solution. We plan to keep using it.

Overall, I would rate the product as a nine (out of 10).

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.

I have approximately 50 clients for whom I provide backup services using Vembu software.

I don't have a virtual environment.

I use the encryption, and I think my clients feel secure knowing that.

I have a couple of examples where I was able to restore a client's data on the spot. This definitely was a success for me, where my client saw how the solution actually works in cases where they would need to retrieve their data when a failure happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it has happened a couple of times.

The only things that I use it for are file backup and SQL backup. I don't do much beyond that. It is pretty much straight file backups and restores. What I like about these features are the ease of installation and automatic scheduling. I do like the email feature where I am able to email the client and myself directly after each backup whether it's been successful, partially backed up, or failed.

I am very pleased with the compression, especially with some of the larger SQL databases that need backup. The amount of compression is impressive.

The reporting can use some improvement. I still use the old StoreGrid Cloud while I'm migrating the rest of my clients over. I am able to export all of my clients' usage for the month, which I then import into my billing program. It helps me speed up the billing process. Also, I can generate a report that gives me statuses of everyone's backup, which I don't get from Vembu Backup Online either. I would like to have something similar where I can export everyone's usage at any time for all their backups, so I can use that to import them to my billing program. 

I would also like to be able to have a report where I can check the status of everyone's backup. Right now, I have it programmed to where I get an email for every backup sent to me. Then, I read those emails and chart them on an Excel spreadsheet separately: success, failure, etc. I keep a weekly log of that. If I had a report, it would make this process a lot easier.

I used to be able to manage the amount of space allocated to each client. Right now, I can't. I have to send in a request if I want to add space to this one or create space for another.

I like the stability. I have been pleased with it.

I have had some things that I've contacted technical support about and they have corrected them. I was surprised because I was running across multiple problems frequently. It's been pretty good lately, but the problem was with the cloud.

It is very simple to add new backups.

I am the only person using it in my company.

I have about 50 clients that have on average about one to two backups. There are almost 100 individual backup schedules which are running.

I support an environment of approximately five to seven terabytes.

I would like to add more clients going forward.

I am very pleased with Vembu's technical support.

I have asked Vembu technical support how to handle the following scenario and haven't gotten a good answer:

I have a couple of clients who are pretty large (a couple of terabytes). If I ever had to restore that, it would take quite a long time. I would like some suggestions on where to maybe physically backup on their location. Then, am I sending that up to the cloud? If I were to restore, could I restore right from their location locally? Since that would be much quicker.

This was my first backup solution.

The initial setup is straightforward: Creating a client and logging into that client on their workstation, then being able to download the software to that machine and setting it up whether it's a regular file backup or SQL. This has become very simple for me after doing it so many times.

The initial setup does not take very long. The only thing is that it is taking me a while to migrate my clients from StoreGrid Cloud over to Online Backup because of access to my clients. Once I get in, the actual setup probably takes me 20 minutes to a half an hour per client.

The implementation is pretty much the same for a lot of my clients because they are from the same type of industry. I have a lot of dentists. I'm pretty familiar with the software that they use. I know when I go in there what to expect and what I should be backing up.

I have a gentleman who gives the IT support to a lot of dentists in my area. As he goes to the different locations where he might either be replacing a server there, or if it's a new client of his, then he'll contact me and I will remote in. I will install the backup software on their server, and we set it up that way for the most part.

I have seen ROI with Vembu.

The pricing is reasonable. I am okay with it.

I did look at other backup solutions as well. I don't remember who they are.

It is an easy solution as far as its installation, scalability, and dependability. I have a regular full-time job as well as doing this. I can count on this solution working properly, and it allows me to be able to have another side income without a whole lot of hands-on everyday maintenance to it.

I have not used Vembu with Microsoft Hyper-V.