Replication & Backup: vRanger or Veeam Backup & Replication?

[pinkerton]

Hi,

we currently have three hosts running about 40 virtual machines which are currently backed up using Data Recovery. We are now looking for a new solution that can also handle replication so we can replicate the most important VMs to a backup SAN.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

[ldelloca]

Hi,

check out Veeam, is one of the best products for VMware backup, and it has both backup and replication into the same software. It also has many more features than VDR.

Regards,

Luca.

--
Luca Dell'Oca
@dellock6
vExpert 2011
http://www.vuemuer.it
[rewarding points to a useful answer is a way to say thanks]

[Gooose]

Hi,

We use vRanger backup and replication and find the product excellent and also simple to use.

[pinkerton]

Thanks,

has anyone tested both products and made a comparison?

[Gooose]

Can I ask what shared storage you are using?

[pinkerton]

Fibre Channel, an HP EVA 4400 for production machines and an MSA2312fc for tesing and backup. The MSA will continue to be the destination for the backups and replicated VMs.

[ldelloca]

Hi,

I've not tested the latest version of vRanger, but when we did a comparison, Veeam seemed more stable and fast.

Regards,

Luca.

--

Luca Dell'Oca

http://www.vuemuer.it

@dellock6

vExpert 2011

[Assign points to a useful answer is a way to say thanks]

[petedr]

I know both solutions have a lot to offer. My suggestion is always to test a few different solutions and see what works best in each individual environment for their requirements.

Pete

---------

www.liquidwarelabs.com

www.thevirtualheadline.com

[SkandAcronis]

Couple of weeks ago Acronis released Acronis vmProtect 6 – lightweight and fast solution focused on vSphere backup. We run internal and independent benchmarks that show that vmProtect is a lot faster and creates smaller backup – thanks to imaging technology we were developing for many years. And as a product manager I think we could make vmProtect really simple and stable. Take a look: http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/vmprotect/

--

Sergey Kandaurov

Senior Product Manager @ Acronis

http://www.acronis.com/

[SkandAcronis]

Also one thing concerning doing backup and replication: unfortunately it requires more than double storage space. There is the same data both in backups and replicas, plus replicas are not compressed and are not deduped. In vmProtect we offer an alternative solution which can effectively replicate replication in most scenarios: a virtual machine can be started directly from a compressed and deduped backup. It only takes several seconds, sometimes up to a minute to create virtual NFS share, mount it to ESXi host, register and power on the VM.  Off course it is slower compared to running a normal VM, but due to a way we handle changes – not much and quite acceptable for most situations.  On the other side you save on storage space and avoid putting double load on production ESXi hosts and VMs to create both backups and replicas.

// Sergey Kandaurov

Senior Product Manager @ Acronis

http://www.acronis.com

[Gostev]

Sergey Kandaurov wrote:

In vmProtect we offer an alternative solution which can effectively replicate replication in most scenarios: a virtual machine can be started directly from a compressed and deduped backup. It only takes several seconds, sometimes up to a minute to create virtual NFS share, mount it to ESXi host, register and power on the VM.

You only forgot to mention that this feature was originally invented by Veeam, has been available as a part of Veeam Backup & Replication for 1 year now, and is patent-pending (as you are well aware). While it is a smart thing to copy the leader (not for long though), I think you should at least be fair to the inventor, and should have referenced us (in this topic about Veeam), instead of making it look like something you guys have unique to replace your missing replication with.

Nevertheless, back to your replication comment, I must mention that you seem to completely lack any understanding of when and how replication is used in disaster recovery. Replicas are to be used when your production VMware environment goes down, which means you cannot even run your appliance (vmProtect can only run on VMware infrastructure, and does not support being installed on standalone physical server, am I correct)? Also, even if your appliance is somehow magically able to work after VMware environment or production storage disaster, I would love to see it running a few dozens of site's VMs through NFS server, the disk I/O performance of those VMs, and how they will be meeting their SLAs. You clearly still have a lot to learn about replication and production environments, if you are positioning vPower as an alternative to replication.

I would have never replied to you, because I generally avoid vendor battles on public forums, just like I avoid advertizing Veeam products on these forums (instead, I only respond to specific questions, comments or remarks about Veeam). With thousands of daily visitors on Veeam's own forums, I have a place to talk about my stuff. But this one looked so very special, I just could not pass it. First, clearly your only intent and sole purpose of registering on these forums a few days ago was to advertize your solution (which is NOT the purpose of these forums). Not a good start already, however, it would be understandable if you created the new topic. But instead, you have chosen the topic where OP is asking about the two very specific solutions (assume you found it by searching for Veeam), and crashed the party with blatant advertizement paired with pure marketing claims having nothing in common with reality. And that was really hard to let go, I am sorry.

[SkandAcronis]

Gostev wrote:

You only forgot to mention that this feature was originally invented by Veeam, has been available as a part of Veeam Backup & Replication for 1 year now, and is patent-pending (as you are well aware). While it is a smart thing to copy the leader (not for long though), I think you should at least be fair to the inventor, and should have referenced us (in this topic about Veeam), instead of making it look like something you guys have unique to replace your missing replication with.

I am surprised by your reaction. For many years our customers use Acronis Active Restore (US patent 7,979,690) that allows to boot a physical machine directly from a backup image. Also it is possible to mount an image as a drive latter to copy files from it, share it to other users, run applications or even do updates.

We developed those technologies 5+ years ago meaning before Veeam released the first version of backup. In vmProtect we provide the same technologies for VMs.

Nevertheless, back to your replication comment, I must mention that you seem to completely lack any understanding of when and how replication is used in disaster recovery. Replicas are to be used when your production VMware environment goes down, which means you cannot even run your appliance (vmProtect can only run on VMware infrastructure, and does not support being installed on standalone physical server, am I correct)? Also, even if your appliance is somehow magically able to work after VMware environment or production storage disaster, I would love to see it running a few dozens of site's VMs through NFS server, the disk I/O performance of those VMs, and how they will be meeting their SLAs. You clearly still have a lot to learn about replication and production environments, if you are positioning vPower as an alternative to replication.

Back to replication and your questions. vmProtect provides flexible deployment options and can be installed either as a virtual appliance or on a physical Windows machine.  Some people install an additional copy of a virtual backup appliance on a stand-by host to run recovered VMs.  I’m not saying that running VMs from an image provides full replacement of replication. However, it may be good enough for many situations.

[Gostev]

Sergey, I am sorry to ask, but did you actually read that patent? If vmProtect used the approach listed in the patent you referenced (hooking the BIOS, placing I/O filter inside recovered computer), I would not have nothing against it. Why did not you do that in vmProtect?

Why, instead, you have decided to go with 100% copycat of Veeam's patent-pending, virtualization-specific archicture, which is nowhere near what you have patented? No need to answer, I perfectly realize that this was because your patented approach simply would not work with virtualization, as in-guest logic is not virtualization aware - so things like Storage VMotion (which is essential to finalize VM recovery), would not produce the desired results if you went that route.

So please, no need to make it look like vmProtect's implementation is what you had patented 5 years ago.This is just silly. vmProtect's implementation is nowhere near close your own patent, and I am sure you know this better than anyone else. But then, why are you attempting to confuse everyone by referencing totally unrelated patent application?

Sergey Kandaurov wrote:

I’m not saying that running VMs from an image provides full replacement of replication. However, it may be good enough for many situations.

Ditto. We are getting close! Before you said "most scenarios", now you are down to "many scenarios". However, it really is "few scenarios", unless we are talking about tiniest IT shops with only 3-5 VMs (or, is that your target customer?).

Obviously, running more than a few VMs from backup provides unreasonable performance. Only replication will allow you to perform full site recovery, and be meeting SLAs upon such recovery. There is just no replacement for replication in case of wide outages, period. Moreover, in cases with certain workloads (such as highly transaction database server), you will not be able to meet SLA even with that single  server, if you boot it from backup. So, even though replication costs double storage, that's the price you have to pay to meet RTO and SLA in case of disaster.

[dstamen]

I would definately go with Veeam over vRanger. We recently migrated and it is the best thing we couldve done. better handling of replication, jobs and deduplication.

vRanger's development was slow and always promised features with no deliverables. veeam is ahead of the curve and always developing.

[robhayes117]

I know everyone loves Veeam and it defintely has some very slick components but unless ALL of your data actually lives in you VM's you are ou of luck.  Will not back up iSCSI shared drives.  So for all you clustered folks with shared data- SOL.

You have to have all of your data stored in the actual VM's.  Not sure why anyone would want to tie thier hands setting up VM's in this manner other than to be able to use Veeam

[Gostev]

I am out of office on vacation until Monday, September 19th. I will have limited email access.

[SkandAcronis]

robhayes117 wrote:

I know everyone loves Veeam and it defintely has some very slick components but unless ALL of your data actually lives in you VM's you are ou of luck.  Will not back up iSCSI shared drives.  So for all you clustered folks with shared data- SOL.

You have to have all of your data stored in the actual VM's.  Not sure why anyone would want to tie thier hands setting up VM's in this manner other than to be able to use Veeam

Unfortunatelly in this case the only way would be to install a backup agent inside a virtual machine. Look for solutions with per-host (or per-host socket) licensing.

[DSTAVERT]

Gostev SkandAcronis please take your battle off line. This is totally unprofessional behavior from both companies. I am locking this thread