BDRShield vs. Dell Avamar

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BDRShield
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Vembu BDR Suite is a universal backup solution catering to the backup, recovery, and disaster recovery needs of diverse IT environments. It is also optimized for service providers who deliver BaaS and DRaaS to their customers.
$12
per year per endpoint
Dell Avamar
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and desktops/laptops.N/A
Pricing
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Editions & Modules
Endpoint / Workstation Backup
$12
per year per endpoint
SaaS Backup
$12
per year per user
VMs, Servers & Cloud Backup
$48
per year per VM
Apps & DB Backup
$72
per year Apps
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Features
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
BDRShield
9.6
Ratings
12% above category average
Dell Avamar
7.8
Ratings
8% below category average
Universal recovery9.90 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Instant recovery9.60 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Recovery verification9.90 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Business application protection9.10 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations9.60 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Incremental backup identification9.60 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Backup to the cloud8.50 Ratings3.60 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression9.80 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Snapshots9.70 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Flexible deployment9.70 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Management dashboard9.50 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Platform support9.40 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Retention options9.80 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Encryption9.80 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Small Businesses
Cove Data Protection
Cove Data Protection
Score 9.9 out of 10
Cove Data Protection
Cove Data Protection
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
Bacula Enterprise
Bacula Enterprise
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Likelihood to Recommend
6.6
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BDRShieldDell Avamar
Likelihood to Recommend
First of all Web UI makes it so much easier to manage, with few clicks you can schedule a backup, you can see the progress and you can instantly recover it. There is a multiple environment support which is great for hybrid environments. Pricing is more reasonable than other high priced backup solutions
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It's well suited when you are looking for something to keep your on-premise environment safe and you don't want to spend a lot of time doing the setup. It's easy to scale and a very reliable solution. I think it is not a really nice solution in terms of pricing, so the challenge here is to check if the value [is] worth it.
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Pros
  • Bare metal system images. These are incredibly flexible, enabling you to do dissimilar hardware restores, local or online backups and restore to VHD
  • Full, differential and transaction log backups for SQL server, ensuring rapid backup and restore, with maximum storage efficiency.
  • Incremental backups for files, meaning only the changes which have been made to a file are backed up, dramatically reducing time to backup and increasing storage efficiency.
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  • New and improved interface no longer requires separate program to run on a management server.
  • The avamar interacts with the data domain device to allow for cloud storage.
  • The Avamar AVE footprint is much easier to install and use, given the new GUI.
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Cons
  • User interface on the servers do not have enough tools to better monitor the systems and finding information is difficult.
  • User interface at portal is difficult to navigate and confusing
  • Support documentation is too generic and rarely answers my questions.
  • Licensing and acquisition. As a reseller and partner the licensing model is confusing and the portal interface to manage licensing should be scrapped and rebuilt. It is difficult to navigate and the available information is too vague.
  • Recently, communication with new channel contact. My previous contact was articulate and answered my questions.
  • Did I mention licensing? This is the most confusing and difficult process I've dealt with in 25 years. Makes Microsoft look simple.
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  • The technology is stagnant. It's had the same basic interface and feature set over all of the years we used it.
  • A clunky java based management GUI.
  • It only supports RedHat for the management console under Linux.
  • Meta-data continues to grow even when backup sets do not cause nodes to fill, requiring professional services to clean it up.
  • Fork-lift upgrades.
  • It requires a lot of care and feeding with a lot of time on the phone with support.
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Likelihood to Renew
I think the product will remain useful for us and as the company keeps improving features it will continue to be relevant and useful. We don't like switching technology much and BDR solutions shouldn't be something that a company replaces every few years., that's why most likely we will keep using it.
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I have been using the product for over five years. This has performed so well that with the current system reaching its End-of-Life with EMC next year, I have proposed replacing it with the latest version of the product. Now that it integrates with Data Domain, the cost has been greatly reduced. Instead of the need to purchase many nodes, one Data Domain can replace them creating a significant cost savings.
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Usability
As outlined in are parts of this review, I have various issues with the way their KB center is structured and how error codes aren't documented or KBs for a specific error provide steps for older versions of the software and aren't applicable to the current version because of a design layout change. "Go here and select Y" where the "here" has been removed and doesn't exist anymore. Or they release a new version without any supporting documentation even though they restructured a lot of the interface and updated the error messages.
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The system overall is easy to monitor and see your backup/restore status. The user interface could use updating as it relies on Java and any updates to Java cause the interface to stop working need to be reinstalled
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Support Rating
It often takes a very long time to get an issue fixed. the support folks seem committed to getting it fixed but they often seem to be trying different things and hoping something works. I did not get the sense that they had a clear idea what was wrong.
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Support is very convincing, always eager to solve issues from the root rather than workaround, don't hesitate to take webex, describe the issues to the core and recommend configuration to avoid further issues. We can ask few questions other than the main issue. They don't hesitate to answer.
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Implementation Rating
Overall the implementation was not complicated. The linux version installation is rather easy step by step process. It's just when you do something for the first time, it always take a bit longer because it's new and you just need to be more focused to configure everything properly
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
I tested Vembu against Veeam and for the price, Vembu was the better option. I also had a great support experience as I had to contact Vembu twice after mistakes I made. While using Veeam the software was not as intuitive and support responses were not as swift and accurate.
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Unfortunately, Avamar has stayed behind solutions like Solarwinds Backup and Datto in many different things, like the management of the applications being only desktop, the old fashion interfaces and configurations and specially the fact that it doesn't work as a business continuity tool, which makes it mostly and out-dated application when you compare it with how the market is evolving.
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Return on Investment
  • Backups complete quickly each night saving me time from always having to modify client backups to fit within their backup windows.
  • Money: We are saving hundreds of dollars per year for us and our clients by switching to this product.
  • I no longer spend significant time managing backups, checking their status, etc. Alerts are consistent and warn me if there's a problem. It just works. I rarely have to touch it other than when I do random restore tests (as I do with any backup product) and the instant recovery feature works well for that.
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  • Absolute Zero ROI
  • This appliance does not work in its current state and to update we need to wait 2-3 months
  • Can't wait to get rid of it and replace it with something else. (not even sure if we will be able to get it running before that)
  • [I think] this is one of the worst mistakes we made
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ScreenShots

BDRShield Screenshots

Screenshot of EncryptionScreenshot of Multiple recovery optionsScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of RetentionScreenshot of SchedulingScreenshot of VM Selection