Dell killed vRanger. What are the low budget backup solutions?

[Uptimes]

Hi All,

It seems that VMWare and many of the surrounding programs are geared towards multi-million dollar datacenters, where I am sure they are doing wonderful things. However, for the last 5 years we have been focusing on bringing VMWare to small businesses. The problem that we are hitting now is backups…

Most of our installs are running vSphere Essentials 5 (some running on 4). Some time ago we got on the bandwagon of vRanger – it did everything we needed. On the fly backup of live running VMs, restoration of whole VM, or granular restores via mounting the old VM and extracting what's needed. I know it’s not as fancy as some of the other options with intelligent de-duplication and whatnot, but it worked great for our needs.

The problem is that Dell bought vRanger and a product that used to cost us $350 to license for 10 sockets spread out amongst as many machines as we wanted, now is billed per core and comes out to about $3,800 for the same end result. And Dell is pretty much killing the product – our sales reps there didn’t even know what vRanger was and I can only imagine what would happen if we needed to call someone for support… It took the better part of the week for them to even send us pricing!

We also looked at veem, but again it is just too pricey and complete overkill for us. We dont need a software that managers a million VMs spread out over thousands of servers on 4 continents. Our installs are 1-5 physical machines sharing a rack in a basement. vSphere+ seems to have a good built-in backup system, but it costs about $5k, which is also way out of our budget.

I thought the whole purpose of vmware was to make this kind of stuff cheap and easy – over the past few years it seems that with M$FT redefining their EULA’s and vmWare charging obscene amounts of money for what should be simple utilities, it is putting the technology out of reach of small business. At this point its pretty much sheaper to use something like BackupAssist on a physical box and call it good.

We are starting to look at either using OS-level backups (Windows backup, as sad as that may be), or just moving aware from virtualization altogether.

I am really hoping that someone could point me to a software that can do on-the-fly backups of the VMDK files that does not cost an arm, a leg and a nut.

[Linjo]

Why not look at VDP? Its included in most vSphere bundles and works well in small deployments.

// Linjo

[TomHowarth]

you could also have a look at Veeam or PHD Virtual.  some woul argue that Veeam are actually the leaders in the virtual server backup space.

[spravtek]

Besides solutions mentioned above there's also VM Explorer from Trilead: http://www.trilead.com/Features/

[Uptimes]

Guys, did anyone read my post??

Linjo - VDP does not come with vSphere Essentials. The lowest level it comes with is vSphere+ which is about $5000.

tom howarth - As mentioned in the original post (unless there is a product that I don't know about) Veeam would cost us about $1100 for up to 12 cores, which would still mean 3-16 times more than what vRanger used to cost us. I will look into PHD Virtual.

spravtek - This one looks interesting. Thanks for the link! I will get back to you.

[RParker]

Joel Lindberg wrote:

Why not look at VDP? Its included in most vSphere bundles and works well in small deployments.

// Linjo

Wait what?!??!  Telling someone to use VDP as a backup "solution" would be like recommending NASCAR to use a prius as an alternative cheap race car!  Don't tell them that.. VDP is a horrid piece of software...

Friends should not let other friends use VDP (or drive a prius for that matter).  There are so many other options Veeam (which is still around the $500.00 per server price point), PhD Virtual.  vRanger was only 1.. there are still plenty of others before we even consider using VDP.

VDP is good, if you like limitations, don't expect your backups to work, and having to reboot / reset it every 2 weeks, and you enjoy making life difficult, then go ahead by all means, use VDP.

[RParker]

Uptimes wrote:

Guys, did anyone read my post??

More like glanced over.  You have to keep posts and replies to a single line if you expect anyone to actually READ!

  Reading a long post takes time and work...

[spravtek]

Sorry for this post in advance ...

But  ...  LOL! :smileylaugh:

[TomHowarth]

You have a point Richard, however the original poster does not want to spend any money on the solution and VDP is free and does sorta work

[digitalj]

please do tell me more about this idea of VDP working.  I can't get more than one day of results, and no logs to show why they fail.

[Jasbo2000]

Friend, do you read the news or articles online?

I cant believe you still havent looked at NAKIVO Backup & Replication. It is only $199/socket for Essentials edition. Has dedup, encryption, compression, cbt. Among some cool features provided integration with Amazon EC2, can be installed on Linux and Windows. I switched from my crappy vRanger last month and I am very happy with the performance.

[Arnward]

I so agree with this post.  We just purchased our first VMWare server with "essentials" for a testing environment.  I don't need fancy software that does a lot of other stuff.  I just need backups of servers on a regular basis.  How can you call it "essentials" without a solution for making a backup?  All the backup vendors appear to be appealing to larger customers with huge systems.  I'm getting a price quote for the Nakivo now.

[depping]

You want low budget?

Script it.

[Arnward]

I attempted to use the GhettoVCB script with ESXi 5.1, but it no longer functions with 5.1.  There are some people who report they got it working, but even after making modifications that were listed, I continued to have issues with commands that were no longer compliant.  It appears to me that VMWare purposely made some changes to make the scripting option more difficult.  That may not be the case, but I haven't found any other examples of a scripted solution.  I am prepared to drop back to ESXi 5.0 just so I can use the ghettoVCB script.  If you know of other options, I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks.

[lmurphudd]

Wow! $350 for 10 sockets of vRanger? How long ago did you purchase? vRanger has been sold per ESX(i) physical socket for many years and is not something that Dell instituted. The product has evolved just like any of the other backup solutions in the market today.. With that comes new and better features as well as increase in pricing due to evolving the product. The product features you mentioned are still in the product but, like everything else in this world, prices go up.

[Uptimes]

lmurphudd , thanks for the reply but I am sorry that is complete BS!

I have a formal bid from vRanger dated 05/05/2011 - you make it sound like I am comparing pricing to some product from the 90's! Despite the pricing and models, the fact remains that in a course of less than two years, Dell effectively raised the price by about 1,100%! This is not due to 'product evolution', as the feature set is virtually identical; it is not due inflation ("prices go up") as the theoretical costs related to inflation should have seen a less than 5% rise and effectively given true costs factors should not have moved more than 2%.

Our shop is a "Dell Partner Direct" and our reps at Dell don't even know that vRanger existed or that they owned it. After climbing through the departments, we finally found their 'Special Software Division' who took FOUR DAYS to even acknowledge that they still sell vRanger and come up with that price. Dell simply bought and effectively killed the product. What's worse is that during the past few months of searching, we have not found anything even remotely close in function for even 300% of its previous cost. Sad...

[lmurphudd]

The product has evolved DRAMATICALLY since 2011. Especially if you were using the 3.x version of vRanger. 3.x was pretty much a command-line tool wrapped in a Windows GUI. The 4.x line was a complete re-engineering of the product and the 5.x version introduced the convergence of vRanger and vReplicator. I am not going to argue pricing with you as that all comes down to what your are willing to pay for a solution that protects your business-critical data. I will however inform you the Dell has not killed off vRanger. Dell purchased Quest software which had over 200 software solutions that came with it. vRanger was just 1 of those.

Your Dell rep may not have known about it but does he/she know about Foglight or vWorkspace or Toad or Migration Manager? Those are also now Dell products that came from Quest. The Dell Software Group has many internal groups that deal with the different software categories. It is the Dell reps job to work with the internal group that encompasses that product. The Quest acquisition is not even 1 year old yet. Dell is a huge corporation and Quest Software brought a LOT to Dell.

Dell has a dedicated Data Protection team that not only works with vRanger but the other Dell data protection solutions. (AppAssure, Netvault, LiteSpeed, Recovery Manager). vRanger is still actively being developed and a new release of the product is right on the horizon.

vRanger is not even close to being the most expensive piece of software out there. IMHO, it is priced pretty competitively with the other backup solutions in the market with the same feature sets.

Might be worth asking your Dell rep to schedule a meeting with you and a member from the Data Protection team.

-Larry

[Uptimes]

Larry, I don't know about the version histories of this product or what other software Quest made. All I know is that we had available an awesome product with a full GUI that provided flawless restores of granular files, even down to individual Exchange email messages, as well as complete 'bare metal' image restore capability. It worked quickly, had decent de-duplication, used space efficiently, did not peg the servers while performing tasks and in general fit our needs completely. I do not remember ever seeing any CLI associated with the product that we bought from Quest - everything was performed via intuitive GUI. Whatever they have since then may be good an well, but it does not constitute a reason for an ELEVEN HUNDRED PERCENT up-charge! There is just no basis for it.

The point of a backup system is not to act like Ransom-Ware - pricing itself based on what it's worth for you to not have it. That's called extortion and racketeering - a ridiculous notion! Obviously, every business plan must assess its product's market - will people pay for this what we need to develop it and make money? However pricing should be based somewhat on what it costs to create, plus a reasonable profit margin. If Quest could make money selling the product for ~$300 and presumably make enough money to attract a buy-out from Dell, it only speaks to great inefficiencies within Dell to perform what sounds like a few GUI tweaks and jack the price by (I can't stop saying it) ELEVEN HUNDRED F'n PERCENT!!

Per Dell reps not knowing their own product lines, listing more products that they may not be familiar with just goes to prove my point. I would assume that a company of that size would have some form of internal tool that would allow reps to search for titles that are requested by clients and be directed to a department or person who is responsible and aware of its existence. But you know what they say about assumptions...

[lmurphudd]

Uptimes, not sure where the hostility or the confrontational tone of the post is coming from but are you sure you are not getting vRanger confused with another product? vRanger does not, nor ever did have a built-in deduplication option. vRanger could utilize appliances like DataDomain or Exagrid or (around 2012 time frame) was able to utilize a separate piece of software named Netvault SmartDisk as its repository. Most recently it can use appliances like the Dell DR4x00 as well as DD and Exagrid. Yes, vRanger 3.x used CLI commands sent to the ESX console to run the backups. You could pull out the CLI command from the vRanger GUI and place it directly in the ESX console. I have done it thousands of times if not more. The version that you last used would definitely be useful here.

Just to give you a heads up on my background. I am a Dell Data Protection SE and before that I was a Quest Data Protection SE and before that I was a Vizioncore Support Engineer (hired in 2007, with 3 years in the Support department). One of the main products I supported was indeed, vRanger. So I know the product a little bit and definitely know the changes that have gone on since I started with Vizioncore in 2007. With that said, the product and features contained in it are very different.

Remember your original post is from 12/2012 which was 5 months after the announcement that Dell purchased Quest. Now I am not sure how many corporate buyouts you have been a part of but I can tell you that 5 months after a buyout of that size, I am impressed it took him 4 days to get you a quote because we still were 2 separate companies at that point with 2 separate systems and 2 separate sales forces.

Again, I am not going to argue the price of the product with you as it is a fair market price for the product with the features it has. That price is based on a lot of market research and our customer base at the time the price was set.  I will say that I hope you call your rep and ask to see a demo of the current product instead of assuming that "a few GUI tweaks" is all that has changed since 2011. I assure you there are a lot more than that!

-Larry

[Uptimes]

Hi Larry,

Someone earlier today resurrected this long-dead thread and tried to tell me that a more than ten-fold hike in pricing over less than a year's time-frame was normal and then tried to justify it with 'feature updates' - got a bit under my skin. Honestly, it's been a while and we work with so much of this stuff that I may very well be wrong about de-duplication. But for your typical small business, that is not a critical feature. I dug through my emails now and it looks like our guy at Quest was Dariusz Wierzbicki and we were getting version 5.x for our initial trials before Quest suddenly disappeared and nobody at Dell could tell us what happened.

Research and focus groups could be swayed so easily - in certain circles you can easily find a group of people that will say that all software should be free. That is not the point. At issue is that Quest had a great product that was priced right for a particular market. Obviously it was profitable. Whatever changes Dell made, cannot logically account for such a huge price hike - how can 'features' cost 10 times more than the base product? I thought I was getting screwed on my Mercedes when the base cost of $70k went up to almost $90k when I added the options that I wanted. In comparison what would this be called?

Obviously anyone that can spend $4k on backup software, has a server farm that cost well into six-figures. vRanger 5x was priced and featured for a smaller customer. Even assuming that there are another one thousand percent worth of features there, I really wish they would split the the 'feature-full' product (make it the "Platinum" addition or something) and let the bigger clients buy it, leaving the original feature set with the same price point. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the original product was still around with its original product specs and pricing, that very few would buy "The Platinum" because it would not justify the cost in comparison. Please, tell me I'm wrong! So what Dell has done is effectively kill the old product, put lipstick on it and pedal it for 11 times the cost - hence this post looking for an alternative.

Such is life. We now use a combination of two software titles to provide similar functions for about $900. In the meantime, Dell could have netted around $5-10k in licensing fees from us on the old pricing model, but got all of $0. They are going for bigger fish but my question would be, how many smaller fish are they missing in the process? And would the total weight of fish be greater if instead of gouging clients for top dollar of "what it's worth to them to not have it", they continued providing a great product at a fair and profitable rate that could grow to dominate the segment instead of covering a sliver of it?