BDRShield vs. Dell Networker

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 Networker
Score 5.7 out of 10
N/A
Dell NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.N/A
Pricing
BDRShieldDell Networker
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 Networker
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BDRShieldDell Networker
Features
BDRShieldDell Networker
Data Center Backup
Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Product A and Product B
BDRShield
9.6
Ratings
12% above category average
Dell Networker
5.0
Ratings
52% below category average
Universal recovery9.90 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Instant recovery9.60 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Recovery verification9.90 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Business application protection9.10 Ratings4.40 Ratings
Multiple backup destinations9.60 Ratings3.00 Ratings
Incremental backup identification9.60 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Backup to the cloud8.50 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Deduplication and file compression9.80 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Snapshots9.70 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Flexible deployment9.70 Ratings2.70 Ratings
Management dashboard9.50 Ratings4.50 Ratings
Platform support9.40 Ratings3.90 Ratings
Retention options9.80 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Encryption9.80 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BDRShieldDell Networker
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 Networker
Likelihood to Recommend
6.6
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.6
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
6.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BDRShieldDell Networker
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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For users with a basic backup system that does not provide advanced data protection this is a life saver in the age we live in where hackers are looking to encrypt and ruin your important backups. I would recommend [Dell EMC Networker] based on its features, price, and ease of use. If you have a similar product already it does not offer many unique features however.
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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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  • Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
  • Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
  • Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.
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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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  • Networker terminology is awful. My favorite example is that many required-to-function configuration changes need to occur with the advanced configuration enabled. To make this worse, the 'advanced configuration' I am speaking of is actually called 'Debug Mode'. That's right, you must use debug mode in order to have a functional administrator interface.
  • Errors are common and to resolve you often must go to support. You really need to be an expert to fix many errors, the steps usually involve being really knowledgeable in the CLI tools, which I am getting good at, but the public documentation is seriously lacking for troubleshooting these issues. That said, support (through emc) is really good at handling the common issues, friendly, generally knowledgeable, and quick to respond.
  • It runs on Java, and sometimes I need to clear java cache to fix interface bugs. Generally this isn't an issue, but it is additional software you must worry about.
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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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There are three reasons for not renewing our use of NetWorker: 1) the rising and extremely high cost of support and proprietary hardware needed for deduplication, 2) the complete unreliability of the product (we couldn't recover from a true disaster if we wanted to), and 3) the horrible support from EMC for the product
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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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NetWorker has the clunkiest interface and unfriendliest CLI with which I have ever had to work. I spent three years hating this application because it took ALL of my time just to keep it running. Even then, I had no confidence in our ability to recover from a disaster because of its unreliability.
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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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The support team has always been good, and there is never an issue that can't be resolved. The techs are competent and know the product. The slightly less than perfect rating I'm giving is because Support shouldn't carry the burden themselves. We hear from Dell sales people all the time, but they never call and ask about this product, nor do they offer to upsell it or make it better. That lack of sales support and coherence hurts the overall rating a bit. When I spend my company's money on your product, I expect you to at least ACT like you care, if not actually care for real. It influences my opinion and future purchasing habits.
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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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How can anyone build a house without a blueprint? NetWorker was ramrodded into place here without a design or implementation plan. The result was a setup that was doomed from the start and never worked reliable over the full three years of our contract obligation.
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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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Our trust in DataDomain as a premier deduplication technology naturally leads to [Dell EMC] Networker being the appropriate backup application to integrate with. Networker provides the most favorable dedup with DataDomain when compared to other backup technologies, and provides the highest combination of protection flexibility and performance that most other applications cannot provide. For example, Veeam provides excellent VM backup capability, but is unable to protect Meditech. If you go down the list of backup applications, you'll find that Networker is unique in what it is able to protect and in its backup performance.
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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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  • Now that it's been implemented and the many kinks worked out, we have far less exposure to downtime, but that's only because we didn't have an adequate backup solution in the target environment initially. We used native tools to protect SQL data and a few other tricks, but really didn't have anything proper. In other words, the bar was low.
  • We have reduced the load on some of our application servers through the use of Networker's agent for Microsoft. However, compare that with Veeam, which just has a checkbox and no agent required to properly back up a SQL box.
  • Agent-based backups require monitoring and periodic updates. This adds complexity and additional staff time to manage.
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ScreenShots

BDRShield Screenshots

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