Vembu BDR Suite Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

The image backup on VM is the most valuable feature.

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

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

There was one issue though with the hardware IDs. When I went to a different version of Hyper-V, the hardware IDs weren't restored and the machine got two new IDs. The preliminary unique IDs weren't restored, so I had to reactivate programs. That was the only downside.

I have been using it close to two years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The deployment took an hour and a half. 

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

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

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

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

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

The licensing model is quite complicated; it's not simple. An example: If you have a physical server, you have to pay more for that license than you do for a host. It could be running several VMs and that could be a server VM as well. Then, for web station machines, there is no license for those machines and they have no desktop OS - the free version has all this functionality. Their license model needs to be looked at and simplified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned just how important backups are. 

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

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

I don't really use the deduplication feature.

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

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

We are a managed service provider (MSP). We have also started to sell it recently. We have been using this solution at our company, and after testing the product for close to six months, we realized this is a good option moving forward.

We are a managed service provider. For us, this solution is even more beneficial because we can control the licenses, renewals, and other things for customers from a managed service provider's panel, and we get an option to upsell and cross-sell to clients.

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. 

It also has very less overhead on IT in terms of the product, service, and outcomes. Another good feature is that you don't really have to install any agent on the server side, especially when you are taking Hyper-V backup. We are using Microsoft Hyper-V, and we are taking backup. No agent and other things need to be installed on your machines.

I have done a couple of restores on a trial basis to check the integrity, and I did not find any issue in terms of the reliability of the restores. It was smooth.

It would be a great improvement if they can give a console to control the systems. All other vendors let you simply log in to the cloud console and control everything from there, but for Vembu, whether you choose Vembu Cloud Backup or Vembu Disaster Recovery, you still need to install the Vembu software on your on-premise system and configure it from there. It would be great if I can get a cloud console to manage the systems. 

They can also give an option where if you don't want to install an agent, you can use your own server and manage it, but if you want to manage it from the cloud console, you install the agent. It should be my choice. I should have control when I am sitting at home. I should also have control over the cloud so that I can monitor everything and do whatever I like. If my organization policy does not allow me to do that, then obviously I don't do it, but Vembu should provide such an option.

I have been using this solution for close to six months.

It looks good to me. So far, I haven't found any glitches. It is always there, so it is stable. You run it through the browser, which makes it simple.

It is scalable. We started with a 30-days trial, and after that, we started using its free version. Today, we upgraded from the free version to the enterprise version. We are also working on putting 10 TB backup on Vembu cloud as well as going ahead with almost eight servers for the disaster recovery offsite. 

To upgrade from the free version to the enterprise version, I simply had to synchronize the license, and everything was set. You can scale it very easily. You just need to activate the license under your account, and then you can log in to the Vembu console and just synchronize the license, and you're done. If you want to go from an on-premise backup to the cloud, you should have a cloud license. You can then synchronize and configure it. That's it. 

In terms of the size of the environment, one of the implementations is done for a government organization, and there are around 20 or 25 users with close to 5 terabytes of data and two virtual machines. We don't have plans to increase its usage in the same organization because this is a small subsidiary of a big government office. With the same client, there is nothing more we can do. They have a limited number of users, but we are working on implementing it for other clients.

I have used their support, and I had a very good experience. We were basically installing a demo for another client, and they were using 2008. We were getting a particular error while doing the installation, and for that, they needed to reboot the server, but you just cannot reboot the server in a live environment. You need to fix up a time for that. For example, if we have to reboot your servers, we need to schedule it with you, and you will schedule a time for it with your management.

Vembu's support is available 24/7. They said that whenever we are ready, we should just send them an email, and they will do a remote session with us, which is what precisely happened. When we were ready, I sent them the intimation that we will be ready in about 15 or 20 minutes, and their support guy connected with it and helped us.

Its ease of use and less price set it apart from other solutions. I have used many solutions, such as Acronis, Veeam, Symantec, Veritas, etc, and all of them are a bit complicated. I found Vembu to be the simplest one. In terms of features, it is similar to others. It has encryption and retention features and multiple backup options that every backup software provides.

Currently, we are also using Acronis, and slowly, we will be migrating from Acronis to Vembu. It is cheaper in price than Acronis. Of course, Acronis gives other benefits such as patch updates, cybersecurity, ransomware protection, and so on, but people have their firewall, endpoint protection, and antivirus. They don't really need to invest again in something that they don't need. The only thing that they particularly need is a backup solution that is encrypted, so there is no point in protecting them from all these things because they are already protected. If you go for Acronis Cyber Cloud, a client is not going to stop using the firewalls or endpoint protection. There is no point in loading double onto that. It is a good addition for those people who are very specific and know what they want. If you just don't know what to do, then you can go on a shopping spree.

With Acronis, all you have to do is to install the agent, and then you can control everything from the cloud. Wherever you are, you simply log in to the console, and you have your servers over there, and you can do whatever you feel like. With Vembu, you have to install the Vembu BDR software onto the server, and from there, you can basically dump the DR or a backup onto the cloud.

It was very straightforward. You simply install the software, plug in the storage or wherever you want to dump that, and create a profile. That's it. These were the three steps, and of course, the fourth one was to activate the free software. You can start with the full-fledged version after 30 days. You can convert the trial version into the free version, which is available online. It is easy. 

Its initial installation took less than an hour. This includes downloading and setting it up.

Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts. I like its pricing, and its price is okay. The lesser they take, the more profit we can make, but we are happy with its price.

It is very affordable. We were working with a client, and they were looking for backup software and had a very tight budget. When I told them that Vembu is only going to cost around $400 to $500, they were shocked. They didn't believe me, so I showed them the website so that they can check the price themselves. Of course, if they agree to that price, we get a 15% rebate as a managed service provider.

You choose the type of license you want. There are two types of licenses. One is a subscription license, and the other one is a perpetual license. If you go for a perpetual license, next year, if you want, you can renew the support. It is up to our clients whether they want to renew the support or not. They have an option. They also have an option to go for a subscription.

Every IT scenario differs from others. It is a good product, and just give it a shot. If it fits your organization, you will save a lot.

I have been in IT for over 25 years, and I had never heard about this software. I came across this through a consultant who was also working for a government organization. They asked us to install the free Vembu backup software, and I wondered which is this solution. I checked their website, downloaded the software, and installed it for the first time. I was amazed why there is no marketing for this. I get so many marketing emails and other things, but I never got any email related to Vembu. I also didn't come across it while doing research on the internet.

We have been using this solution for only six months. There are many features that we haven't used, but whatever has been phased out and tested was okay. We haven't yet used Vembu to back up Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or AWS, and we also haven't used Vembu's Download VM to help in migrating physical machines to a VM environment. Similarly, we haven't used its Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to VMs or physical machines after a crash. 

It provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files, but I haven't tested this option. Having such a feature is a good addition because if some resources are not there, you can restore your data to different ones. We will definitely be using Vembu's data integrity check feature after the enterprise installation.

I would rate Vembu BDR Suite an eight out of 10.

We use it primarily for backups and restoration of data, for disaster recovery purposes. We back up our file servers as well as our access control servers. We use it for standard, physical Windows 2016 servers, at this stage.

The key things we use in this solution thus far are only the backup portion, the recovery, and the reports. We will try to make use of it more extensively, but for now it's working for us.

It's on-prem at this stage, but we would love at a later stage to go to the cloud.

• The dashboard is very nice. 
• The solution is very user-friendly. 

When you're looking at your dashboard, you can see all your active jobs. You can see exactly if they're successful or failed and you can actually drill down and see what caused the problem. The fact you can see that right away is nice. 

It's a very simple layout, but effective. What you see is what you get. Some dashboards have these funny graphs and a lot of information. But what I want to know is, number-one, what jobs are running? What type of jobs are running? And I want to know what the job status is. If it's a red "X" I know I have to investigate. If it's a green checkmark then I know I don't have to stress about it, it has actually backed up what I've selected. It's simple. That's what you want.

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. It doesn't matter what type of graph, but it must just give you more information. Currently it's in text format and you have to click on it and investigate. It would be nice if I could see information in a small chart as well. 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?

Then we would know we have to look at settings, or maybe there's a permission issue, or maybe the unit was offline. Currently it's just showing a red "X" and you have to go in to have a look. If it gave you some information such as "100 percent complete, successful," and not just a checkmark, and if it failed it would tell you, "75 percent successful," then you would know more.

We've only been using the product for three months, and only on three servers.

It's very stable, unless you have somebody messing around. Otherwise, it should not have any issues.

It's scalable. It's similar to industry standard backup and disaster recovery solutions, like Veeam. 

We want to move to the cloud at a later stage, and we also want to do backups of Office 365. We're in the process of moving from webmail to Office 365. Once we're there, we're going to use the same platform to make backups of critical user data and mailboxes.

Although Office 365 has retention and backup solutions in place, we prefer to use Vembu in addition, on top of that, for our high-level users, to be 100 percent sure. Microsoft can maybe give you 30 or 60 days of retention, but if you have your own backups, you can go back to one year, based on the typical needs of users.

Once we have our Office 365 portion up and running and maybe one or two email users, I would love to perform a backup online. The challenge we have is that our upload is a bit slow. We might need to use a satellite link, but within the next month or two we should have a solution and the internet should not be a problem. Then we can most probably run some of these backups from the cloud version. The idea is to ultimately move to the cloud.

Currently, the information we back up is for about 60 to 80 active users, across all the employees in the company.

The salespeople I've dealt with are fantastic; they are great people. They wanted the solution to work and they only stopped phoning me the moment I told them, "Listen, I'm alright. I'm okay now." They wanted to make sure that the application was working and meeting our needs. That was very nice.

And obviously, you can contact them anytime and they will help you. Their technical support is great. It's top-notch. The turnaround time is quick. The last time I contacted the person I have always dealt with, within a couple of hours he contacted me. It's not like it's 24 hours or 48 hours, it's less than that. It is good.

It's a very nice, easy, and economical solution. I'm coming from a Veeam background, but Veeam is a bit expensive. That's why we opted for Vembu. I tested out the Vembu trial version and found that it has a lovely interface, it's easy to work with, and it's something I can teach quickly. With Veeam, you must attend courses to understand it; you can't just show somebody. If I'm on leave, or I'm leaving the company, I can give anybody in my position a quick rundown.

The company I'm supporting now is not a corporate company or a listed company. The company I used to work for was a listed company and they were forced by the auditors to use a certain type of backup solution but it was expensive. When I started with this smaller company, they didn't have any backups. If something happened they would lose all their information. I was browsing the web looking for an economical but effective solution to meet the needs of this organization. I was surprised, as I had never heard about Vembu. But I checked them out and that's where the journey started with Vembu.

It's cost-effective for us.

The initial setup is straightforward. And what was nice was that I had somebody on the line to talk me through it, just to make sure. You're allowed to play around with it to get more familiar with it. Coming from a Veeam background I tried not to compare it with that. I had to work with it to make 100 percent sure that I appreciated Vembu.

I figured out most of the things by myself because it's straightforward. It's very easy if you have some form of IT or backup background. It should not be a challenge or an issue. Maybe if you're brand new to computers it could be a challenge but if you have some experience with running backups it's easy to work with.

The deployment was done within two days because we don't have a big setup. It was just me involved in the setup, from our side, and for maintenance I have an IT assistant. If I'm not there, he can handle it as well.

My experience working with the Vembu person during the setup was good. They are very proud of the product. They want it to work.

It's still too early for us to see ROI. 

But the annual cost is so low that it's going to be difficult to calculate a return on investment. But if we are going to do backups of Office 365 and those types of things, the business might see ROI, because then you're working with a lot of user information as well, and they can see the reports.

It's more affordable than Veeam, so smaller companies can afford to have a solution like this in place, which is very nice.

For three licenses we pay not even 3,000 Rand per annum, which is a bargain with what you're getting. It's not expensive if you compare it with the counterpart.

I didn't evaluate any other options other than testing Veeam for a month. I know that product and it's fantastic, but when it came to going from trial version to live version, it was a bit expensive. I went for Vembu because I could pay a third of the price and get the same service.

When I look at a product like this there are a couple of basic things it must do: 

• I must be able to access it easily, deploy it easily
• It must be secure. 
• If I want to make changes, updates must be easy as well. 
• It must be integratable, compatible with different operating systems. 

Vembu ticked all the boxes.

Do you know when a business starts to appreciate a backup solution? When it loses information and needs to recover it. If your senior management is not very risk-minded or they tend to see these things as a waste of money, the moment they lose information and you can restore it within no time, they start to respect the product and they are more than willing, when you go to them for upgrades or improvements, to actually pay for them because they know you're adding value to the business. It's not just an expense.

For a small company like ours, I would rate Vembu at eight out of 10, because while the dashboard is very nice, there are some things that the major backup solutions provide as a stock-standard, like the graphing information. Most backup solutions offer it standard. I also give it eight out of 10 because I want them to improve, but it would be nice to move closer to 10. It may take them a while to get there, but with Vembu I can sleep. I don't have to worry and that's good.

We're deploying it to support the backup of some on-premise VMware vSphere workloads.

Vembu has been a great benefit to us and it's been very positive. I would definitely say it's been a good thing.

We're using some very specific components of it like the on-prem backup to back up some separate systems for DR.

The restores have been reliable. We went through testing validation and we haven't had any issues.

We just started to use Vembu's Data Integrity Check. We need to validate the backups to see that they're able to be restored. This feature is pretty important. It's a big deal.

The restores have performed very well but our infrastructure is highly connected. Our infrastructure is the way it was before. We have a 10-gigabit infrastructure. So the performance of our backups has occurred the same as it did before, and it's been very good. We haven't noticed any difference between what we were doing before and with Vembu now.

It's important to us that Vembu provides multiple options to recover data during hardware failures or accidental deletion of files. But it's not critical because we back up the entire environment. So if we had a problem, we pull back the entire system. There's only a couple of instances where we pull back individual files. Being able to recover the entire virtual machine is the most important piece.

We used the Instant Boot VM feature for instant access to our VMs when we did the testing, but it's not necessarily something that I think is going to be an absolute requirement for us. It would be important if we lost everything

We do a lot of internal automation, so the Vembu API definitely has some gaps. The Vembu API could definitely use some improvement. We do rely a lot on automation outside of just the regular interface. We've noticed that the Vembu GUI is good, but we do leverage the APIs for a lot of stuff, and there's definitely some room for improvement there.

When it comes to the GUI, it could use some UI modifications to make it a little bit easier to navigate, filter, and sort information.

We just made the purchase. We just went through the evaluation and we purchased it in the last two months.

So far, it has been very stable for us. We haven't had any problems.

We're not a big shop. We don't scale to thousands and thousands of workloads, but it's scaled very well for the things that we've needed to do.

We're 100% into Vembu right now. I don't know that we'll be looking to do anything more. That all depends on what the infrastructure requires of us, but right now it's working very well. I don't think we're going to scale out and do Hyper-V, Office 365, or any of that stuff, at least not right now. If that does become a need, we'll be using Vembu for that because we know it can do that kind of work, but right now that's not in scope for us.

We have a little over 150-some odd workloads, virtual machines, and we have six hosts. Spread across six hosts, we have 150 workloads. It's not a big environment.

Technical support was very good. We engaged them. They did respond very quickly. We were able to get them in and work through the issues that were there. They did have to go back to the team a couple of times to get some answers for us, but it was certainly no more than one business day between them going back, figuring out what's going on, and getting back with us. They were very good.

We did use another solution but it was for the exact same kind of thing that we're using Vembu for.

It worked fine for a while but the updates weren't happening on a regular basis and the product wasn't moving forward the way that we wanted it to. Vembu has a lot more time under its belt in terms of development and whatnot. It turned out to be a much better solution for us.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

Vembu has two options for deployment, Windows or Linux, and so we had looked at both options. Both options for setup and configuration were pretty straightforward. There were some bugs that needed to be worked out, so we had to engage the Vembu support team. That team engaged very quickly and worked diligently to get the issues resolved. There were two or three things that needed to be addressed. Ultimately, we chose to go down the path of Windows deployment for Vembu, not necessarily because there were problems with the Linux platform, but because the Windows platform seemed to work better for us for some of the automation that we're doing. Overall, it was very good. 

The initial proof of concept to deployment was about a two-month venture for us. It was not very long.

Three people were required for the deployment. We're all engineers and I have the decision-making ability.

We have seen ROI. The real return is when something bad happens. All the proof of concept work that we did, all the testing we did, it all panned out for us. We're already seeing a return on that.

They do have a pretty good breakdown online. Their product detail and data sheets and all that kind of stuff listed out pretty well what it does. So we knew right away that it was going to probably align with what we needed to do. It was pretty easy for us to understand how well it was going to be aligned.

I think it's priced well. Obviously, we're happy with the pricing.

There were a number of different technologies we looked at. They were all the same basic feature functionality that we were looking for. In some cases, it was the price. A couple of the products that we were looking at are more than twice the cost of Vembu. We're not a big environment so to pay twice the amount of money for effectively the same solution just didn't make a lot of sense for us. There are some less expensive solutions too but they didn't offer some of the automation that we needed. They didn't offer an API. They didn't offer as easy a path to getting into Vembu as Vembu offered. Vembu wasn't the least expensive and they weren't the most expensive, but it did align with what we needed. And a lot of what we needed was VMware and vSphere backups, automation, those kinds of things, and we felt that Vembu was the way to go.

We do have a tight budget. We're not a big shop or environment. It was very affordable. The cost was a big deal but it was very affordable for us.

Look at it to align it with what you need it to do. See if it is well aligned with the way your infrastructure operates and the needs that you have with what Vembu can offer. Obviously price and budget are concerns, but I think that initially, it has to meet your needs. You're not going to go out and buy something that only gives you half of what you need. It's really all about evaluating the business needs first.

I would rate Vembu an eight out of ten.

We use it for replication to our disaster recovery sites for the storage we have on-prem. We needed our critical infrastructure and our critical applications backed up. We needed to have something we can restore from when we have an issue.

Our environment is hybrid. We have some of our servers on-prem, some on Azure, and some on AWS.

With Hyper-V it helps to ensure high availability. Before I started using Vembu, if I wanted to back up my Hyper-V what I would normally do is go to the folder where I have the VM and copy the hard disk, the VM image. With that I would be able to restore easily. With Vembu, with just the click of a button, it does my backup. I've done a series of restores to test what I'm backing up because that's the essence of a backup — to see how it comes back — and it comes out fine. In VMware you don't just copy your image, but for VMware Vembu also does a perfect job.

Vembu has also ensured that the disaster recovery aspect of our business is well taken care of. It is very critical to the business to have a tested backup. Vembu has helped us a lot in that way. We have restored from Vembu backups several times.

It has saved us a lot of money, but it's not quantifiable. If you have an issue that would cost a whole lot of money but you have a proper backup solution so you don't have to spend that money, you just restore. It might have saved us millions, in Nigerian money.

It saves us time because I just schedule the backups the way I want them and that's it. I don't have to worry about my backups. I'm certain that my data has been backed up. It saves a whole lot of man-hours.

The backup is very reliable for both VMware and Hyper-V.

In terms of the compression, Vembu's product is quite good compared to what I've seen from other products. 

The encryption is okay. That security feature is fine. You have the option of either encrypting the backup or not. I don't use it in all cases, but I will use it if I'm backing up something and it will be taken outside of our environment. For example, if I'm backing up a VM to an external tape drive or hard drive, I will use that option, to give it another level of security.

They keep on improving and I can't see anything that they need to add for now.

We have been using Vembu for the past four years.

This year was the first time I had an issue with it. I don't know how the issue started. I called their support team and they told me what to do. I tried it but I then decided to simply do a fresh installation.

Vembu is very scalable because it gives you everything you could want. Our environment is medium-sized.

We definitely have plans to expand our usage of it. When you get value from a product you love to do more with it.

I love Vembu's customer care. If you have any issues or questions, they respond and their response time is quick. Their technical support is good. I would rate it at eight out of 10. I had a conversation with them last night. I sent them an email and they immediately responded.

Prior to using Vembu I tried Acronis. That is what we were using before we dropped it for Vembu. The main difference I see between Vembu and the other solutions we've tried is that with Vembu, you don't need anybody to tell you what to do. Once you have done the installation you just look at the user interface — it's very friendly — and you can do things yourself without resorting to help from anybody.

If I want to back up a VM or all the servers I have in vSphere, I just drop the password of vSphere and it will do everything automatically for you. You just tell it what you want to back up. Acronis doesn't work that way. The guys on my team found Acronis difficult to use. In terms of user-friendliness, Vembu does a better job. With the click of a button, you know what you need to do.

Acronis would time out most of the time. If you have a slight network-connectivity issue, it causes a problem.

I found Vembu by searching online for free backup solutions. I saw a lot of solutions but that is how I started with Vembu, with their free version. I saw that it solved my problems.

To install Vembu, the only thing that takes time is the download. But once you have downloaded it, within 30 minutes you are up and running. You schedule your backups and you go to sleep.

I was the only one involved in the setup.

There are two guys on my team who maintain it. They have administrative rights on Vembu, like me. They also have many other responsibilities besides Vembu. It doesn't take a lot of effort to maintain it. Once you're up and running you just check your backups and the status to make sure that everything is running. And if there is an issue, you check the log to see why you are having that issue.

I did not need a third-party to deploy Vembu. But when I used Acronis, I had to call their support. Acronis has a partner here in Nigeria that I worked with. The fact that I had to work with a partner with Acronis, and I didn't have to with Vembu, is a major difference.

The overall return on investment is quite good. It's good for the business. The margin is on the positive side.

The pricing of Vembu could be better. They have a good product, and I know good products cost money, but they need to find a balance.

I also looked at Veeam. I used Veeam for a while before Acronis. Veeam is a fantastic product. I think it is one of the best. It is in the same class with Vembu. I went with Vembu because it is very easy to use. It is easy to install. With the click of a button you can manage everything: add a VM and do your backup.

It gives me peace of mind. If your infrastructure backup is up and running and trusted, it gives you peace of mind.

I have recommended it to a number of people.

It's important to note that most backup solutions will tell you that you can download and use their solution for free. But the truth is that that is not the case for almost all of them. After some time, you will have to pay for a license to backup critical sources.

Mainly, we use it for our backup recovery. If you have relevant data, we need to make backups similar to the data to ensure that we can export it in the case of any emergency or disaster. The main use case is disaster recovery for relevant data to be able to survive after any disaster.

I have two deployments. One of them is Hyper-V deployment with backup for Hyper-V virtual machines. The other one with backup for the Vembu virtual infrastructure version. Both of them are on-premises. There is nothing on the cloud.

All our clients have been happy with the backup and restore features.

It is easy. You can save a lot with their features, without a lot of hassle. You can design your backups closely and flexibly without a lot of details or variables. It is very straightforward. You can put what you want in the right place in a very short amount of time.

The speed of the solution’s restores is good. It is dependent on the infrastructure and the nature of the connection between the storage and servers. Overall, it is good. There are no problems when using it.

You can restore all your data or partial parts of it. You can restore a specific version of the data. It has a lot of options for restore, so you can have the correct data that you want to restore. This is very important. You must know what you are going to restore. Otherwise, you may be overwriting correct data with other data. You must know what specific files you are restoring as well as which version. Partial restore is very important because there might be some files which are newer than the backup and some files that are corrupted. You need to restore some files from the backup, but not all the files.

We have the VM replication. We can copy a VM to another host with VM replication.

Maybe they can add some features regarding working with the vCenter cluster to be able to have more power over the cluster overall, not just over a single or specific host. Also, I would like some enhancements in technology for the web interface, e.g., some interactive technologies to advance the interface of Vembu. Although the current interface is very good, maybe they can use more advanced technologies for its web development.

I have been using it for about a year.

For the entire time that I have used Vembu, I didn't encounter any issues. It is very consistent and nothing failed nor was corrupted. 

I have three people trained on the solution, and the main person is leading the support. They are IT specialists. The role of backup administrator is assigned to them. They keep track of the backup operations done daily or weekly. If something needs to be restored, they are responsible for restoring it.

Scalability is good.

I am backing up two environments: Hyper-V and VMware. One of them is about 40 VMs, and the other about 60 to 65 VMs, supported by three machines that are dual sockets each.

The main component in the backup solutions is compatibility. The backup is located on the hard disk, and I didn't face any corruption of data, which is very valuable. When something happens as an error, there is technical support who gives us the reason why this error is emerging. In most of the cases, the errors are emerging from the operating systems in which you are trying to back up. Sometimes, the client refuses to connect, etc. All this is under control and can easily be solved.

I refer a lot to the knowledge base on the website, which is very good. I haven't needed to contact support persons interactively. 

I tried to install it twice on Linux just for testing, and I succeeded, but it was picky sometimes, because there are a lot of options with command line interface. So, it was a challenge to get it to work on many operating systems. However, on Windows, the setup was very straightforward and no problem at all.

Using Windows to deploy takes not more than five minutes. It is very fast. For Linux, it takes about half an hour to an hour, according to the problems that we would face.

We tried to restore it mainly on the physical machines, not virtual. The hardware that it is deployed on is very reliable. We faced problems on the backup machine itself. The machine, which functions to store the data, must be very reliable. You also need to keep it away from any disaster or security exposure.

I did contact their technical guys for some technical discussions before we deployed one of the instances that we used. They were very good and helpful.

Manually restores or restores from manual backups are very hard. They take some time. Restoring from a platform software, like Vembu, makes things very easier, particularly the speed to restore which version, which state, and to where. So, you speed up the overall operation by 20% to 25%.

The ROI is very good because you have the safety of being protected by backing up your data a lot. If an incident happens, then we can restore valuable data, save a lot of money, and preserve the continuity of the business. This is a big benefit which provides a lot of value. 

The pricing of Vembu is one of its strong points. The license is not as much as other competitors, and it has a variety of licensing options: subscription-based, perpetual licenses, and a virtual machine license. You can design whatever license that you adopted to your environment, and that can support your environment without extra cost, providing more than you need. So, you can design a license that fits your environment and budget. The pricing is very good and can be used when the budget is tight.

I used Veeam software for a while, but as a trial. I didn't support it because their prices are very high. I think Vembu provides the most resolution for our backups.

I use the Microsoft Windows Backup tool sometimes. However, it feels like a very heavy tool, not a sophisticated tool.

I know that there are features that are more advanced with other competitors, but those are not needed often.

I used Vembu's Data Integrity Check once when doing an integrity check for the backup. If I have doubts that the backup is good or bad, it might be good for that, but I haven't used it a lot.

I encouraged you very much to engage with Vembu. Vembu is a really good software. I was convinced to use the company and software the first time that I saw it. I recommend it to everyone I know. It is a very powerful backup solution with a good price.

I would rate it as nine out of 10.

I'm using the backup from Vembu for my home lab where I have ESXi. I'm backing up VMware servers. That's all I use it for.  I have Oracle Databases running in these VM machines and I do testing, patches, upgrades, etc. I want to be able to back them up and, if need be, restore them so that I don't have to rebuild them.

I'm running it in a Windows Server in a VM machine. I have ESXi 6.7 running on a Dell PowerEdge R720 and I have a Windows 10 VM running in that. And in that I have the Vembu BDR running as my backup server.

It helps me with restores. I can repeat a test multiple times: Do the test, the restore, and then test again. It saves me time because I don't have to rebuild the VMs every time; rather, I just do a restore. I would estimate it's saving me four to eight hours every time I have to do a restore.

I also had a disk crash and the restore was important because I didn't have to rebuild it. So it helps with data recovery as well.

It gives me peace of mind because I don't have to do the rebuilds. In a home lab, documentation is not usually at the forefront of your thoughts. You are just trying to get it built and tested. Having the ability to back it up and restore without having to remember all the options were that you had installed and what was the data like before, it gives me peace of mind that I have the restore.

The two features that I use are the backup and the restore.

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. If I were to add another CPU, I would start to get into an expense where I would question, "Do I really want to continue backing this stuff up?" But from what I could tell, this was definitely the least expensive option to go with.

I have been using it for about eight months. I bought my first license in April and then I had to buy another one because I added another ESXi server. I have two licenses and they're both for five years. My intention is to be using it for five years and I won't be switching out.

I'm on the most recent version because I just upgraded when it came out.

It has been very stable. There haven't been any issues.

I have it licensed on two CPUs, one CPU in each machine, and it has not had a problem with the 40 VMs that I have.

The only way I would be increasing usage would be if the cost would allow me to add it to another machine. The other machine I'd like to add it to has two CPUs in it, so I would be doubling my license cost. Right now, that's not an option.

For the issues that I've had, the tech support has been very good. I've had no complaints and they've been very responsive. I've only had three or four issues, and they have all been resolved. That has been a very good experience.

The last reason I had to contact support was for a restore that I needed to do. I also moved ESXi servers, so I had to have some assistance because the backup was done on one ESXi server and then I moved it to another ESXi server. I needed to do the restore and tech support assisted with that.

There has never been a situation where I had tiered tech support, where the first person I got didn't know and handed me off to the next person who handed me off to the next person.

Veeam was what I was using before I went to Vembu. 

The wording, when you start Googling this stuff, gets kind of questionable because it says "unlimited free VMs." That really isn't true. You can only do a couple before you can't do anything with it. Veeam was the one I was using first. But when I hit my third VM, it wasn't working anymore. You could only actually do three and you would have to roll out one before you could roll in one. 

The initial set up was very easy. It was just like installing anything on Windows 10. It took about 15 minutes.

The first time around I did it myself. I did move it from one VM machine to another VM machine and I had assistance with that from Vembu, and that assistance was very helpful. That was part of standard tech support.

As far as competitors' prices go, Vembu was definitely better than all the competitors I found.

I would guess it has saved me 30 to 50 percent. The problem is that I'm a single-person home lab, so I have no idea what kind of licensing things happen for a corporation which is looking to buy 500 CPUs. If you were to do that and you were to look at the cost per CPU versus my cost per CPU, theirs might be 50 percent less than what I'm paying.

Veeam was one of the solutions within a list of solutions I evaluated. Cost was definitely one of the big differences, but I didn't use Veeam long enough to go down that path. When I hit the third VM, which was within the day that I started using it, I stopped using it.

Make sure you plan out your backup server for the long-term. When I did this I moved my backup server. When I moved it from one machine to another machine and the IP address changed, there were some headaches. I had to get the knowledge documents and I had to get tech support involved to help me outside of the knowledge document. So try to plan out, for as long as you can plan out, that this is the server, it isn't changing, etc.

It has worked as expected. It's straightforward for backing up and it's straightforward for doing the restores. Other than the navigation and what buttons to push, there's really no learning curve here.

I'm not using the encryption. If the deduplication is in use, it must be so by default because I have not done anything with it.

For what I need it to do, and compared to the other products that are out there, this is the most cost-efficient and best solution for my needs.

We manage 100s of backups at any given time. This includes virtual machines, both VMware and Hyper-V, physical machines running Windows, and file-level backups.

We have backups that are 100% cloud-based as well as ones that retain both a local backup and a cloud backup copy. The data replicated to the cloud must be contained within a data center that is owned/managed by our organization.

Our recovery processes primarily include being able to restore directly to an ESXi host/vCenter appliance. This must be able to be completed in the shortest amount of time possible.

The Vembu BDR product is very intuitive and easy to use. This provided us easy training of our staff, a quick process for our internal documentation, and reduced time in installation/configuration and deployment to new customers/devices.

The high level of stability of the Vembu BDR Suite has reduced our engineering management time by at least 35%, which has also lead to a higher rate of successful backups.

The retention mechanisms within the solution are a critical component of our backup strategy. It has allowed us to reduce the amount of backup storage we use by more than 25%, which has saved on our hardware costs both initially and on an ongoing basis.

The most valuable feature is the highest level of flexibility. The Vembu BDR platform allows you to backup virtual machines and physical machines at both the file level and image level. You can choose to deploy offsite backups only, onsite backups only, or both onsite with replication offsite.

Being able to use one platform to accommodate all of these different scenarios has allowed us to train our staff on one solution and really make sure they are experts at that product. 

The ability to restore backups directly to any ESXi Host/vCenter environment is critical for us. The process in which to execute the restore is simple and the recovery time is quick. We regularly execute restores of 5TB-10TB environments in a matter of hours.

With any backup that uses VMware snapshots, there is a disk ballooning issue where VMware reports that the server is using 100% of the assigned storage, even when the disk is thin provisioned, when the Windows "Optimizer" runs while the snapshot is in place. Basically, this is the case when the backup is running. This issue is not specific to the Vembu BDR solution; however, it would be nice if Vembu was able to implement some function that would disable/disallow the Windows Optimizer from running during a backup.

We have been using Vembu BDR Suite for more than 10 years.

As an MSP, we have used many different backup solutions, as both a managed service as well as customer-deployed. The Vembu BDR solution is one of the most stable platforms we have used. For us, some of the measurements we use to determine stability are:

1. The installation/configuration is streamlined and functions as expected.
2. General use of the product runs smoothly without any regular "glitches", services stopping, or having to constantly reboot the machine to resolve issues.
3. Backups have a high completion percentage. More importantly, not getting failed backups on reoccurring issues that you have already implemented a fix for.

It currently supports all of the features that we need in a backup solution. However, I am aware that as O365 implementations continue to grow, I suspect additional O365 backup functionality will be needed. Vembu BDR currently supports backups of O365, although it does not currently have an email archiving function to the O365 backups. This is something that we have had customers request.

As with any technology based product, there are times when assistance is needed to configure, update, or troubleshoot the product. It is critical for our organization to be able to obtain support 24x7 with a team that understands their product. This is one of the areas we are most impressed with Vembu Technologies. They are always very quick to respond, provide excellent tools to their team, and are always efficient at driving the ticket to resolution.

We had a few concerns with our previous backup solution that we were looking to remediate.

1. The synthetic full was a forever backup, which over time would take up a ridiculous amount of space. With the Vembu BDR solution, we are able to configure a retention process of however many days we specify. This greatly reduces the amount of backup space used and ultimately saves us in hardware costs.
2. The time needed to maintain the backups was a problem. Our volume of failed backups on Vembu BDR is at least 50% less than our previous backup platform. This not only reduces our engineering costs but also increases the morale of our engineering team, as they are less stressed about failing backups.
3. Backup chains on our old backup platform had to be manually validated and cleaned up. I felt the risk of missing a file during this process was too high and could result in the inability to restore data. With Vembu BDR, the retention process is entirely automated within the software and requires no manual cleanup.

Compared to other backup solutions, the initial setup was the most straightforward.

We deployed in-house.

I would guess our tangible ROI was 12-24 months. However, for us, it was more valuable to deploy a solution that provides us confidence in being able to restore, as well as reduce the stress of our engineering team. These are invaluable items that you can't really put an ROI on.

If backup and recovery performance is critical for your environment, then the hardware is just as important as the software. We deploy full servers as our backup appliances with only SSD disks and enough processing power and memory to support the backups and the restored servers if onsite recovery is a component of the solution.

Any organization that is looking to deploy a backup solution in their environment with minimal time commitment and the highest level of confidence in being able to restore their data should be seriously considering one of the Vembu Technologies backup solutions.

In summary, the Vembu BDR solution currently fulfills all of the functions that we need it to at this time.