Veeam Backup Vs PHD esXpress

[ufo8mydog]

Hi all (repost as perhaps I posted in the wrong area earlier)

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.

[jaygriffin]

I am an esXpress customer. Have been using it for a few years. I have 11 ESX hosts and about 150 VM's. Version 3.1 on ESX 3.5 worked very well. Definitely lacked a lot of features since it had to be managed through a cryptic menu on each host. File level restores were not easy. Best target option was an FTP server. But it worked.

We have upgraded to ESX 4 and esXpress 3.6. I can say they really seem to be struggling with the new API's. When I first upgraded it worked great for about 4-5 weeks then stopped working. Have been trying to get this resolved now for about 5 weeks. They are making progress. Some of the problems have been resolved, but not all. I have my backups working to an FTP site again, but can't get them to work through the dedup appliance. They will get it fixed, so I am hanging on.

The dedup applicance and the GUI appliance definitely are some great adds to esXpress 3.6. There are still some things you can't do from the GUI, so it is not where it needs to be yet. But the dedup appliance is a major disk space saver. When it was working it was awesome. And it gives you the ability to do File Level restores.

I believe esXpress is a good option and that they will get the problems worked out. Their support has not been up to its usually high standards since the new version -- I am sure their workload has drastically increased with the problems associated with the new version.

I saw a demo on Veeam yesterday. It was their 3.x version. They are coming out with a 4.0 in Q4 that is going to use the ESX API's. So, who knows, they might have some of the same struggles PHD is experiencing now. From what I saw, Veeam is a little more polished on the management side. You can do more from the management interface. But I don't believe that Veeam has a dedup device -- I don't recall them showing me that. With Veeam you have the option of backing up through VCB or through the service console. With version 4.0 there will be a 3rd option - the APIs. More flexibility there.

I am not sure of the load Veeam puts on a server. One nice thing about esXpress is it has virtual machine "helpers". And you can somewhat control the resources they use and the impact on your environment.

I also recently looked at Backup Exec's AVVI. It also uses VCB is is extremely slow. I saw many people complaining about this on their forums.

Overall, I think you are going to find they both have their pro's and con's and it just depends on what fits well in your environment. They both offer a trial, which is probably your best option. Try them both out and see what you like and don't like.

[manfriday]

I demo'd both ESXpress and Veeam.

For me, it was a no-brainer.

Veeam was easier to set up, the management interface was simpler. The file-level restore utility was nice, and it performed backups faster than esXpress.

Also, Veeam supports ESXi.

That said, you should just download the demo's of both products and give them a try.

[Gostev]

Disclaimer: I work for Veeam. I just wanted to clarify couple of points mentioned above about OUR product.

Yes, we DO have deduplication (since version 1.0), the difference is that we are using inline deduplication (data is deduped on the fly by backup processing engine), so we do not require additional dedupe appliances, which is why you have not seen those during the demo.

Backup architecture/approach is completely different between Veeam and esXpress, and the new APIs our upcoming version 4.0 will be using has nothing in common with ESX APIs that current version of esXpress is using. So you should not expect to see Veeam problems in esXpress and vice versa.

Anyway, based on the closed beta feedback for Veeam Backup 4.0, these new APIs are rock solid, and provide great performance benefits over VCB. For example, incremental image-level backup of 666GB VM takes less than 15 minutes now, which means 800 MB/s processing speed (yes, it is not a typo - almost 1 gigabyte per second). This is from real-world production environment with mid-range SAN storage on FC4. As one of the customers told us, these new capabilities provide for "literally next generation backups". Not too take too much credit for this, I have to say that it is VMware who did absolutely great job with ESX4 - we are merely leveraging all the new capabilities and APIs.

I really can talk forever about our product, especially on how it compares with other solutions... but I cannot agree more with Manfriday. Veeam motto has always been "Put us in the lab" - please do that instead of listening to vendors' claims. It takes under 5 minutes to setup Veeam Backup and start your first backup.

If you need any help or additional questions - we will be glad to assist you on our community forums at

[petedr]

Jay thanks for posting about esXpress.

Our point of view is to test as many solutions as possible to make sure you have the correct solution for your infrastructure.

If anyone has any questions about esXpress you can always email me or private message me.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[ufo8mydog]

Hi everyone

Thanks for all your responses so far. I guess the best way to check is to test both products in the environment and assess them against our requirements checklist.

One question I had in particular was the load each product placed on both the hosts and the guest; for example, what sort of performance impact is felt during a full backup cycle?

[Gostev]

Veeam Backup does not put any load on hosts or guests. With our solution, all backup activities are offloaded to your backup server (instead of agents or appliances running on ESX hosts). Backup is done directly from storage (and is completely isolated to the storage layer) - we do not even touch your hosts.

[JroscoPHD]

I would like to answers your question as clear as possible item by item.

Please not the architecture between the 2 products is very different.

Q1) Value for money. Which tends to be more cost efficient?

A1) esXpress is delivered as a Virtual Machine and uses

little virtual machines to backup each VM.

Most other use the Service Console 's resource or require

setting up 1 or more VCP proxy servers

and having to worry about backing it up or connecting it to your infrastructure

as it is a Windows Box.

esXpress takes advantage of the hardware you already purchased for VMWare without an additional hardware or OS licenses

to patch and update and grows as your environment does. More hosts the more VBA (Virtual backup appliance you can run)

Q2) Backup and

restore efficiency

A2) esXpress backups are not proprietary and do not require

our software or a license key to restore the data like others. esXpress does backups and restores without the

data going through the Service console.

Q3) Functionality/reporting/management

tools

A3) esXpress is a Set it And forget it approach. Setup the environment

policies and new machines are backed up automatically. Daily email reports per Host are sent and also

can be configured per VM to go to specific accounts.

Q4) Consistency of restores

A4) I would recommend you test this. As other have false positive backups (say they are good but can't

be restored)

Q5) esXpress is a distributed system architecture designed with no

single point of failure. There is no

single system controlling the backups that might fail or crash and prohibit

backups.

Q6) Does the solution feel that it is of 'enterprise' or

'production' quality?

A6) See above all the above. Note: Are all your servers in one site?

VCB does not work for remote hosts

Please let us know if you need more detail in any of these

areas.

J Rosikeiwicz

www.PHDVirtual.com makers of esXpress