Pro's and Con's for Esxpress and ESX Ranger

[Gaprofitt]

Can someone who has reviewed both products give me a pro's and con's of each. I'm looking for some opinions on which product to go with for backing up running VM's.

Thanks,

Greg

[admin]

Oh dear, I sense a flame war coming.

They're both good products in their own right and both work well, I believe both do evaluation version so I'd recommend trialing both and choosing the one that you like the best, rather than relying solely on the opinions of others.

As you'll probably see shortly, people tend to like one or the other - it's a bit like Mac OSX vs Windows vs Linux, I wouldn't say one is better than the other, they're just different approaches to the same problem.

[ilatimer]

mittell,

I am going to have to disagree. Mac OS X is a far better operating system than Windows.

As for Esxpress and Ranger, I agree. I know that Ranger interfaces with VCB, but I am not sure about Esxpress (if you are looking for something like that).

[admin]

Lol, there's always one. Personally I can't stand Macs but each to his own.

[ANSA]

Touche

[femialpha]

I have evaluated both products and I am leaning towards esxranger unless my budget can not accommodate it. If i were the only one managing the virtual environment, esxpress would be a no brainer but for my windows centric shop, my team would be better off with esxranger. Secondly, you have to allocate resources to the virtual appliances esxpress uses and the numerous items it registered with virtual center made it look cluttered.

Esxpress is cheaper though and there is a free version, whereas vizioncore is yet to release a free version of esxranger for vi3.

Message was edited by:

femialpha

[kix1979]

No flaming war that I can see. As you said, both products are well respected and perform the functionality you want at the core. However, each has different bells and whistles that you really need to evaluate for yourself. Based on which features you like the most and gives you the reliability you are looking for will determine the product to go for.

Both are available for download to trial/use and are fully functional. Give them a download and if you run into issues at all contact the support for either. I know both give you support during testing.

Kix

PS. I do work for vizioncore :smileygrin:

[ronzo]

Hi Femialpha-

Can you send me a list of your specific complaints, as we're always making esXpress better from peoples suggestions. (support @ p2v.net)

thanks

ron mckelvey

phd technologies

[femialpha]

I will definitely send you one but just to give you a clue, take a look at leostreams P2V virtual appliance. It is much more user friendly and doesn't look like an open source product for geeks. Don't get me wrong, i like your product but in a company where we use lean production principles in decision making, we would consider esxranger a better product.

[petedr]

I can only speak about the esXpress product. We have been using it in production for about a year now. Think it is very easy to use plus it has lots of features. Backups run in VBAs ( Virtual Backup Appliances ). This offloads the backups to the virtual space. Configuration can be done in a text menu or a GUI helper. Support is excellent and very responsive.

Their free version does Full backups only. They also have an inexpensive Starter edition which enables their Delta Technology. They also have a Professional edition which adds additional features.

Definitely recommend it.

[jrhodes]

I have used ESX Ranger for over 2 years.

Ranger does very well if you have a small shop. For us, we had to pull the plug on it because it just could not handle the amount of VMs we were throwing at it. We have around 500 VMs running on 20-24 ESX hosts. We asked vizioncore to come out and help us get it running. Their response was "We don't do consulting anymore".

We switched to EsXpress, and we having it working much better.

PHD consulting was execellent at providing us what we needed. They came out and set us up and helped us work through our problems.

Jim

[cheeko]

Definitly a plus for esXpress, they're support is outstandig. Whenever you have an issue, you can be sure that you well have support immediately. And when i mean support, I am talking about in-depth technical support and problem solving.

Another plus is the backup speed. Maybe someone has the numbers, but I think esxRanger can't compete with the GB/h that esXpress delivers through it's (parallel-running) VBA-technology.

People like it because it's reliable - Set and forget.

Test both products, see what works better in your environment and make a decision.

[kix1979]

Another plus is the backup speed. Maybe someone has

the numbers, but I think esxRanger can't compete with

the GB/h that esXpress delivers through it's

(parallel-running) VBA-technology.

I beg to differ on this point. When you compare GB/hr as well as Backup Impact vs. GB/hr you might be suprised. :smileygrin:

[jrhodes]

Yes, I forgot to mention the VBA technology.

Vizioncore uses the console to do their backups.

esXpress uses VMs to do the backups (VBAs).

Jim

[gogogo5]

esXpress installs a daemon into the SC, esxRanger does not install anything into the SC.

[ronzo]

In begging to differ, lets review the math.

Suppose I have my physical server, a dually box, or even a 4 way. It has my 1Gb (or 2GB) fiber card. Now mind you, this is a Windows box, running VCB and some type of backup software.

Assuming this machine was getting 25mb/s on backups and you could run 4. OK, I'm assuming that this Windows server could be reading, compressing, backing up data at 100 megabytes per second. Yes, stay with me here.

10 meg/sec = 35 GB/Hour (100mb)

100meg/sec = 350 GB/Hour (1000mb)

So 10 hours at 100meg/sec (1000mb) would get you 3.5TB of backups.

Now I rounded the numbers a bit.

In your 10 hour backup window, your VCB box can backup 3.5TB. So for 10TB, you need 3 VCB proxies?

How does VCB scale, or am I missing something?

thanks

ron

And about the esxpress daemon in the console. There are jobs in the console that create, control and destory the VBA VMs. All the actual data processing happens in the virtual space. So if you have an 8 way host, you can run 8 backups if you choose.

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ronzo

[kix1979]

VCB or VCB integration has no impact to your systems when you do a backup vs. console or virtual appliances. Also since you are mentioning, keep in mind that esXpress does install inside of the service console and runs a daemon on the host.

[kix1979]

With any product that uses resources on the host, you are not going to run a backup during production hours. There is no reason to run VCB within a 10 hour window, since it uses no resources on the ESX hosts. Therefore you can run VCB 24 hours with minimal impact. Now granted, there are exceptions to this, but those VM's could be scheduled during what you would consider to be the backup window. In addition to VCB, if you use VCB and network based backups, you are now able to do a combination of backup technologies that scales out and up with minimal costs. Why use one backup technology when you can leverage both?

[kix1979]

Another question I have for all of us, me included... Is there a set of standardized tests for backups, similar to the process used for SQL testing for hardware? I'd love to have a standardized set of VMs or something that could be used for bake-offs or something.

Also I forgot to mention, if your SAN infrastructure can support 2G+ fibre channel cards, it will improve speeds even further.

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kix1979 Add the fibre stuff

[admin]

Hey look at that.

Gasprofitt started you guys going again, marked this thread answered and didn't even give you any points for your blood pressure.

'Doh