Alternative to VDP or what’s good for backup?

[pwjohnston]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a backup alternative to VDP?  I tried deploying the VDP appliance on our HA cluster and even VMWare doesn’t know what’s wrong.  DNS is resolving on the VDP, the vCenter, and on the DNS server, but I can’t get past the initial setup from the web interface.  It’s been passed up the Dev so I  don’t know when/if it will get resolved.

We have a small cluster 4 IBM blades in a Bladecenter H.  20 to 30 VM’s and I don’t expect that to go over 50 by the end of the year.  To backup on, I have an IBM x3550 m3 with 2 TB of space.  I had deployed an ESXi box on it so if can run from a VM appliance that would be great.  Any help would be appreciated.

[edinburgh1874]

I'm in the same situation, and have a low budget for backup software so I looked into a few alternatives.

Quantum VMPro - free up to 1Tb of protected data, data can be stored on their DXI V1000 VM appliance which dedups data up to 1Tb for free. Quite a good product, but gets expensive if you go beyond the free limits.

Trileads VM Explorer - $700 for site license, works well with our DRS cluster but doesn't do incremental forever - a full backup is required every few incrementals.  Seems to be very stable though.

Thinware vBackup - free but is in beta stage, perhaps one to watch in the future.

Veeam Backup free - free, but doesn't do scheduling.

Anything else is licensed per socket/host, usually about $1000 per license.

[pwjohnston]

I saw that Quantum VMPro and thought it looked interesting.  I'll have to give it a spin.  Have you tried the Arkeia appliance?

https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/arkeia-virtual-appliance-for-vmware-free-use-edit...

[edinburgh1874]

Yes, I seen that one but the 250Gb limit is too low for us.

Quantum VM Pro worked well, restores worked, was stable during backups and reporting was good too.

But 1Tb wasn't enough for us after incrementals...that figure is based on protected size rather than stored.

Everything else was too expensive, costing more than the enviroment we have...there are some limitations to Trilead but can't complain about the price.

[JFSC_Chris]

I've heard good things about AppAssure but haven't used it myself in anger.  The pricing is particularly good too.

Cheers.

Chris

[sarad]

Hello,

I am a Sales Engineer for PHD Virtual Backup.  PHD offers a similar solution in regards to VMware backups.  We have the same appliance type architecture, though our VBA is easier to install and supports multiple backup targets such as NFS, CIFS, virtual attached disk and cloud targets.  The PHD VBA (virtual backup appliance) supports DHCP so network configuration is very simple and will allow for multiple NIC's in case you would like to backup over a private non-routable network.  The restore capabilities are very robust in that you can restore an entire VM, rollback an existing VM to a previous point in time, instantly spin up a VM in backup storage (for backup verification as well as quickly get a critical VM up and running) and file level recovery.  If this sounds like something you would be interested in there is a fully functional trial available on the website at http://www.phdvirtual.com/.  Good luck in your search!

[TomHowarth · Accepted solution]

Veeam are the market lead in this market space.  depending on who or what your current none-virtualised backup solution is, you may be able to purchase an additional plugin to enable it to back up your virtual environment