Microsoft System Center vs Vembu BDR Suite

What users are saying about

Score 8.6 out of 10

Based on 52 reviews and ratings

Score 8.1 out of 10

Based on 81 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenarios which Microsoft System Center is useful are if:

you are the systems engineer for a company and you have a complex data center in a Microsoft environment,
you need to centralize the management of your data center in a single point
you want to check its performance, make detailed analysis after a downed service
you want to analyze what happened

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Gambling & Casinos Company, 51-200 employees

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I've been working with nearly every backup
program for more than 25 years from small shops to corporations with thousands of users. Vembu BDR [Suite] is a great product for any
business, large or small. It is missing a couple of options that maybe
the most popular one has but it doesn't prevent protecting your business. When
budget is an issue it's by far the best option. Being able to provide it
to our clients is an added bonus since that makes it so much easier to manage
when everyone is using the same product. When it comes to technical
support, I haven't experienced support like Vembu Support in years. They
are quick to respond, happy to remotely connect if desired and seem to really
understand their product well. Many others I've worked with refuse to
help, and send responses that have nothing to do with my question or they simply provide a link to a
document and basically tell me to read and figure it out myself. Often that document does not relate to my issue. I've
always done my research before contacting support and that kind of response is one
of the biggest reasons we decided to look elsewhere and after many trials and deep testing, ultimately switched to
Vembu. Vembu has been rock solid, fast, and tech support has been top-notch.

The biggest place I would say that VembuBDR is
less appropriate is when you have the desire to backup your physical systems to
multiple internal storage devices and want a secondary backup as a safety net and don’t want to risk that the
backup itself is corrupt or infected and your only other option is a mirrored copy of that data. I know they are working hard on adding features
and I’m excited to know version 5 is releasing soon.

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Dan Worrell

Datacenter Manager

CSSNWInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Universal recovery

Live recovery

Recovery verification

Business application protection

Multiple backup destinations

Incremental backup identification

Backup to the cloud

Deduplication and file compression

Snapshots

Flexible deployment

Management dashboard

Platform support

Retention options

Encryption

Pros

Provides our users the ability to deploy and manage our own datacenter based on defined software with understandable solutions for storage, compute, networking and security.
We are able to update at once all the computers from all departments without having to install the OS on every computer.
It allows us to have everything in one place for database management and datacenter inspection as well.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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Bare metal system images. These are incredibly flexible, enabling you to do dissimilar hardware restores, local or online backups and restore to VHD
Full, differential and transaction log backups for SQL server, ensuring rapid backup and restore, with maximum storage efficiency.
Incremental backups for files, meaning only the changes which have been made to a file are backed up, dramatically reducing time to backup and increasing storage efficiency.

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Tom Evans

Director

CognizantComputer Software, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Needs web based storefront for requesting new software
Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better
Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Investment Management Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Although its interface is simple, a web-only interface for a backup solution isn't recommended as the main interface.
Using PostgreSQL as the configuration DB Source is OK. But, the lack of options for the Database isn't OK. Especially on a Windows Environment, admins prefer using a centralized MS SQL Instance, and this is not possible with Vembu.
More work needed on SharePoint, Active Directory, and Exchange Restores. All three are critical workloads in almost any infrastructure.
Reporting can be greatly improved.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vembu BDR Suite 6.8

Based on 3 answers

I think the product will remain useful for us and as the company keeps improving features it will continue to be relevant and useful.We don't like switching technology much and BDR solutions shouldn't be something that a company replaces every few years., that's why most likely we will keep using it.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Usability

Microsoft System Center 7.0

Based on 1 answer

It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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Vembu BDR Suite 7.9

Based on 46 answers

Vembu is a great solution, but it still requires some fine-tuning. The user interface for Managed Service Providers could be more streamlined. Support logs need to provide clearer information about an issue whenever there's a failure. Backup agents should have the ability to automatically update when there's a new version and support should be on-shore during US business hours.

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Colin Rosario

Principal Technologist

Genius Information SystemsComputer Networking, 1-10 employees

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Support Rating

Microsoft System Center 8.0

Based on 2 answers

If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Sales

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

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Vembu BDR Suite 6.5

Based on 8 answers

It often takes a very long time to get an issue fixed. the support folks seem committed to getting it fixed but they often seem to be trying different things and hoping something works. I did not get the sense that they had a clear idea what was wrong.

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Bruce Redfern

Higher Education, 51-200 employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vembu BDR Suite 8.0

Based on 3 answers

It wasn't difficult at all, it fact, it was mostly simple, implementation doesn't require much skills and knowledge, but the configuration part does require some skills to create the jobs and configure certain settings, overall, its an easy implementation, especially for experienced IT People

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

We are using Microsoft products for a long time, so the overall confidence played a part in the decision, the feature set and licensing cost was also very high when compared with above products, so we decided to use System Center for our environment, so far it has solved many of our problems and reduced effort and time to maintain compliance and devices.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Automotive Company, 1001-5000 employees

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I tested Vembu against Veeam and for the price, Vembu was the better option. I also had a great support experience as I had to contact Vembu twice after mistakes I made. While using Veeam the software was not as intuitive and support responses were not as swift and accurate.

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Jesse Brandt

System Administrator

Mitchell Humphrey & Co.Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns.
We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops.

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Mark Fitzgerald

Adjunct Professor

Boise State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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For organizations that use different tools for Backup and recovery, this could be the single tool for Storage and Backup Administrators to automate and work effectively.
Software cost is lesser thus the money can be invested for other tools/software procurement
I don't think there is any negative impact as of now

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Verified User

Anonymous

Financial Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

$1,323 per month

Microsoft System Center Editions & Modules

Edition

Datacenter Edition	$3607
Standard Edition	$1323

none

Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

—

Vembu BDR Suite Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Microsoft System Center

Vembu BDR Suite

Likelihood to Recommend