Quest Rapid Recovery [EOL] Reviews

Our primary use is backup and restore, which we use to protect our customers' data centers.

From an operations standpoint, the email notifications have helped me a lot.

The mount function has helped us because it is a straightforward process that we can explain to a customer over the phone. When they need to restore a file or a folder, there are only a few steps involved.

Many times, we have been able to recover data with little disruption to our customer's work environment. In a few cases, it helped me to recover all of the data for a customer, which was a big help.

In cases where we have had to restore a failed server, the process has been quite fast. The timeframe depends on the size of the data but it is faster than other products we have worked with.

There are multiple choices for restoring data. For example, first, you can create a virtual standby, and then restore data while it is being used. Alternatively, you can bring up another server and then restore data to it. I have not yet used virtual standby in production.

The most valuable feature is the ability to mount a backup as a drive, where you can access the data.

Quest Rapid Recovery has good speed and reliability.

Rapid Recovery has a feature that will archive backups.

This product is straightforward and easy to use.

I'm quite impressed with the usability, and I am comparing this with other backup and data protection software that I have used, such as NetVault. Rapid Recovery is easier to use because of its user-friendly interface.

An example of another product that I use currently, that is different from Quest products, is Veeam. I prefer to use Rapid Recovery because the number of steps required in the process is minimal. With fewer steps required to complete my tasks, compared to other products, Rapid Recovery is the easiest one to use.

This product has absolutely reduced the admin time involved in my backup and recovery operations. The amount of time it saves depends on each customer's environment. At the most basic level, before using this product, I had to log in every day to check on the stability of the backup and sometimes act based upon it. For example, if there was a failed backup then I had to set a new one.

With Rapid Recovery, after creating alerts, I no longer need to check on each client. I used to have to go to each client, one by one, and check several pages to see whether a backup had failed. Now, I simply wait for an email notification to inform me of the status. Basically, half of my day is saved because of the email notification and alerts. When I don't receive an alert then I don't even need to check.

The compression and deduplication features have helped to save on storage costs. We have quite a number of clients, and there is a lot of data. I am quite impressed because we started with an 18 TB capacity license, and we managed to back up almost 126 clients. This was possible because of the deduplication and compression features. There are other solutions that only support compression, and they require that customers allocate more storage. For example, my customers that are using NetVault require more capacity.

Incremental Backup is another feature that saves storage space because this type of backup only records the changes since the last one. If there are few changes then it does not affect the storage very much.

I really like the replication features. Rapid Recovery has different mounting options and you can do a fast restoration. For example, you can mount a virtual hard disk and it doesn't impact your environment. My customers have been quite impressed with the speed of replication.

One of the features that I like is the Rapid Recovery Core portal. Basically, you can access the customer's site using a website URL. However, what I notice is that the information sometimes differs from what is in the Rapid Recovery Core. I think that more should be done to ensure that this is synchronized.

When backing up the configuration it has to be done manually, which is something that should be improved. It is quite surprising to me that the configuration cannot be backed up automatically, and I think that Rapid Recovery should have an option for scheduled configuration backup.

I had an experience with one customer where the backup storage was corrupted, and as a result, the repository was corrupt. In that situation, with the repo gone, we were unable to retrieve the backup. To handle situations like this, it would be great if Rapid Recovery offered a second-tier of backup. What I am doing now is archiving the repository, which gives me a secondary backup for my clients.

I have been working with Quest Rapid Recovery for almost three years, since 2019. I began working with it as soon as I joined my current company.

I would rate the stability at 95%.

This product is quite scalable. I'm quite impressed with the way Rapid Recovery handles scale and the ability to expand it. As our customers migrate from NetVaule to Rapid Recovery, we increase our own total storage space and it's easy to do.

In the first two years, we subscribed to 13 TB of data. Now in our third year, it has been increased to 18 TB. Because the product is profitable and working well, the company is planning to increase usage. Eventually, all of the servers will be put into Rapid Recovery and additional licensing will be purchased.

In our environment, there are two administrators for this solution. One handles the customers and the other is internal. Between them, we have full visibility.

Technical support is quite fast. My interactions with them are quick because I have memorized the steps, which start with sending them the logs. Once I send the log to support, they can begin.

Overall, they are quite fast and quite helpful.

I use a variety of Quest products, including NetVault. Based on my observations, when a customer allocates 50 TB with NetVault, you can do the same with less storage using Rapid Recovery. It only requires about 20 TB to restore 120 clients, which results in a lower overall storage cost.

Many of my customers began with NetVault, and we proposed Rapid Recovery to them. In general, they have been quite happy with the switch. They like the way it connects with the core and that they do not have to install agents. One of the problems with installing an agent is that you often have to reboot that machine, and they no longer have to do this.

Most of the servers are migrating to Rapid Recovery because they trust it. From a maintenance perspective, the majority of the issues that I had found previously were related to agents. After migrating, these problems are no longer there.

Performing maintenance on Rapid Recovery involves more steps than it does with NetVault, although not very many. I just want to ensure that everything with Rapid Recovery is stable.

I also use products from other vendors including Veeam.

Both installing and upgrading are simple and straightforward to do. It is not a complex process to set it up. The complete deployment takes less than 15 minutes.

Based on the customers that I have now, my implementation strategy focuses on VMware. VMware connects to Rapid Recovery using vCenter. It is set up so that customers retain their data for one month.

Because Rapid Recovery doesn't have a secondary backup, I also have the archiving solution as part of this. 

We have an in-house team for deployment.

Minimal staff is needed for deployment and maintenance.

Licensing fees are based on the amount of data that you want to store, which is related to how many customers you want to cover. I recommend that before purchasing a license, you identify how many clients will be protected. You then need to estimate the total amount of storage based on each client's size.

Evaluation of other options is the responsibility of the customer. My company handles multiple data products but this is the only option we offer for data recovery.

The Synthetic Incremental Backup feature is a new one that I haven't set up yet. Instead, I use the normal incremental backup.

When replication is being used, when it first starts, it will be slow. The reason for this is that you have to start with a base. Then, once you have the base, the replication is very fast.

It is important to my clients that features such as deduplication and replication are included at no extra charge. They understand these features, as well as compression, and understand the costs involved. As they switch from other products, they know that implementing Rapid Recovery and adding storage will not cost very much.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is to not trust the storage hardware. Similarly, don't trust the connection between your customer and the backup storage site. When corruption occurs then it is quite troublesome and requires a lot of troubleshooting. Moreover, some data may be lost permanently. To deal with this, we have started creating multiple repositories and back up accordingly. This gives us insurance that data is not lost in the event of a disaster.

My advice for anybody who is looking into this product is to first know what they have in their environment. For example, if they are using a tape backup system then this product is not applicable. However, if they have a supported storage system then this is a good choice. Similarly, if replication is being used at branch offices then this product is very good because of the speed. I really like how the replication capability works.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

This solution is our on-premises backup server.

It is connected through a VPN to the Azure Rapid recovery backup, off-site virtual server.

We also use it for disaster recovery. If we were to lose the site or the place were to burn down, we could start up a couple of virtual machines on the Azure platform and have users log in via a terminal server through Azure. From there, they could access the MIS system, file server, and other resources until we were able to establish a rebuild of our infrastructure on the school premises.

The major benefit to our organization is the security of the data that we have. We were assured and reassured that we could recover this vital data if there was a critical failure, whether it be on a hardware server, or on a virtual machine. This became apparent over the last six years, where we've had one or two failures on the SQL Server. We've been able to get it up and running with the help of Quest support within a couple of hours.

We use the off-site model, where we replicate all of the current data at the end of the day. After we do our roll-up and everything, we replicate across to the Azure Rapid Recovery Server. At any given time, both servers would be in sync in the evening, with all of the data. Whatever we've got on-premises is the same as what we've got off-site.

File restoration and also virtual server restoration are paramount and critical to the school. I think that over the past six years, I've had probably two occasions where I had to restore a SQL Server.

It is pretty simple to set up and use.

The ease of use has reduced the administration time involved in our backup and recovery operations. I can sleep easily at night knowing that I've got one of the best solutions in place for the school. How a product is used will differ from one client or customer to another and there's a free choice of backup solutions out there, but some of them can be very complex. 

That is something that you don't want to have because, with very complex solutions, you have complex issues happening. With simplistic solutions, they're much easier to run and you don't have to be highly trained to work on them. Conversely, there are some products that you would have to think twice about. Whereas with Quest, after a couple of weeks if you've been working with it all the time, you become good with it. We have reduced our backup and recovery time by between 80% and 90%.

Built-in encryption helps to secure our data as it travels from our on-site server to our off-site backup server.

When you do a full backup, all of the memory resources on the server are used, which is something that should be improved. It is an annoyance because I rotate my disks out for full backups, and I do a nightly backup of the incremental ones that have taken place over the day. When I try to complete a full backup, the process normally uses all my memory resources on the server. This is the oldest issue that they've had, which they just haven't resolved yet.

I have been using Quest Rapid Recovery for more than five years.

This product is very stable. I can't recall having an issue but in cases where people do, they have an app built-in to the software to assist with the troubleshooting. It will diagnose everything and then use FTP to send data to their site, where their support staff will pick it up on a server's request number, which is linked to the upload.

From there, they can diagnose it further and see what the problem is. They will in turn work out a solution and fix the problem, which to me, is important with respect to maintaining stability.

I have had a few things go wrong, now and again, but this year, I haven't had any major problems. The problem that I had last year was that I lost the SQL Server, but Quest sorted it out right away.

If you're a big company then the scalability is quite good. In fact, it is probably one of the best. It depends on how much money you've got to spend. That would be the first thing, especially with the hardware and the data centers.

You could have a third site, which would be a further repository for backups. As it is now, I've got a local site, and storage space on Azure, but if I had another local site where I could use the same repository then it would provide greater redundancy. Instead of having the third site locally, at the same location, it would be somewhere else.

What we've got now is probably the best model for the school. I think a lot of small businesses would probably have the same sort of model that I've got, which is an on-premise server and an off-site server. Depending on their solution, they might have an off-site solution in another location, maybe a few kilometers away from where they are or they might have chosen to use Amazon, or Google, or Azure as the other site to replicate the data to.

Ultimately, I think you have to work out the perfect model for your business, but also, you've got to also think about the costs involved, and you've also got to think about whether it is worth having three sites or just two sites.

This choice depends in part on how important the data is. Normally, the data is very important because that's the most crucial thing for any business. The loss of their data is catastrophic, so to speak. What I've got is on-premises data, with replication that takes place on the Azure site. Plus, on top of that, I've got a nightly backup of the data. I think I've covered every area that I could for the school, and also, the local backup disks that I use are kept in a fire safe. In the unfortunate event that you lost everything, you've still got the backup disk to use for a rebuild, just in case you needed to do one.

I think the problem is that you've got to work out different scenarios. The first scenario would be that you lose the building. What do you do? In this case, you've got your off-site backup, Azure. It will probably take one or two days to get the necessary servers up and running, as virtual machines built on the Azure platform. Then, you've got to get the users. They can be anywhere in the world, remote in through the terminal server, and then they can access the file server or the SQL server or whatever services are available.

Every situation for every business is unique. It depends on what applications you've got and what servers you've got. We are a school but another business might be a pharmaceutical company or it could be an airline. Whatever the business, every company has got to have some solution in place for disaster recovery. That was the model that I decided to follow, and Quest plays an important role in that.

On occasions where I have had to restore a server, the support I had from Quest was fantastic. One time, it was a weekend, and I phoned them up in the early hours of the morning. They got a hold of me within half an hour and we got the SQL Server up and running in a couple of hours.

If you do have any issues, they're regularly available to help you through the process of resolving your problems on a daily basis, or even during the evening or after-hours.

That's the kind of support that you get from Quest.

Before this, we only had one server, and then we expanded the infrastructure. This was the first solution that I chose to use. I looked at Backup Exec also, and I just thought, "No."

I've used Backup Exec in the past, and I wasn't too happy with them. I just thought, "Well, there's Quest. Quest used to be with Dell, and now they've left Dell, so they can build up their products".

They can pursue products that they would like to build, including new ones. They are no longer restricted to developing specific ones. This has allowed them to come up with new ideas for their existing products and their customers, and maybe ask their customers what they'd like to see, in cases where they want changes. This allows for enhancements, for example.

Overall, I think that their products are fantastic but the best one for me is the Rapid Recovery backup solution.

In the end, I haven't seen a change from them leaving Dell to working as a separate company. I think that they're probably as good as they were at Dell, but maybe even better. I don't think that it affected them in a negative way.

It's quite easy to deploy the agents and everything on the virtual and hardware servers. You just have to remember a few pointers. One thing that you have to do, if you're performing an upgrade on the cores, is to make sure that you upgrade the off-site repository first. After that, you move to your on-premise server, where you do the update of the core there. You have to work from back to front, starting with the off-site server. Other than that, it is pretty simple.

The deployment did not take very long to complete. Most of the time can be spent if you have an issue with the virtual machine, and you want to get rid of all of its snapshots, then delete it from the vault. That will take a long time to replicate a base image of, for example, a SQL Server. That takes a couple of days, but it's down to the VPN as well, because of the bandwidth consumption. This is an issue that I have become accustomed to and I don't have too many problems with that side of things. You get what you pay for.

The installation and initial setup on the server were completed by Quest.

It's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's worth its weight in gold from a software point of view.

Part of the cost of this solution is cloud storage. Azure is quite expensive, but I think that would be the case on any platform, such as Google. I think they probably cost the same per terabyte because it is billed according to how much compute time you use on their platform.

I don't think the licensing for the product is very expensive. That said, to be honest, I don't think you should put money down to how important it is to keep your data secure. There shouldn't be a cost involved in the decision because if you start thinking about costs, it might be to the detriment of your business. I think that you pay for what you get, and if you want to keep your data secure, you need to first think that money shouldn't be an object when it comes to the security of your data.

It was very important that duplication, replication, and virtual standby were available without having to pay extra for these features. Deduplication is critical because it reduces the size of the repository and if you didn't have that, your repository would continue to grow and the cost outlay for storage would be more expensive. You would probably use double or triple the amount of storage that you would like to have if you didn't have deduplication and compression on the data.

There were other products that I did look at, but I thought Quest was probably the best by far. For instance, there was Veeam and VMware that I considered. I just thought that the Quest product was probably the best for the school's situation.

I looked at the products from a support point of view and the hardware structure, and I thought that the Rapid Recovery product was most simplistic. It is easier for IT-savvy people to use it and the support is very good.

I have not yet used the synthetic incremental backup feature but I know that it is available.

With respect to how the product should change in the future, I'm pretty happy with the way that they are investing time and effort in their product. I suppose the model that they've got works for their company and also for their customers, so I think trying to make major changes to the software might not turn out too well. I think companies or IT managers or IT staff, in general, would prefer that the software not change very much.

I can recommend it to other people in the circumstances that I've got. We are just a small school, but the most important thing is that the school's data is protected. Quest does that for us. Overall, I'm very happy with Quest's software.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We back up our on-premise servers, storing and archiving in the cloud and on-premise.

It is on a physical server.

When we had a server upgrade, we were able to restore the entire disk to another machine. It was very easy to do. This was a huge benefit. We were able to just take the data off of the Rapid Recovery backup and restore it to the new machine. We didn't really have any downtime other than the obvious meantime to restore, which was pretty slow only because the setup of the environment wasn't best practice. So, the data was stored on a USB drive that was not the standard configuration for Rapid Recovery. Therefore, it took 15 to 18 hours to get it restored, but we were able to do that on a weekend. We upgraded Rapid Recovery to the local disk instead of USB, which made it tremendously better.

The ease of use has reduced the admin time involved in our backup/recovery operations. Once the system was set up correctly, it ran smoothly. It is a set it and forget it kind of thing. 

Though I haven't noticed a huge impact, Synthetic incremental backups have helped to reduce the impact to our production environment and network resources.

Disk backup (archiving to the cloud) is its most valuable feature because it provides for our disaster recovery plan.

The incremental backups take far less space. The less you have to store and the more compressed it is, the less disk you will need.

It gives me great peace of mind.

The archive feature is a little cryptic. I don't think that it is very understandable. Also, the difference between transfer versus backup versus archive and all the terminology can be a little bit muddy. Maybe some white papers or something describing what each thing is, because I had to learn it by calling technicians. Thank goodness, I had a maintenance agreement with software support. For example, I was looking for something called backup and it was called transfer. So, the terminology wasn't things I was used to. 

I was trying to look through an archive, and I couldn't see where you mount the archive. I couldn't find it anywhere. Sometimes, once you know where things are and learn the system, then it is fairly simple, but it is understanding their terminology and what each thing means and how each part is used that maybe could be improved.

The terminology didn't seem easily available. When I go to the website, it is hard to search for things. You get all the articles, then you finally get the search button. They need the search at the top of the knowledge base. Then, on occasion, if you get an error message in the system, which is very important, it says, "Click here for more information," but I never get more information. The search engine doesn't find it or it is some weird error. It has never worked for me.

I have been using it for almost three years.

It is very stable because we haven't had any issues with it. There have been issues related to disk, or something like that. However, as far as the software/product failing, we haven't experienced any of that.

I am the administrator for all things IT.

Everything is pretty stable, so we are not increasing usage.

This is not really applicable because my organizations are very small.

The technical support is excellent. They have been responsive and have always resolved the issue. They are easy to understand and know the products.

The technicians said it was a good idea to enable Synthetic once that feature was available through the updates. So, the technician recommended Synthetic be turned on.

It was previously the same product, but Dell EMC owned it. So, it was Dell AppAssure, then Quest took it over and it became Rapid Recovery. 

I have used the Symantec Backup Exec Enterprise and Carbonite. Carbonite didn't have as many features and Symantec was just impossible to get technical support on. I think Rapid Recovery falls into the middle, where they're easy to get ahold of, but not too large, and the product is robust enough.

I didn't set up the system originally. When I came in, they were already using the system so I didn't know that it was an inappropriate configuration. Once I was able to talk to technicians, they described what the best practices were so we modified the machines with the local disk instead of USB, then it was much better.

Even though we did this deployment over a weekend, we were able to get everything done over a weekend so it didn't impact the usual Monday through Friday work week. It was very important that there were no big impacts nor distractions to the work environment because it is just disruptive to users' work. In this situation, all the users' case files and data were on that drive, so it had to be restored. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to work. This is why zero to very little downtime is important, because it just completely disrupts the business.

It does require a little bit of upfront time to get everything configured via best practices. Once it is set up, it is fairly reliable as long as your Internet connection and network stay stable.

If you are going to start with Rapid Recovery as a new system, I would advise investing in the consulting time to get the system set up properly. It is very important to work with an engineer. Once it has been set up properly, they sort of train you on what you are looking at, then you can take over on it. I don't think that any person should start trying to set up their systems without knowing anything about it. Therefore, the consulting time is very important.

Just knowing that the data is easily recoverable is our ROI. It definitely lowers risk.

Because it is a very small environment, we really haven't reduced costs. However, if it is more efficient, then I won't have to add disk space. So, it could prevent future expenditures on disk space if it can keep it highly compressed.

It is a little expensive. However, I haven't compared it to other solutions. Being a nonprofit, it is always good to have nonprofit discounts on products.

Compared to similar solutions, it is pretty easy to use.

It requires some training. Once you know where the features are, it is very easy to navigate. Their terminology is a little different than most. It seems to be a little different than other concepts of backup or disaster recovery. However, once I was shown some of the basics by a technician, then it was pretty easy to navigate.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

We primarily use the solution to back up our critical servers. We have an SQL server, so we use it to back up the data and the services on the SQL server to another machine in our disaster recovery site. We also use to back up our file server and some other critical servers.

The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to back up a physical server to another physical or virtual server. 

The solution should improve the reporting functionality.

The pricing could be adjusted.

The on-premises deployment model shouldn't have a maintenance fee. If there's going to be technical support, they need it to be free or it should be paid on upon adopting the solution.

I've been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution has good scalability.

We only really had interactions with technical support during the initial setup of the solution. they responded to our requests and were able to assist us.

We have used other solutions, including NetApp, in the past. It was quite expensive to set up the infrastructure and maintain it which was why we switched.

The solution is complex. We tried hard to set up the solution, and it took us a while to activate. Deployment took a couple of days as we had to leave it and come back until we finally succeeded in implementing it. You only need one IT person and an external consultant for deployment and maintenance.

We used a consultant that assisted us with implementation.

The licensing costs are quite reasonable; they aren't the most expensive option. You do have to pay an extra amount every three years.

We looked at three other vendors but we ultimately decided on this solution because it had the ability to function well with our existing infrastructure.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

It wasn't deployed for users. It was deployed for backup purposes for our servers. It's just the IT administrator that handles it. It's doing everything on its own. All we do is just supervise to check that it's still backing up our data.

It's a good solution. Most people may just find that it is undesirable to pay per call. I think they charge per call, so you should check your infrastructure before choosing Quest.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for backup and recovery.

The general backup for replication and virtual standby are the most valuable aspects. It does what it says it does. It's a decent tool for not a big budget.

It's buggy. That's a big problem. We're arranging to get rid of it. We're going to switch to Veeam. We've had no end of issues with it. When we got critical outages, we weren't able to rely on. It's quite frustrating but they do have some really, really good support guys. Generally speaking, they do try and get on top of these issues as quickly as possible, but I've just seen too many bugs with it. It doesn't work as I want it to work.

In the next release, they should tie up all these issues that they've got with the bugs.

It's not stable. 

It's relatively scalable. We have 21 users. 

Some of the guys they've for there are really good, some of them are useless. I would rate their technical support as a seven out of ten. 

The initial setup is relatively simple. It's not hard. 

I've experienced a lot of issues with it, so I would advise against installing it and going with Veeam. I would rate it a six out of ten. 

We use the on-prem deployment model for this solution. My primary use case of this solution is to backup my physical server. 

The fact that it can take a snapshot of everything on a server and replicate it on another server in real-time is the most valuable feature. 

You can only take a snapshot from a virtual environment. It should have the ability to take snapshots from both a virtual and physical environment. 

It's very stable. 

It was deployed by the IT department. It's not used by a user. We use it to replicate applications to another point, as another disaster recovery measure. 

We have technical support. The time difference affects their response time but we do get support when we need it. I am satisfied with their support. 

The initial setup was complex. It took a while to deploy because we had a lot of challenges. We didn't get it to a perfect, 100% point. We are managing it the way it is.  

It's very expensive which is why I want to drop it. They charge us per core and we have a six-core server. It's expensive to pay for maintenance charges. I want to switch to something cheaper. 

There are additional costs to the standard licensing fees. 

If cost isn't an issue, it's a very good solution. If you're looking at your overall, yearly costs you should look for something cheaper.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. Not a ten because it's lacking features. It can only replicate from SQL to SQL, not Oracle to SQL or IBM, etc. 

We are primarily using the solution for backing up our critical servers and certain SQL servers.

Rapid Recovery comes with internal rapid recovery. We can make a backup for critical machines on a disk outside of our data center and it works perfectly. If something happens,  and the machine fails, we can restore it. You choose the time you want to restore and it restores anything. 

The solution offers a 100% guarantee that if it's backed up you will be able to restore it onto any platform you want.

Sometimes, when we have certain batches for Windows, it needs to be restarted. When it's restarted, the service is configured as a delayed start. Sometimes, you need to wait too long until it rights itself or you have to do it manually.

I would like it if they could offer the solution as an appliance as opposed to a software.

The solution has perfect stability.

The solution is very easy to scale. We've already increased our usage since deployment.

Technical support is very good and very helpful. They know exactly what the problem is when you call.

We previously used EMC Networker. It was an older version, 8.01, and it was very bad. It was too complicated for us. We switched because the software was complicated, the administration and support were poor, and the price was not good.  

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment took about two days. You only need one person for deployment. Maintenance is operationally delivered. It means you just restore, and make sure the backup is okay, and you're good. You need one person for maintenance and one for administration once the solution is deployed.

We had integrators assist with the implementation.

The licensing is on a yearly basis and it's perpetual. You can have the license forever if you want to. However, if you want to upgrade, you can't upgrade unless you have a support contract.

The amount the solution costs is related to space. We have about 72 terabytes.

We also looked at VMware. We also use it. We find Rapid Recovery more impressive, however.

We use the private cloud deployment model.

I would recommend the solution. Rapid Recovery is one of the most durable and rock-stable solutions. If you ever need to have a system backup, it can be restored to 100% without any issues.

Price-wise, it is similar to EMC Networker and Symantec.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten.

The solution is primarily used to backup all infrastructure environments as well as the database.

The best feature of the solution is the user interface. It also offers a very simple audit from the utilization environment and has a very easy installation agent on record.

Rapid Recovery support is very bad. It's outdated and needs to be expanded.

Rapid Recovery can only backup the machine or disc, but it can't back up from folders, files, and things like that.

In a future release, I'd like them to offer more database support, file-level backup capabilities, and recovery, and a better support menu in the restoration environment.

The solution is very stable.

Scalability on the solution is great, but you need more resources or to make more backups. You need some RAM memory, more space, to scale.

I've contacted technical support in the past if I've needed information or to find out if Rapid Recovery will be able to support some features. We've never had any problems with them before. 

We previously sold Quest Results. It's from the same Quest software company. We switched because Quest is an enterprise-level backup solution. Rapid Recovery is a better small and medium-sized business solution.

The initial setup is very easy. It's not complex. Installation only takes maybe five or six minutes. Edge installation takes another five or so minutes as well, so you are up and running in ten minutes.

We handle the deployment.

I'm a distributor. I sell this solution to clients. We typically deal with the on-premises version of the solution.

The solution is a great backup for the retail environment. It's a simple installation as well.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Quick and easy backups for all of my servers.

We now can make hourly backups of all our servers, both virtual and physical.

The need for speed is very important. Tech support must be quicker to respond to all issues. At least they do respond with a solution eventually. Tech people are clever and they use Google to get Windows answers.

We have used this solution for about three years.

There were no major stability issues.

There were no major scalability issues. This is usually license based.

We need clever tech people with a faster response time on regular tech questions. I was able to solve most issues on my own.

We used Backup Exec before. This was recommended, so we switched.

The initial setup was very straightforward and simple. It was just the standard "next, I agree, next," and setup. The retention policy is in plain English.

It is expensive. If you do not need physical backups, it is expensive for basic virtual backups. Look for an alternative solution.

At that time, this solution did all that we needed.

You must use physical hardware. Do not create this server in a virtual server. We did that at first and it was way too slow. We then used a physical server on eBay with customer storage. Now it is so much faster. Not running in a Hyper-V physical later is always faster.

It is easy to do recoveries from the very granular recovery points available. It is easy to change from default backup scheds/retention policies to client-specific ones as needed. Push installs of the client software have been successful.

The new ver. 6 (Rapid Recovery) has no agent software needed (for VMs) and I'd like to upgrade to that.

It is now fairly simple for operators to keep backups automated and easily do restores, or for managers to log onto the web GUI to get a quick view on things. If you don't have knowledgeable or enough staff to troubleshoot it well and you're on contract, Dell support will do their utmost to support and fix it (so far).

GUI response time has a LOT of lag, although in all fairness it might be due to us running more clients than we should on the server (although that has supposedly been improved in the newly released version 6, called Rapid Recovery). It doesn't support tape backup or Mac clients (although I've heard rumours that users have been able to get it to work with tape and because it has a good Linux client, I would love to try to use MacPorts or Fink or Homebrew to try to get our newer Mac clients to run the Linux client). Works well with Windows and Linux physical and VMs. Newest (Rapid Recovery) version says that it won't "officially" support Win XP and Server 2003 clients any longer, although they should still work.

I have used it for over five years, since back before Dell bought it out, when it was called Replay.

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

In my opinion, it's designed more for mid-sized, enterprise-level organizations, although if larger orgs use it, they'll have to add additional physical core servers, as Dell recommends not exceeding 130 clients per core server (although we are using 180 on ours but that's taxing it). We have about 75TB of storage supported by AppAssure for those clients, split into four repositories; some SAN, some DAS.

So far, I've found both the online forums and Dell Community pages and the Dell knowledge base pretty extensive, and all our direct support with Dell techs has been quick and so far very helpful. Hopefully, it will stay good now that they've just transferred Dell Software to Quest since Dell and EMC merged.

Technical support is very good to excellent.

I'm not sure how things will continue with the software now being supported by Quest, although the newest version (Rapid Recovery) looks worth upgrading to and is supposed to have addressed some of the weaknesses of the 5.4 versions. We run this on two servers (one is the source - where all the backups back up to; the other is a target, which is where everything is replicated to as soon as each backup finishes, for DR purposes). The replication works well and allows you to change servers to the main "source" core in case of a server failure or problem, which we had to do once.

There are a lot of PowerShell script features you can run with it and a fairly large amount of forum and user info on the Web even outside of Dell's pretty extensive knowledge base online for it.

The GUI seems to be JavaScript-based and the events logs are MongoDB-based.