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BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs Dell Avamar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BDRSuite Backup & Replication
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th), MSP Backup (1st)
Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Redha Benlaksira - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it lets customers choose to restore their data to an hour or a day ago
BDRSuite is better than competing solutions because it can protect, back up, and recover data. A feature called live migration allows you to recover the same data in different environments. For example, I can back up the data from a VMware machine and restore it to a Hyper-V. You can also create repositories and back up environments to a cloud platform like GCP and AWS S3 buckets. BDRSuite allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on an EC3 instance or Microsoft 365 mailboxes, SharePoint, etc. The solution allows us to recover data instantly. We can recover all our data in under 15 minutes. In a virtual environment, we can recover a virtual machine and all its data in under 15 minutes. It's the same for a NAS, SAN, or DAS disk. The ability to boot instantly enables customers to maintain their business operations without interruption. BDRSuite's ability to maintain multiple restore points is critical because it gives customers the option to restore their data to an hour or a day ago. They can choose a full, incremental, or synthetic backup. Incremental backup makes sense if you are backing up the same data daily and you want to save space and network resources. It only backs up the differences or updates in every block. I've worked with lots of backup solutions, and BDRSuite is the easiest to use. It's simple to install and create backup jobs. It doesn't require many tasks to install the solution. You can easily back up and restore from one console
Rahul Sarangdhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Works excellently for on-prem backup but not the best for Azure backups
Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice. There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup."
"It's easy to restore."
"The most important features are the backup and the availability of the Universal Explorer. The in-transit compression is great."
"We are now using it 24/7 because it is serving as an online backup, and very soon, the DR will activated on the product."
"Valuable features include Snapshots and the constant backup for SQL, application services, and Active Directory."
"While BDRSuite offers a variety of functionalities, our primary focus is its disaster recovery capabilities, which we find to be the most valuable aspect of the software."
"The most valuable feature is the Hyper-V backup - it's just one click. I don't have to worry about it."
"Its ease of use and price are most valuable. It is simple and straightforward. Someone who has never used any backup software will easily understand it from the first installation. It is that simple. Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts."
"The most valuable feature of Avamar would have to be the way it works over needing very little bandwidth to move data across a WAN or LAN."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Avamar's source side deduplication is very strong, it can easily back up remote sites' data, and not much bandwidth is required on the Avamar side."
"It was very simple to deploy the solution to the client that you wanted to backup."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"Duplication and the speed of backup are great."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
 

Cons

"The dashboard should more interactive."
"BDRSuite could improve support for XenApp Citrix Backup."
"I would like to have a different set of products instead of having a single software which does everything."
"I have seen that the BDRSuite user interface can be less intuitive and more challenging to navigate compared to other similar products."
"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."
"Our initial experience with BDRSuite highlighted the need for improved user onboarding materials."
"What I would love to see on the dashboard are graphs, per backup job. I want to see the month and the days in it... If a job has failed, when did it actually fail and what percentage of it failed? Did it fail completely, 75 percent or 100 percent or did it only fail partially?"
"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."
"Performance can sometimes be affected when tools are utilized for tasks like backup or deep archiving."
"Avamar needs a greater emphasis on storage targets. If it's going to keep pace with the times, it needs more ability to leverage cloud storage."
"The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."
"Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"The screen design is a bit back-dated."
"The UI is not easy to use. There are other products such as Veeam that are easy to use for the end-user which is why they are moving away from Avamar or Networker."
"The recovery is a bit slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It helps us deliver an enterprise-level data protection solution and reduce budgets at a price that - and we don't want to encourage them to change their pricing - is a great value."
"The product's pricing is of good value. It was much more affordable than the alternative solution to it, which was Veeam. That would be the closest competitor, and between those two, Vembu was much more affordable. It seemed reasonable for what we needed to do."
"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."
"The pricing is fair."
"The best thing about the product is the license management. It is a true managed service provider solution. It has a good price. The licensing is quite flexible, which is one of the most important things for us."
"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."
"The high availability is too expensive for our customers."
"The only thing with room for improvement, as everybody says, since I'm in a home lab, would be the price for the CPU; the cost... As far as competitors' prices go, Vembu was definitely better than all the competitors I found."
"When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
"Dell EMC needs to lower Avamar's price and add more features to stay competitive."
"Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution."
"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."
"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
"I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool."
"It's an expensive tool"
"This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
87%
Retailer
3%
Educational Organization
2%
Financial Services Firm
1%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I had a small problem integrating VMware and Hyper-V when customers used a free VMware license to create VMs. This is a problem because many customers use the free version of VMware. There are also...
What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?
From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
 

Also Known As

Vembu BDRSuite
Avamar
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about BDRSuite Backup & Replication vs. Dell Avamar and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.