BDRSuite: Windows Server Backup Software
Do you have an environment where you have standalone Windows Servers that aren’t virtualized? Or, do you have Windows File Server Clusters in your virtual environment with RDM disks (Raw Disk Mapped)? Then BDRSuite Windows Server might be the solution for you!
As with The free VMware Backup solution, BDRSuite for Microsoft Windows also has a FREE edition! See the differences between the two below:
Vembu Backup for Microsoft Windows – Free vs Standard Edition
| Free Edition | Standard Edition |
| Backup your Windows machines at zero cost: | Full functionality edition for Microsoft Windows: |
| Backup 10 Windows Workstations with no feature restrictions | Backup your Windows Server at $6 per server/month |
| Backup entire disk or selected volumes of your critical workloads | Backup your Windows Workstation at $1.5 per workstation/month |
Here are some of the features of the BDRSuite for Microsoft Windows…
Microsoft Windows Backup – Feature Highlights
Backup
| Image-based backup of Windows Servers/Workstations running on physical and virtual platforms | Application-aware backup along with automatic Log Truncation for MS Exchange, SQL, AD and Sharepoint servers |
| Backup the entire Windows Servers and Workstations or only selected disks/volumes of Windows machines | Vembu uses its proprietary Changed Block Tracking driver to take incremental backup after the initial full backup |
| Supports backup of MBR and GPT partitioned disks and the disks of size more than 2 TB of data in a Windows machine | Flexibly scale your backup repositories as and when required through Scale-out repository feature of Vembu |
| Vembu backup for Microsoft Windows supports the backup of both Basic and Dynamic disks in a Windows machine | Automated Backup Verification to verify the data recoverability of the backed up Windows Servers and End-points |
| Deploy and manage Vembu Backup agents directly from the BDR backup server user interface | Configure, restore and monitor the backup of Windows machines from a centralized web-based User Interface |
Recovery
| With Bare-Metal Recovery (BMR) restore the entire machine including its operating systems, applications, and data to the same or new hardware | Application item level recovery for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Active Directory |
| Using Instant Boot VM (P2V) option restore the entire physical Windows machine as a VM on VMware/Hyper-V/KVM hypervisors | Flexibility to migrate Windows machines from a physical to a virtual platform to achieve cross-platform migration by downloading the data in VHD,VMDK, RAW formats |
| Restore the corrupted volumes or disks of Windows Machines through the Disk/ partition level recovery option of Vembu | Instant Boot Live Migration is a permanent migration process where the Windows backup that is instantly booted as VM can be migrated as an independent VM to a targeted VMware Host |
| Instantly restore files/folders from Windows Server backup without restoring the entire image of the Windows machine |
Management
| Built-in AES 256-bit industry grade Encryption Algorithm that encrypts the backup data in flight and at rest to ensure data security | Store a secondary copy of the backup data in an offsite location- Remote/Branch office, Cloud and also archive it for years using Native Tape drives |
| Control the size of backup data with in-built compression that could range from low to high without compromising on integrity of the data | Set up rotated drives as the primary backup repository by using multiple external hard drives and swap them on a regular basis |
| Inbuilt deduplication of redundant data to reduce the storage space with an ability to scale as and when required |
Want a peak under the covers to see how it works? Here you go!
How does Vembu Backup for Microsoft Windows work?
| Vembu uses Microsoft VSS technology to take a snap of the entire Windows machine or a selected disk/partition | |
| The application-aware processing ensures a consistent database snapshot by quiescing the MS applications using Microsoft VSS APIs | |
| The initial backup is the full backup and the rest are only the incrementals (changes) | |
| The changes are captured at the block-level using the proprietary Changed Block Tracking (CBT) driver of Vembu to ensure faster backups at an RPO of 15 mins |
Unique Backup features for Microsoft Windows
Disk Image Backup
Vembu offers Disk image based backup for physical Windows Servers and Endpoints with a flexibility to backup the entire Windows machine or a particular disk/volume.
| Supports backup for both Basic and Dynamic disks |
| Also backups disks that are larger in size i.e. more than 2 TB in size |
| Exclude system files during backup – pagefil.sys & hiber.sys using the advanced filter option |
Advanced Near Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
The flexible scheduling policies of Vembu to backup Windows Servers and Windows desktops/laptops at an RPO of every 15 minutes helps to achieve near continuous data protection.
| Incremental Windows backup using proprietary Changed Block Tracking driver of Vembu to ensure faster backups and less data transfer |
| Run backups on Hourly/Daily/Weekly basis |
| Configure additional full backups on Daily/Weekly/Monthly basis |
| Configure synthetic full backups on Weekly/Monthly basis |
Application-Aware Backups
Businesses today run services and data on top of business-critical applications and the data protection solutions need to have the ability to interact with the application for consistent backups.
| Leverages Microsoft VSS technology to create consistent application backups |
| Supported for Windows Servers running Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Active Directory |
| Automatic Transaction Log Truncation to save the storage space |
Flexible Retention Policies
Retention allows organizations to have control over the number of recovery points that are to be retained for a certain period of time by purging older recovery points of a backup job.
| The Basic and GFS Retention Policies of Vembu helps to retain multiple recovery points that span for days to years |
| Depending on business SLAs the retention policy can be varied by selecting the number of versions to be retained |
| Through GFS retention, retain Additional Full and Synthetic Full backups from days to years |
| Create restore points on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis |
Automated Verification of Backups
Verifying backups is one of the most crucial steps as far as disaster recovery is concerned. Vembu BDR Suite provides an automated process for verifying backups in order to ensure data integrity.
| 3-tier of backup verification – Boot test, Mount test and Data Integrity test |
| Automatically boots and tests the integrity of backed up Windows Servers/Workstations |
| Screenshot of the booted machine is captured and sent to the admin via email |
Multiple Recovery options for Windows Machine
Bare-Metal Recovery
The Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) feature of Vembu allows you to recover the complete physical Window Servers, Desktops and Laptops from the scratch. This Restoration process brings back the system to its previous state which was available before the occurrence of the disaster or system crash.
| Perform free Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) using Vembu Recovery CD |
| Bare Metal Recovery also restores the supporting environment such as operating systems and applications in-order to rebuild the system |
Instant Recovery
The Vembu backup for Windows Servers and Windows PCs allows you to instantly boot the entire physical machine as a virtual machine on a VMware/Hyper-V/KVM hypervisors.
| Physical to Virtual platform migration – (P2V) |
| Meet RTO less than 15 minutes |
| Similarly mount the disks of the backed up Windows machine virtually on the local server in couple of second using Disk Management mount recovery option of Vembu |
File-Level Recovery
The basic recovery operation is granular recovery of files/folders from an image based backup. Vembu ensures quick and easy recovery of files and folders directly from the backup data of physical Windows Servers/Workstations.
| Restore files/folders to the same or different location |
| Restore the file/folders along with their file permissions |
Recovery of Microsoft Applications
Recover individual application objects of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and AD from the backup data. Any restore point can be selected and individual items can be recovered within minutes.
| Supported for Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint and Active Directory |
| Mount the backup data, browse and restore the application items directly from the Windows disk image backup |
| Restore specific application items from the backup of Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, and Active Directory Server running on a physical or virtual Windows platform |
Cross-Platform Migration
Migrate the backed up physical Windows Servers/Workstations to a virtual environment (P2V) by downloading the appropriate virtual disk format i.e. VMDK, Flat-VMDK, VHD, VHDX and RAW to launch as a VM.
Robust Data Security & Management options for Windows Backup
Higher Grade Backup Encryption
Vembu BDR Suite protects your backup data both in-flight and at-rest using industry-standard AES-256 bit encryption algorithms and also allows the user to add a second layer of authentication to protect the backup data with customized or system generated passwords.
Scale Out Backup Repository
Vembu BDR Suite supports different storage media such as Local drives, NAS (NFS and CIFS) and SAN (iSCSI and FC) as backup targets. Flexibility to scale the storage repositories as per the storage needs without constraints.
Software Defined Backup Storage
With Vembu you can create a software-defined logical storage pool by grouping one or more storage volumes that makes efficient use of all available storage provisioned for backup purposes with built in compression and deduplication.
Optimized Backup with Where-it-left-off
Image-based backups run more efficiently even if there is network failure or other interruptions during backup. Whenever a backup restarts from an interruption, the backup will automatically start from where it left off during the previous schedule. This feature can greatly improve backup performance even when there are frequent network failures especially in WANs
Multi-host Backup Support
Configure backups for multiple-hosts in a single job and you can always configure running backup for different hosts inside a job to run in parallel thus improving backup performance.
Parallel Disk Processing
Parallel backups of multiple disks in a single host during the backup schedule. You can customize the number of backup jobs and the number of VMs/disks in a single backup job that can run in parallel from the BDR Backup Server GUI.
Build Virtual Lab Environments
With the ability to boot the backed up Physical Windows Machines as VMs directly from backup storage, businesses can effectively build virtual lab environments that allows efficient provisioning of DEV/STG/Test environments on the fly
DR support for Microsoft Windows Backup
Offsite Copy
Replicate a copy of the backup data to an offsite location i.e. a remote office/branch office datacenter to ensure extended data protection at times of unexpected disasters using Vembu Offsite DR server.
| Bandwidth throttling of network to limit its traffic during work hours |
| Seed large amount of backup data to offsite locations to save bandwidth and time |
Cloud DR
Experience the power of Cloud by replicating a copy of business-critical data from Windows machine to Vembu Cloud, in order to access the data from almost anywhere. This Vembu Cloud resides in Amazon Web Services.
| Granularly restore the backup data from anywhere at any time |
| Control replicating the secondary copy of data at work hours through Offsite Replication Window |
Replication to Hybrid Cloud
Vembu BDR Suite allows you to replicate a copy of the backed up Windows machine to your own cloud storage that relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by creating respective gateways through Offsite DR Server.
Native Tape Backup
Vembu offers Native tape backup support at both the primary and secondary location to archive Windows Server/Workstation backup for a longer period of time at a lower cost compared to other competitors in the market.
| Efficient and cost-effective long-term archival of data |
| Helps to meet the best practice of 3-2-1 backup strategy |
You’ll certainly want to check out BDRSuite for Microsoft Windows Server!
Get more information on BDRSuite: Windows Backup Software from Vembu.
You can download BDRSuite here!
Get more information on these BDRSuite offerings below:
VMware – https://www.bdrsuite.com/vmware-backup
Hyper-V – https://www.bdrsuite.com/hyper-v-backup
Micosoft 365 – https://www.bdrsuite.com/office-365-backup
Visit BDRCloud.com to get started with Cloud Backups with Vembu!
You can find a list of my previous Vembu posts HERE.
Ben Liebowitz, VCP, vExpert
NJ VMUG Leader