Item: BDRShield
Rating: 10
Author: Dan Worrell

Overall Satisfaction with Vembu BDR Suite

Usability

It's really easy and intuitive.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Vembu BDR Suite across our organization and implement it at client sites. It addresses all of our backup and DR needs by providing a consistent console, the ability to backup bare metal, VMs, all the way down to single files and database entries. It solves an issue we had before with not being able to easily backup client data directly to our data center. Vembu BDR Suite makes this really simple and efficient.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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.

Cons

Restoring VMs. Version 4.x restores a recovered VM in a default location that cannot be modified. That's annoying, especially when you have a standard for your VM locations. I can move them afterward but that's an additional step that takes additional time. I believe this is resolved in the upcoming V5 release.
Depending on the backup job you are creating, you can't select the repository for that specific backup. You must make sure you set the repository you want as Default prior to setting up the job.
The ability to backup the same physical hard drive to multiple local storage devices should be an option and allowed.
Although the bare metal bootable ISO is a nice feature, it needs to be able to access the data independently instead of having to restore the data to a location first and then use the boot disk to restore the physical server or workstation. It's basically two restore jobs and if it's many TBs in size, that takes a lot of time and you need to have that extra space available for a temporary location for that first set of data to be placed. It's very rare to have to recover a physical server these days but it happens and waiting for 2 restores for one recovery increases the time needed. I have submitted a request for this feature and I believe they are working on it.
I must also note, I believe many if not all of the above are being addressed in Vembu BDR v5 which is due to release soon.

Return on Investment

Backups complete quickly each night saving me time from always having to modify client backups to fit within their backup windows.
Money: We are saving hundreds of dollars per year for us and our clients by switching to this product.
I no longer spend significant time managing backups, checking their status, etc. Alerts are consistent and warn me if there's a problem. It just works. I rarely have to touch it other than when I do random restore tests (as I do with any backup product) and the instant recovery feature works well for that.

Key Insights

Do you think BDRShield delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with BDRShield's feature set?

Yes

Did BDRShield live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of BDRShield go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy BDRShield again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

BDRShield Feature Ratings

Comments

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Bhavani Shanmugam
commented 4 years ago
Thank you for the review. We have forwarded your feedback on Bare-Metal Recovery to our Product Team. Also, the option to have backup copies on multiple storage devices will be available in the next immediate release following v5.0. We provide options to select the target datastore for VM Recovery. Kindly email nivas@vembu.com for further information on this feature and any questions you may have.

VembuBDR 4.2