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Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

Anyone using Appassure?

Looking at moving to a different backup solution. Currently using Backup Exec 2010 doing traditional Weekly-Full backups with Daily-Incremental backups. No data dedup or anything fancy.

We are a full VM shop, and my googling found a big competitor to Appassure is Veeam and lots of information saying both is better then the other.

We have all the typical windows services, SQL, Exchange, AD, and what I've seen from Appassure it seems pretty slick. Just looking for other peoples' opinions on Appassure (or something better if they know).

Badger3k
We Don't Need No Stinkin Badgers
Premium Member
join:2001-09-27
Franklin, OH

Badger3k

Premium Member

Tried using AppAssure (work for an MSP) and it sucks. Shit just doesn't work and support is terrible. We don't even use it internally let alone recommend it to clients.

Veeam or Storagecraft would be what I'd look at to replace Backup Exec.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

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Same as badger worked for a MSP and it was part of the kaseya stuff. i have used app assure once or twice it worked with out any major problems... rebuilt a sbs server and a authentication server with it, prefer veeam.

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

Have either of you had to work with it to do restores of individual messages from an Exchange mailbox or any SQL restores with it? Just curious on the process of it. The demo I sat through for Appassure was pretty slick when it came to a restore so I am curious how it compares.

Badger3k
We Don't Need No Stinkin Badgers
Premium Member
join:2001-09-27
Franklin, OH

Badger3k

Premium Member

The only place we had it in production we only had it installed on the file server before we stopped using it. This was back when Kaseya was buying/bundling AppAssure as smunro622 See Profile said. Like I said we had so many issues with the core crashing and not backing up anything that we ended up replacing it with something else.

Maybe it's gotten better since Dell bought it, but we do have a client now that is deploying it (against our recommendation) and from what I've heard backups are failing and nothing is working right.

izy
MVM
join:2000-09-21
endless loop

izy to Weasel

MVM

to Weasel
AppAssure is a pile of ^%$*.... just check out the server requirements for it... Veeam is much better. Check out ShadowProtect too, does both virtual and physical servers and also offers a GRT Exchange add-on for individual email restores.

exocet_cm
Writing
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY

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I tested Veeam in my lab and liked it.

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

So far this thread is sounding pretty similar to what I've read as well. I will have to take a look more into Veeam I think.
mikefxu
join:2004-10-05
Titusville, FL

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Veeam just had a significant update, version 6 to 7. I was going to give it a bit to let the potential problems shake out. We use just a small fraction of what Veeam is capable of but everything has worked great for us.
said by izy:

Check out ShadowProtect too, does both virtual and physical servers and also offers a GRT Exchange add-on for individual email restores.

Veeam does that too: »www.veeam.com/microsoft- ··· ery.html

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
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join:2005-05-02
us

Modus to Weasel

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to Weasel
POS that Appassure and the support sucked (i used the demo before dell bought them). i did a bake-off between it & unitrends. Side by side unitrends beat it to the ground.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

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i used veem to rebuild a embedded sql express db and had no issues...

cypherstream
MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA

cypherstream

MVM

Sounds like a lot of good praise for Veeam. What is it cost, like $1200 per socket right, but that includes everything like exchange, SQL, deduce, etc?

Using Acronis vmProtect. Had a lot of issues but that worked it self out.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

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i want to say 700 to 800 socket for veeam 1 which is the virtualization back up.

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
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join:2005-05-02
us

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you should also take a look at this »www.unitrends.com/resour ··· e-backup I have 2 of them & they have no per client fees

cypherstream
MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
·PenTeleData
ARRIS SB8200

cypherstream

MVM

You have two of the Unitrends backup appliances?

That sounds interesting. Were using the very buggy (and I wouldn't reccomend) Acronis vmProtect and it backs up to some old servers we repurposed with OpenFiler and big storage drives.

Working on next year's budget initiatives now and since Acronis is a wild card, I'm thinking Veeam but you got me thinking Unitrends now as well. Don't mind a separate backup appliance with a ton of storage rather than a few openfiler servers. Much rather consolidate that stuff.

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
Premium Member
join:2005-05-02
us

Modus

Premium Member

Yep..i have 2 of the 833 model. My entire DR strategy is rapped around those & it works great. I like to do bake off's between products so that's how i ended up with unitrends, the other thing i loved is the lack of fees.

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

Modus, do you have any cost comparisons between the Unitrends option and Veeam?

cypherstream
MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
·PenTeleData
ARRIS SB8200

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MVM

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So do you have one at a remote site? They replicate over the WAN?

I want to see if I can just get the software. I have plenty of storage. Submitted my info to their sales dept. Thanks for the suggestion. Got great praise over at the Spiceworks forums.

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
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join:2005-05-02
us

Modus

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Yes i have one at my HQ & another in my DR site, I also have an application that is local to the employees that work at the DR site. The 833 in that location performs backups on that application/databases & replicates that back the my 833 at HQ over 10Gig connection. They don't call it replication they call it "cross vaulting".
Modus

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I would have to dig & see if i can find my results from that bakeoff ( i checked out appassure & veeam) but if i remember correctly veeam would have cost me around 50k (i think) for what i wanted to do. At the time i don't believe veeam had anyway to do any replication, they suggested some 3rd party software to aid in that effort. The unitrends appliance cost me 30k & i went with the premium support which costs 5k per yr because it's DR. I've been using the unitrends appliances since early 2012.

cypherstream
MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
·PenTeleData
ARRIS SB8200

cypherstream

MVM

With Unitrends does that eliminate the need for VMware SRM and replication via SAN/NAS? I have two EMC Cellera's replicating and VMWare SRM at the DR site. However this is live so I still need to keep backups, and that I use Acronis vmProtect which is sloppy. Sometimes Acronis will fail and not clean up its temporary snapshot. You have to babysit it every day to make sure all snapshots have been consolidated. I've seen other people post this as well.

Needless to say I'm looking at Veeam or Unitrends. Sorry don't mean to steal this thread from the OP, but if the OP is looking for a new backup solution then maybe Unitrends or Veeam are better fit the. appassure. To be honest I haven't read up on Appassure yet and I don't think I need to at this point with these other two fine options available.

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
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join:2005-05-02
us

Modus

Premium Member

Yes it would eliminate that need & they have the (IR) Instant Recovery which really is instant, they've re-designed the website but i know at one time they had video's so you see it in action. It may seem kinda cheesy but works just how they show you. They will work with you to design a strategy, I can tell you now they will tell you to dump the acronis (which you have stop using it but keep around for historical backups) so unitrends can take over your vmware & whatever else you have that needs to be backed up. So far i've had a few SQL db failures, 2 vm's crap-out & many users delete files/emails....i've been able to recovery 100% everytime. Going to this product was a big change from tape backups but i'm glad i took the chance on it.

cypherstream
MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
·PenTeleData
ARRIS SB8200

cypherstream

MVM

That is good news.

I'm going to schedule some time with them to discuss. I have to get all my ducks in a row to get a number approved for next year. I constantly have issues with Acronis and the upper mgmt knows this, so I have to find something.

I just want to find out if I can use my own storage, rather than Unitrends storage appliance. Like just buy the software and point it to cifs or NFS shares where I want the backups to reside.

I'm going to replace the EMC Celerra next year, most likely with an upgraded VNX. So I either could sell back that Celerra to EMC (which I'd rather not... just invested a bunch of money on drives for it).. or re-purpose it for backup storage.

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

Well my site is way smaller then needing 50k worth of software. More in the range of 9k, and I don't have a DR site to bring things online if my main site goes down.

If you can find the results though I would be interested to see.

Modus
I hate smartassery on forums
Premium Member
join:2005-05-02
us

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Yes you can use your own storage, I have a dell compellent at my HQ. I just moved my EMC CX320 to my DR site, im working a plan to tie it in to my appliance on that side.
drh
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join:2008-10-20
Olympia, WA

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WeaseL - Any update on your project? Have you picked a backup provider? I’m in the same boat currently and wondering how your selection has been going.
It seems like all the negative Appassure is dated. Pre-Dell purchase, and older v4 reviews. I would love to see someone that has installed in the last few months do a detailed review. They acknowledge that support / customer service fell down after the Dell purchase due to the sudden expansion of customers. Sound like Dell bought it but didn’t provide the support needed for how fast they grew it. That’s supposedly been fixed.
Veeam will not do physical machines. VM’s only. Appassure doesn’t charge for a 2nd Core. So you can put a machine at your home if you wanted that would hold a copy of your in-office core. I think my selection is a number of months off as I want to replace a few major hardware pieces before I put in a new backup. I have an older SAN that is a single point of failure.
I think my short list is Unitrends and Appassure
Regards,
Dave

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

Weasel

Premium Member

We went with Veeam. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to deploy yet, the last few weeks suddenly became insane. Looking to deploy early next week, then I will have some data to look at.

For us we are a full VM shop so that limitation of Veeam in comparison to Appassure was a nonissue. Appassure looked like a good program from the demos. Price was part of it in the conversation obviously, and Veeam was also significantly cheaper.
Weasel

Weasel

Premium Member

Adding an update since we have deployed and are actively using.

So far it's been pretty slick. The interface isn't overly flashy which is nice. Performance-wise I can't complain. The reverse incremental feature is nice, something I didn't have before. Already had to do one file restore which also was very painless. Creating a jobs and repositories is straight forward as well. Their documentation is also pretty good, it has been helpful in answering questions on what some settings do.

Still working on replication. They have a couple ways of doing. Their "primary" way seems more about creating a DR site, which does nothing for me. If my main site goes down bad enough to require my DR backups, I'll have no servers to utilize it. They do have a "copy" function that duplicates the backup sets which appears to be what I want, but scheduling it is a bit awkward since I cannot tell it to run after backups finish. It seems to be something that runs continuously and replicates data as it changes in the main backup directory. Still waiting to see how this settles out after getting a week or two of data replicated.

I was hoping for better dedup and compressions levels, but that may be a settings thing I haven't gotten optimized yet.
mikefxu
join:2004-10-05
Titusville, FL

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Make sure you register on their forum. They send out a weekly "Community Forums Digest" that keeps you updated on improvements and solutions.

yaplej
Premium Member
join:2001-02-10
White City, OR

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Well I'm a little late here but just found this post and wanted to comment because we just went the other way.

I am now finishing a deployment of two Dell DL4000 appliances (the big ones). They are each 25TB systems split into 5TB/20TB the 5TB is for recovery/standby VMs. We actually plan on using that for a test environment because we have two 4-node Hyper-V clusters (256GB 48-cores) we can dump any recovered VMs onto.

We compared a lot of solutions and AppAssure just made the most sense for us on every front. Their licensing model worked better for us, unlimited clients, circular replication and de-duplication worked to our advantage rather than to the their sales volume.

I'm not delusional its not without any issues but the AppAssure and DL4000 support has been very good. Better than working with my previous backup vendors. Even low priority issues I get a call within a few hours to do some initial triage and assign the ticket to the proper team.

There are a few things they certainly need to refine but I think its moving in the right direction to compete with some of the enterprise solutions out there. Now time could prove me wrong but I wont be upset because it wouldn't be the first time and certainly wont be the last.

As for the high hardware requirements its for running the standby VMs without making your backups suffer.