Veeam Backup Vs PHD esXpress

[ufo8mydog]

Hi all

I've been looking at VM backup options recently for vSphere. After messing around with our current solution (Commvault) it turns out that they are still using the old VCB framework according to this article:

http://www.backupcentral.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=259&Itemid=47

Things like mounting the restore to the proxy server first before restoring back to the SAN volume and no Linux file level restore are dealbreakers, so Commvault can't be considered a serious contender in this market segment at this stage.

It looks like the choice is therefore between Veaam Backup and PHD esXpress. Could current customers/vendors comment on the two solutions? The environment comprises of 12 sockets and growing towards 200 VMs (ranging from 10GB - 150GB). For example, if you could comment on:

1) Value for money. Which tends to be more cost efficient?

2) Backup and restore efficiency

3) Functionality/reporting/management tools

4) Consistency of restores

5) Any single points of failures or caveats/gotchas that should be taken into consideration?

6) Does the solution feel that it is of 'enterprise' or 'production' quality?

Basically some real life experience using the tool in a production environment would be great. The target is a hardware dedupe datadomain appliance so the dedupe function would be done in hardware.

[petedr]

Thanks Paul,

With DeDup esXpress can do VBA restores which is outside of the service console and these restrictions. But as you saw with Full/Delta restores it is still in the service console. Moving Full/Delta restores to the VBAs is something we have discussed. I'll check what the current plan is for that.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[petedr]

I checked within development and VBA Restores for Delta/Full backups is on the plan to implement however I don't have a time frame yet.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[FlEric]

:smileylaugh:

Nice to hear that VBA Restore for Delta/Full are on the plan. Are you sure that will bring a improvement in the restore speed? A VM Ware guy tell me some time ago that there is a big difference between the speed if you write and read inside a vmdk or if you write a file directly to the vmfs (i don' t remember the exact reason).

I can remember that i hear something like this several times in the past but it was not implement since today.

So i hope your customers have not to wait many month again before they got a working version..

Regards

[pauliew1978]

Hi Pete,

that woud be fantastic. Its really the only bugbear I have with esxpress. I really love the product. its so simple to use. If vba restores were working with full/deltas and I could get the restores faster then I could actually restore probably in 12 hours rather than 36. At the moment I see restores at about 15mbps on a san which can do 60mbps (probably faster at the DR site, its just we have 70 vms running on the san at the moment). I know the console is the limitation. Its such a shame vmware can't pull their finger out and allow us administrators the ability to change the throttling. In some situations it calls for this not to be throttled (as in a DR situation). I always thought that some linux guru would be able to find where this is throltted (if it was in a config file or something) but as yet have never found an answer. Interestingly this post has come on the first day I am, moving over to esxpress backups. its taken two months to come up with a suitable solution because of the console throttling and not only that requires me to sit at the DR site for possibly 48 hours awake to make sure the vm's are restored within the SLA. If either esxpress releases a vba for full restores OR vmware allow us to change the throttling on the service console then all would be great. I know that there must be a lot of other people out there who are having the same issues. In fact talking to the DR site company they tell me that everyone who uses vmware in a medium to largish company are suffering from exactly the same thing. Maybe we should all petition and ask vmware to kindly give sys admins the ability to change the throttling! Though being a sys admin I have no idea whats involved or if this is even possible!

thanks,

Paul

[petedr]

Thanks for the feedback concerning esXpress.

Anyone can always also private message or email me for any questions.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[christianZ]

The new ver. 4 is now available:

http://www.veeam.com/news/veeam-backup-is10-times-faster.html

[glemmestad]

I am a current Veeam customer and wouldn't change for anything in the world. Before we went with Veeam we tested vRanger and esXpress. Veeam is in my mind the only one I would call a "backup" product that work for a backup admin in the same way a traditional backup does. There isn't a steep learning curve, because the fancyness is handled in the background.

Also, with Veeam 4 (released yesterday) it is nice that our backup window shrunk from 10 hours per night (15TB of 200+ VMs), to about 2-3 hours with Change Block Tracking with vStorage API and 4Gbps fibrechannel. We utilize 3 dedicated backup servers, all FC attached. 2-3 hour backup of that virtual environment is definetly not a bad thing

[petedr]

Support for the vSphere Changed Block table for esXpress is targeted to be available by the end of November.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[pauliew1978]

Well I should like to have one final word and endorse esxpress from my own experience.

I have 5 esx servers and 70+ vm's (6tb of vm's to backup).

Esxpress is not a difficult tool by any stretch to use and in fact I find it very intuitive and dare I say even fun to use. It IS enterprise class. I certainly wouldnt even think about using it if it wasnt. I have certain criteria for my backups and I have never not been abe to do smething with esxpress as there are functions for pretty much every type of scheduling you could ever need.

Not only that but restores do not require esxpress at the dr site (if you are using full/delta backups)

and the compression on the backups is excellent. I just backed up a sql server running sage that has 200gb on it (130gb ish used). The FULL backup files were <30gb. To me that is a winner. It means restoring these files from tape is quicker to the san.

I haven't used veamm 4.0 but I wouldn't go with any other product. All I can say is for the price and functionality esxpress is a superb product.

I work for a Medium sized Financial instituion and backups are obviously extremely important. We hold medical records etc etc. Don't rule out esxpress as a virtual backup product. Its very very scalable and and very customizable.

Not only that but Esxpress support provide some of the best support I have experienced (apart from Sophos).

btw if anyone needs any help with Esxpress or has any questions about it in real world environments I am most happy to reply.

[petedr]

Thanks Paul for the post about esXpress and especially the post about support.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[pauliew1978]

Just thought you would all like to know that I undertook a DR test over the last 3 days for my company using esxpress and recovered ALL core servers in the virtual environment, thats sql, exchange, dc's, file servers, application servers etc. I was able to restore 20 vm's which totalled 3tb of data over that time and in fact had it not been for having to restore .bak files and being kicked out of the recovery centre we could have got everything back in 48 hours.

[petedr]

Paul, good to hear everything went well with your DR test using esXpress.

Any issues you come across or any questions in the future let us know.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[admin]

A number of messages that were irrelevant to the discussion were deleted. This thread remains locked.

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Regards, Robert

Robert Dell'Immagine, Director of VMware Communities