Vembu BDR(Backup & Disaster Recovery) is a trusted solution for Small, Medium and Large Businesses reaching 100+ countries, having 4k+ partners and 60k+ Businesses. Vembu Technologies has recently released a backup and DR suite called Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0. Their Offerings are in 2: Vembu BDR Suite & Vembu Cloud Services.
Vembu has a lot in their product line so covering each and every feature will be beyond this post. I"ll try to cover all the possible features in a series of blog posts.
- Vembu BDR Suite: It is a suite of four services, built into one unified web-based user interface, which includes:-
- Vembu VMBackup: For VMs created on VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V VMbackup could be used. It supports application-aware backups without installing any agent. Apart from backup and restore of virtual machines, Vembu VMBackup also supports replicating virtual machines from one production hosts to another that's an interesting feature.
- Vembu ImageBackup:-Vembu ImageBackup (Part of Vembu BDR Suite) is a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution designed to meet the needs of physical data centers and workstations for SMBs and Enterprises. Users can now provide their data centers and Workstations(desktops and laptops) the utmost protection they deserve with Vembu ImageBackup. It requires an agent to be installed on your machine. It uses Disk Image Backup, CBT and Application Aware Backups.
- Vembu NetworkBackup:- It supports specific files/folder backup and application backups such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft SharePoint, Outlook, and MySQL.
- Vembu OffsiteDR:-Vembu OffsiteDR (Part of Vembu BDR Suite) is a comprehensive data protection solution that is designed to help users restore their backups that are replicated from Vembu BDR Server to their very own data center. For this feature to work one has to deploy a Vembu Offsite DR Server.
- Vembu Cloud Services:- It is a suite of four services, built into one unified web-based user interface, which includes:-
- Vembu CloudDR:- Vembu CloudDR is a Disaster Recovery strategy wherein users can restore their backup data directly from our Vembu Cloud Server with minimalistic downtime anywhere anytime. Users can now replicate their data from their backup server to our Vembu Cloud Server seamlessly where all your data is kept secured using AES - 256 bit encryption during rest and during replication.
- Vembu OnlineBackup:-Vembu OnlineBackup is a comprehensive data protection solution designed to provide the best backup and recovery solutions for business data of Small and medium businesses. Vembu OnlineBackup supports specific files/folder backup and application backups such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft SharePoint, Outlook, and MySQL. It allows users to store their business data safe and secure over Vembu cloud and provides a restore anywhere/anytime model.
- Vembu SaaSBackup:-Vembu SaaSBackup is a comprehensive data protection solution designed to meet the needs of small and medium businesses protecting their mail servers with domain and user level backups. Vembu SaaSbackup currently provides backup support to Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. With backup data stored over Vembu cloud, users are provided with the option of restore anywhere-anytime with the least possible downtime.
- Vembu BDR360:-Vembu BDR360 is a centralized monitoring and management portal which provides end to end visibility to all your IT environment that is backed up(VMs, physical servers, applications etc.,) using Vembu BDR Suite products. It allows administrators to manage backups across diverse environment at ease.
Reviews:-
- Backups have been made simpler with this. Installation is easy, Management & configuration of backups is simple with just a few clicks to initiate.
- Available as a .exe installer for Windows & .sh shell executable for Ubuntu. Whether you are running your on-prem or in Cloud Infrastructure i.e for AWS ec2 instances or for Azure VMs. Installation is same. You can check system requirements here.
- I have installed Vembu BDR on Windows Server 2012 & Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. When I started reviewing this product it was v3.8.0 and now v3.9.0 is GA so anyways I have to upgrade in the lab. I have upgraded to Windows-based Vembu BDR Server which is done with just a few clicks.
- File System:- VembuHIVE which is a vembu proprietary for BDR solutions.
- It uses PostgreSQL 9.6 database version.
- So if you are looking to migrate from one OS version to another, it will be like you have to backup of your DB and have to restore it to other O.S.
- There is a riveting comparison between free and paid edition.
- In order to activate Vembu BDR suite, the machine is required to have internet connectivity either directly or in restricted environments could be done via proxy. Every 7 days it is going to check with vembu license server for your currently added license.
As of now, there is no option available for OFFLINE licensing of this product, but I am very sure these folks will come up near future. - It supports integration with REST API based client means if you are looking for some automation with a tool or a script, that would be amazing. For REST-API based parameters, you may check on this link. I will be looking forward to integrating it with vRealize Automation & vRealize Orchestrator to make Day2 activities less complex.
- With the latest release they have come up with pretty much interesting feature and one of them is Pre/Post Backup commands which could be a PowerShell, Ruby, Perl script.
- The first-time configuration after installation is:-
- You have to specify the time zone in which it is installed so that reports and we console will have the same time settings.
- For registration, you have to create a unique vembu ID.
- In the snippet, above shown are the different features of VembuCloud Services such as OnlineBackup, CloudDR, OffsiteDR, BDR360, SaaSBackup.
- You have to register your product for the trial version and later you can go for the paid license. Its license is available on subscription and perpetual which has different prices for features.
- Next is you have to add your vCenter Server, ESXi for VMware environment or Hyper-V for your Microsoft environment.
- I tested and initiated a backup on Linux as well as windows VMs. It needs the most important utility to be running on your operating system i.e VMware tools in order to quiesce I/O.
- It supports Full as well as Incremental backups.
- I"ll be covering each and every feature in a series of posts for this product.
**Please note that this review was sponsored by Vembu
