Data Recovery versus AVAMAR

[gnuworld]

Hello,

In your opinion, what are pros and cons of these two solutions ?

Thanks.

[dconvery]

VDR is great for D2D backup (with DeDupe) of VMs. BUT...it is only for VMs. Avamar offers similar features - D2D backup with De-Dupe - but it can also back up physical machines.

Dave Convery, VCDX

VMware vExpert 2009

Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"

[dconvery]

OOOPS! Forgot...Avamar also does the De-Dupe on the fly, so the network bandwidth being used is highly minimized.

Dave Convery, VCDX

VMware vExpert 2009

Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"

[gnuworld]

Well, my understanding is EMC avamar can be run within VM like Data Recovery, there are more functionalities, more versatile... same price.

Is Avamar is the new backup solution champion instead of general backup solution such as Networker ?

[kcucadmin]

my understanding of Avamarr it requires a GUEST AGENT to be installed, which makes recovery more challenging. the backup is a PUSH from the guest OS.

while that may be fine for some houses, it can make the recovery process more technical.

with VDR you do a restore and bamn, you have a duplicate VM ready to bring on line, just turn on the NIC. same state it was for the Snapshot.

however, Avamarr is by far more stable. VDR is still very "Unpolished" i would say. I have tons of issues with ours. and very limited reporting, if you could call it that.

still i staying with VDR with the Faith that VMware will clean it up... i hope.

[SteveDavidson]

What is the price of each? I find that the only way I can get it is with the vSphere 4 essentials plus which over three years is $4500 - 3000 more than for essentials. Any other way to get DR? What does AVAMAR cost?

[heybuzzz]

Steve... To truly have a DR solution with VMware you need to have somewhere to power on your backed up VM's. I mean, you can use Avamar, Data Recovery, VRanger, PlateSpin to get a copy of your VM's, but then what? If you would loose a data center do you have another one provisioned with spare servers?

I currently run HA/DRS cluster and provide "high availability". I also back up my VM's nightly using VRanger to a Data Domain DeDup device so I have VM level restore, but since I don't currently have SRM/or something similar I don't truly have DR at the host or enterprise level.

See what I'm getting at?