Hereby my review of Vembu BDR version 3.6. Vembu BDR Suite is an all-in-one universal solution for backing up your VMware and Hyper-V environments as well as physical servers. Vembu BDR Suite products cover backup & recovery of VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Physical Windows Servers Desktops/Laptops, File Servers, Applications like MS Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server, SharePoint and Outlook etc.
In this review, I shall take a look at it’s basic features and functionality. Advanced functionally and more in depth reviews are going to appear in future blog posts.
A few of the features of Vembu BDR Suite 3.6 capabilities and functionality are as follows:
- Support for VMware
- Complete support for all the VMware versions (Supported from VMware 4.X version)
- VMware Hot-Add and SAN transport mode for LAN free data transfer
- VMware vSphere Replication for High Availability
- CBT enabled incremental data transfer using VMware VADP (vStorage API for data protection)
- Support for Hyper-V (support for VM in SMB)
- Support for Hyper-V Cluster Shared Volumes
- Vembu CBT driver for high performance incremental backups
- Hot backup ensures zero VM downtime
- VSS aware technology for application consistency
- Support for Physical enviroments
- Backs up entire disk image of Windows Server(s), including operation system and filesDuring system crash or any major disaster, bare-metal recovery helps to recover the Windows machines into the same or other hardware
- Vembu ImageBackup helps you to migrate the Windows Servers and Workstation from your physical enviroment to VMware or Hyper-V environment.
Installation and configuration of Vembu BDR 3.6 for VMware
(Hyper-V and physical will be in another blog post)
Installation is pretty straightforward. Just hit enter 3 times and notice the advice & option to change the default admin/admin credentials and 32004 en 6061 ports etc. (Vembu uses MySQL en MonogDB).
Vembu installs a webserver. Make sure that you create a new firewall rule for port range 6060-6061 for TCP traffic:
After installation it’s time to add your (first) VMware server. This is done in a few clicks. Just make sure you use the appriopiate creds and correct port.
Not let’s add the first VM. Go to Backup/VMware and click at Backup Now (arrow in square box) . Go through the following steps:
After creating your backup your first backup is automatically made.
Monitor backup progress
You can monitor the backup progress, go to backup and List jobs. The green triangle indicates that the backup is in progress right now.
Interface
Ok, next step. Let’s go through the interface:
Dashboard is your quick info place, your overview and the place to start. Backup gives you the option to backup and configure backup jobs.
VM Replication gives you the option to replicate your VM’s. (I shall write about it in another blog post)
Recovery.., now that we have made one of more backup we want to test them!
One of the most interesting features is instant recovery/restore. If your server is down by for example ransom ware you need to be up and running as fast as possible.
Vembu uses their Virtual Drive. Their latest backup is easily mounted and you can access all of the files.
Vembu also offers the following options :
I’ve tested all of the above restore options and found that they worked fast and flawlessly.
Reports
Reporting options are clear and simple. Everything you need. Reports can easily be scheduled to be emailed to one or more email addresses.
Management
Here you can choose the server (user management, software update) and storage management options. (Add extra storage to the repository etc)
Vembu Universal Explorer
Vembu offers free tooling for their backup solution. One of them is Vembu universal explorer.
This single recovery tool allows administrators to recover different Microsoft application backups like Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint and Active Directory.
Universal Explorers offers:
- instant restores emails/mailboxen/exchange stores from Microsoft Exchange
- instant restore Microsoft SQL databases and tables
- document level restore for Microsoft Sharepoint
- granular recovery for Microsoft Active Directory
Conclusion
In this review, I found Vembu BDR 3.6 to be a full featured tool set for effectively backing up both VMware, Hyper-V environments and physical servers. The interface is extremely simple and easy to use with everything placed where you would expect it to be. Although Vembu offers more products, their backup solution offers everything you need against failures, ransomware or even complete site loss. Vembu vould be your answer for small companies and large companies seeking for a complete backup solution.
I found no issues with installing the product, backups and restores from either a VMware or Hyper-V environment, or performance with any of the operations that were performed. The GUI is nice and straightforward. A minor issue is the performance of the interface. Sometimes you have to wait a few seconds for it to respond. A drawback of using a webserver. The online portal for all your licenses and downloads is looking good also. It’s even possible to view the status of the VM’s being backup ed using BDRSuite also.
Check out the banner on vWorld.nl for the appropriate link.
Support
More information, check out the website here or email support @ vembu-support@vembu.com
I contacted support for a couple of questions and I received information pretty quick and found it to be helpful.