It is basically used for everything. It is used all the way from files recovery on a simple basis, where one user accidentally deletes a file and we need to replace it, to a server crash, where we need to bring it up virtually on another unit because the hardware crashed or something like that.
It is deployed on-prem. We have two units with Rapid Recovery. So, we have two DL1300s. It was sold as an appliance package at the time.
Previously, in order to do a restore on a file, you had to go through and find the file on a tape or whatever your medium is. You had to go through and dig until you found it, which used to take forever, whereas now, you can mount the whole server in a few minutes, and you can go down and dig into the file you're looking for. If it is not in that directory, all your other directories are available. Doing it this way saves you a lot of time versus the old way, where you find that one file and restore it. If that doesn't turn out to be the file that the user wanted, you got to go back and do it all over again for the other file that they have guessed as being the one. It saves you a lot of time because you're mounting the whole server to a point in time, and then you can grab any file from that point in time and then give it to the user. You can copy/paste it or use some other preferred way. So, it is very easy to use, and it saves hours on each restore.
We spin up all of our machines as virtual machines. They have a feature called virtual standby that allows you to keep all of your virtual machines in a state where they're basically standby virtual machines. All you have to do is spin them up, and then that machine is up and running. So, we test that functionality quarterly to make sure that it is working. We need to know the backups are working. Otherwise, we get alerts if they're not working. The backups go between every hour, every four hours, and every 24 hours. In terms of doing recovery, once every couple of months, we have to recover a file or do something similar. This virtual standby feature would save us quite a bit of time if we have to recover specific servers that have crashed and bring them up with Rapid Recovery. It would save us approximately four to eight hours.
Probably the point-in-time recovery is most valuable. The other piece that is really nice is that you can mount a whole server at any point in time. So, you can mount the server with all the drives to a Z drive or something like that. It will just mount it all up, and your data is accessible right there on one drive, which is nice.
It is very easy to use when it comes to recovery. It has got a couple of buttons. You click restore, and then you click the machine that you want to restore. You can mount a point-in-time recovery of that server if you're just looking for a file, or you can just restore the whole server. It is very intuitive.
For the most part, it is really good in terms of flexibility and choice of recovery methods. What we found lacking was being able to back up virtual volumes that are clustered. We ran out of luck there. There should be an option for backing up clustered virtual volumes.
I have been using this solution for six years.
It has been great and spot-on. I haven't had any issues with it yet.
It is pretty scalable. If you want to increase the amount of space you need, you can just add some licensing. It is pretty straightforward. It seems pretty scalable to me.
In terms of users, it is pretty much just me, so it is just the Systems and Network Administrator.
In terms of usage, we probably use it 70%. We restore once every couple of months if somebody needs something, but that's about it. I don't see that changing. Its usage will remain the same. We may just need more disk space.
I have used their Premier Support. They get back to us pretty quickly. They usually have somebody knowledgeable who is able to help us resolve a situation pretty quickly.
Their Premier Support costs money. I am not sure if it is worth your money if you have to call and get help with the product just a few times a year. I don't really see too much of a difference between their regular support and Premier Support. They seem similar. Their Premier Support hasn't been an influence in purchasing additional licenses or products.
We've used a few in the past. We used Symantec Backup and probably Unitrends. We have also used eFolder. We switched primarily because of the cost and technology. Quest offered some options. Their bare metal recovery was a little easier to do, and spinning up the virtual machines was pretty intuitive. You didn't need extra software to do it.
It was pretty straightforward. The software is pretty intuitive, and you can do agent or agent-less installs. If you have a physical virtual machine, such as a physical VMware hypervisor, you can back up all the machines on that hypervisor, or you can install agents. With the agents, you can get a little bit more granular with the reporting information. So, it is pretty easy, no matter which way you want to go.
The deployment duration depends on the method you choose. If you're doing it agent-less, it can take as little as a few minutes. With an agent, it would probably take 15 to 20 minutes per server because you usually have to install the software, and then you have to reboot. So, it includes the reboot time.
Our implementation strategy was to back up all machines and then synchronize the two units with each other. We have an onsite unit and an offsite unit, and they back each other up. So, we had to back up all machines and then synchronize the two units so that they back each other up, and the offsites are stored at each other's location.
We implemented it ourselves. In terms of maintenance, we upgrade it very often. It is currently on the latest version. So, anytime a new version of the software comes out, I'll upgrade it on each server, and then, of course, you want to test the backups as well.
It is really hard to quantify. We've done some tests, but they don't give you any ROI. I don't know of any backup solution that has ROI in terms of saving money to the bottom line unless somebody had a major disaster from which they've had to recover. Even in that case, you're not really quantifying your ROI because you still have to spend money on that backup solution. That's really hard and a tricky one.
If there was a situation where we needed to use it, it would save money and recovery costs, but as a whole, I don't believe it has saved us any money. It is like an insurance policy. We wouldn't consider living without such a solution. We have to have some kind of backup system. It doesn't have to be this specific product. There are other products that will do the same.
I believe the basic license comes with six terabytes, whereas a lot of the other ones are four terabytes. From the price point, it seemed a lot better than the comparative models, such as Datto, Barracuda, and some of the others. I believe Barracuda was about $15,000 for four terabytes, and Quest was around $12,000 for six terabytes.
Pricing is based on the period. There is just the maintenance fee that you have to pay annually, or you can pay for a three-year or four-year contract. This includes Premier Support.
My advice would be to always test your backups. It doesn't matter which product you're using. You need to test them.
In terms of the recovery at the attribute level, as long as you have the decryption key, you could mount the server, and then you can grab whichever file you need. We back up the whole server, so technically, we could just do a restore. We could just mount that server and grab the files that we need and that were a part of that active directory piece, or we could just restore the whole server at a point in time. I've never had to do it. We've done tons of restores and file restores, but I've never had to restore an active directory. I would rate this feature a three out of 10 because we never had to do it. Of course, when you do need to do it, it is probably a 10 out of 10, but it gets really messy when you try to restore some of that stuff, so we've tried to avoid that at all possible costs.
It claims to provide Microsoft compliant bare-metal recovery and active directory data restore, but I never had to do it. I have spun up virtual machines. We spin them up all the time. It is basically a server at a certain point in time, and then you bring it up on the virtual machine as a virtual machine, and it pops right out. Nowadays, pretty much everything is a virtual machine. So, I don't see why you'd ever need to do a full restore or bare-metal restore when you can just spin up the virtual machine at any point in time. If you need specific files off it, you could do that, or you could just use that virtual machine and just read it back to that point in time and then restore the files you need.
We use its malware detection, but we also use other pieces. We use Comodo for antivirus and malware protection, and we also use Microsoft, so we are kind of double protected. Its malware detection capability is important, but it comes at that point where it is too late, which means that something has already pretty much gotten past your antivirus, your Defender, and everything else. If you go to restore a machine that has been affected with ransomware, by then, it has already got past your malware detection, your antivirus, and all those things. So, you're pretty much toast at that point anyway. It isn't easy to recover from that unless there are definitions, and then you need to restore the machine with the new definitions, grab the files, and move them to the new server.
I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. It is a pretty intuitive and straightforward product. It does a pretty good job overall, and it does quite a bit, but there is definitely room for improvement in terms of backing up clustered virtual volumes.
My clients need a successful, reliable disaster recovery solution that works well. They're using it for backup on-prem, to restore individual files if needed, and in case a physical server dies, so that they can spin up a virtual server within a couple of minutes. That way, they make sure that there is no interruption in service. We also use it to put up all those virtual servers in the cloud. If the company has to declare a disaster on-prem, they can actually work in the cloud within five to 10 minutes, so that they don't lose any business. It is really specific for on-prem environments because the cloud can run everything.
I have a client who had a server issue after a Windows update, the server blue-screened. We were able to spin up the equivalent in the Infrascale environment right away and they were able to do business as usual. We were then able to fix the local machine, get the server reinstated, and then restore the most recent backup to the machine on-prem. Everything worked without any incident.
The time it takes Infrascale to deliver a boot-ready failover in a disaster recovery situation is very quick. This will result in a lot less downtime and a lot less loss in business revenue, since many machines are very business-critical and need to be up and running as quickly as possible. With other solutions on the market, which do not give me the five-to-10-minute ready-time for disaster recovery of a server, my clients would lose a lot more money.
Among the most valuable features are
It is also very important to our clients that Infrascale's Critical Server Insurance feature protects physical and virtual servers, including Windows, Linux, VMware, and Hyper-V. It's part of the total solution they offer that covers every server infrastructure you can imagine. They all get backed up into a virtual environment, which is fantastic. It's totally hardware-independent.
Similarly, the fact that that feature allows you to spin up locally or in the cloud, on demand, without declaration or extra fees is key. If I have a physical server go down locally, I can instantly put up this machine on-prem and it would replace the broken machine within a couple of minutes.
The Infrascale Dashboard is very easy to understand, has a good overview, and gives me access to all my appliances without having to have a local VPN connection to the individual clients. It makes it very easy to find my way around.
In addition, the backup and restore speeds are outstanding. The algorithm they use to migrate their data back and forth between the cloud and local appliances is great. Generally, it takes hardly any time to get a file restored to the original place on the server.
The only thing I would suggest, and I have talked to my manager about it already, is that they should have a direct backup-to-cloud solution. It should be something that does not require me to do an image backup, and then individual file and folder backups, to be able to restore individual files.
I have been using Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery for at least five years. I'm an Infrascale partner and I deploy it for my clients.
I'm very happy with the stability of the solution. I have had very few issues.
One client has had the appliance for five years and we never had any hardware issues. There were a couple of firmware releases that caused a hiccup within the backup solution, but support was very quick to address those things, and even do hot-fixes for the specific appliance to get us going again.
Scalability is connected to hardware. When you sign up with Infrascale, there is a sheet where you provide your information and they configure the machine for you. Sometimes, growth projections concerning data or servers can change. For example, if a company grows 50 percent, instead of the projected 10 percent per year, there might be an issue where you have to replace the appliance earlier. I have not run into this issue and I don't know exactly how they would handle it if it happened.
There was a time when there was great room for improvement in Infrascale's support. This area has significantly improved over the last couple of years. Support has really started to shine during that time. Now, it's a pleasure to call support and get help and assistance. Before the turnaround, it was a pain. You just didn't even want to call them. You wanted to exhaust every other option first, locally, because you understood that the people in support were not going to be able to help unless they escalated it to the second or third level. The amount of time and patience it took, on my side, was just unacceptable.
The level of commitment of the support team, recently, has been great. It's very nice and gives me a lot of confidence when offering this solution to customers, because support really is doing an outstanding job now, helping and assisting as quickly as they can. The communication is outstanding and the follow-up is outstanding.
If they resolve an issue, they follow up the next day, if I don't get back to them in time. It's hard to say they're proactive as a support team, because you usually get support if you have an issue or a problem. They do, however, now notify customers when there are some changes in their data center and that the customer can expect some downtime. These notifications work a lot better than they did a couple of years ago.
The biggest lesson I have learned using Infrascale is being patient with support. In the beginning, when I signed up with Infrascale, our support was sub-par. There was no follow-up. The people they had in support were not capable of providing a solution. It took forever to get support information back. I gave them a lot of feedback at that time and they appreciated the feedback. As I said, over the last two years, there has been a huge turnaround in the support experience. I have reached out to my account manager and told him, multiple times, that support is really great now. Usually, companies hear about the things that are bad, but for me it was also important to mention the positive things to them.
Because I'm a technical person, I would do all the technical checking before I called support and that was true for every vendor, whether Microsoft or Infrascale. When I call support, I'm expecting to talk to somebody on a technical level and don't want someone to just read from a script and say, "Did you do this?" and, "Did you do that?" Now, they have technically knowledgeable people who can help instantly or escalate the ticket as needed, and there's no big delay anymore. Support really makes the product shine for me now.
Positive
The initial implementation process is straightforward. As soon as the appliance is added to the dashboard, I can configure anything related to the appliance through it, such as backups, retention, et cetera. All that type of configuration can be done remotely.
On average, it takes an hour to an hour and a half to deploy and configure the appliance. We try to understand the client's environment beforehand so that we can really dive in as soon as the appliance arrives on-site.
We have seen ROI with Infrascale. My customer had a different solution before and his monthly payment was three times as much as the payment he now has with Infrascale.
Infrascale's pricing, to me, was outstanding and was one of the major factors in my decision to go with Infrascale.
They changed the pricing model this year. The customers I have are not on this new pricing model yet, but I think the bottom line will be similar. It's just a matter of how they come up with the price. It's a little bit different, but I haven't really gotten into the details of it. It should still be easy to give a quote to a customer and say, "Hey, this is going to be your cost, period."
Many other providers have additional costs if you put up a machine, as well as per processor. If you use so much memory, there is a cost. If retention goes over a certain amount of time, there is a cost. There are so many limitations and so many different cost factors. I don't have any of those cost factors with Infrascale, after I buy the solution, because the price is not going to change unless I get into a higher tier of storage.
Before I went with Infrascale six years ago, because I am a solution/service provider, I checked out three or four different solutions: Acronis, Datto. I actually called all of them, had demos, looked at how they would handle certain things, what the pricing was, et cetera. For me, Infrascale had the best package to offer to my customers, including features, pricing, implementation, and support; everything that comprises the total solution.
My advice is "go for it."
I rate Infrascale an eight out of 10 because I still have to use another product for some of my clients who want to back up directly to the cloud. I know Infrascale was working on a direct backup solution about two or three years ago, because I tested their pilot and their beta versions. But unfortunately, they haven't followed through since. Maybe the market for this service is not as big as they were hoping at that time. But that's the only reason I have multiple vendors in this space. As soon as Infrascale comes out with a direct-to-cloud backup solution, I will most likely switch all my customers over to Infrascale as well.
