TBMR vs. BDRSuite

During the Sandy storm, I was told to get over 200 servers ready in case we declare a disaster. I was able to spin over 190 servers in five days. I recovered servers using TBMR recovery. I restored each server using TBMR. After the server was restored at Sungard, I powered on the server without NIC to prevent a production issue with duplicate a name or IP. I validated each server after restore to make sure OS is working correctly and all data had been restored. I did not restore images due to the size of storage. Overall, it worked out and we were ready before Sandy struck. We did not go into disaster mode, but my management was impressed that this product worked as described.

First of all Web UI makes it so much easier to manage, with few clicks you can schedule a backup, you can see the progress and you can instantly recover it. There is a multiple environment support which is great for hybrid environments. Pricing is more reasonable than other high priced backup solutions

Incentivized

• It works 99.9% all the time if you setup correctly. In some instance there was issue was disk was not able to read partition. I called support and upload the log file. They told me during recovery point to new modify file instead of reading from backup configuration. It work and able to recover quickly
• The support is really great. They are always ready to help in any situation.
• During Sandy storm, we mentioned our challenges. They told us there will two support engineer will be stand by for support any time. Just let them know when you need support.
• Support is staff is very knowledgeable. They willing to go extra mile all the time

• Seed an offsite backup. A simple checkbox to seed a large backup prior to backing it up to our datacenter. Previously with another well knows backup provider this was convoluted and time-consuming.
• Backup Speed. Vembu BDR is fast and allows me to schedule multiple jobs within time constraints that prohibit some backup products from working.
• DR - Vembu BDR provides an option to mirror your backups to an offsite datacenter without taxing production servers with a secondary backup job.
• Bare Metal Recovery: the ability to create a custom bootable ISO that you can quickly recover a failed physical server or workstation.
• Ease of use: The console is consistent and very easy to use. From initial install to being fully configured takes just a few minutes.

• There have been so bugs in the software. They provided me the next day with a temporary fix. In the next release, they will fix the bug permanenly.
• As far as we use it, I do not see too much on functionality.
• Setup is unique in every organization. It has been working well so far.

• User interface on the servers do not have enough tools to better monitor the systems and finding information is difficult.
• User interface at portal is difficult to navigate and confusing
• Support documentation is too generic and rarely answers my questions.
• Licensing and acquisition. As a reseller and partner the licensing model is confusing and the portal interface to manage licensing should be scrapped and rebuilt. It is difficult to navigate and the available information is too vague.
• Recently, communication with new channel contact. My previous contact was articulate and answered my questions.
• Did I mention licensing? This is the most confusing and difficult process I've dealt with in 25 years. Makes Microsoft look simple.

Incentivized

Because of the product functions and possibilities: - it's easy to use through WEB browser - installation process is not complicated - Vembu BDR solution is reliable, and works properly. It does the job. This product could get extra points for the appliance that could be imported to virtual environment (no need for windows server license or some linux knowledge).

Incentivized

As outlined in are parts of this review, I have various issues with the way their KB center is structured and how error codes aren't documented or KBs for a specific error provide steps for older versions of the software and aren't applicable to the current version because of a design layout change. "Go here and select Y" where the "here" has been removed and doesn't exist anymore. Or they release a new version without any supporting documentation even though they restructured a lot of the interface and updated the error messages.

Incentivized

Support is great. They go beyond the normal service. I called a few times in the middle of the night for support. I was not able to recover some machines. They called back with half an hour and worked through it with me. They wanted to make sure I was able to recover the server. They are always willing to help.

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

When I started TSM/Spectrum Protect over 13 years ago, disaster recovery was not funded to much. Once all regulatory requirements and auditing became more visible, management decided to start disaster recovery. I looked into one other BMR product. It required lots of manual processes to build WinPE iso images. I needed to build ISO images for each version of the TSM Client. At that time, we had over 350 Windows and Linux servers. There were over 10 different TSM Clients running. It was difficult to maintain all the different ISOs. I am only one admin doing the backup job and other duties. It was not possible to keep. I started to shop around for a different BMR solution for TSM. I came across Cristie. We did POC testing for 1 month. We covered HP physical servers to IBM hardware and vice versa. It worked without any issue. We also tried to recover HP physical servers from DL360 to DL380 and others. It works every time. At that time my management got assurance that this is a good product for investment. We started with 300 licenses. Now we have over 200 Physical and 600 virtual license

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.

Incentivized

• As of today, we are recovering servers without any issue. There is no 100% success. Some servers backup corrupted data and are restored the same way. It is called Garbage in Garbage out. So far management wants to continue the use of this product.
• My management wants to use TBMR or any other backup.
• Every year we are buying more licenses.

• 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

Incentivized