http://www.virtualizationteam.com/veeam/veeam-backup-replication/veeam-backup-replication-4-1-with-full-support-for-replication-to-esxi-hosts.html

We will look into providing a vRanager & Veeam Backup comparison, though we started with the replication part as we have not seen any one comparing the replication products, where there is few comparisons of the backup solutions available on the net.

Enjoy,
ITComparison Team

For future release information of both VizionCore & Veeam I would recommend you look at their site. We have decided to keep the comparison as much as possible to the currently compared products as we can’t verify future release features. Thanks for your understanding & hope you come back & check our upcoming comparisons.

Enjoy,
ITComparison Team

Ok, for people who is following up we had just modified the comparison after all the information feed to us from VizionCore, Veeam, & others on our blog. We had went back to the lab and validated the technology points. As well we had a team members online gathering where we had discussed other points brought up on our blog post & below what has been modified & what has been left & why.

ESXi support as a source disk by Veeam but not VizionCOre was added to the comparison. Although Veeam does not support ESXi as a target, we thought supporting it as a source might be an important to know for some customers.

ESXi expected full support date for both products was removed, as neither party was able to commit to the date listed on their forums. We had decided it was fair enough to remove the expected date as requested by both vendors.

Thin Provisioned disks are still not fully supported on both solutions. We had went to the lab and tried to replicate Thin Provisioned disks with both solutions, and what we had end up with was a think disk on the target side. Although that will do the DR failover trick, it will waste way more space than if thin disk provisioning was totally supported.

We had not added the compression point as requested by Veeam in the earlier comment on here, as VizionCore claim to do inline compression. As well while testing the replication we could not really calculate the compression advantage of neither vendor as both of them use a different method of replication.

We have not omitted VizionCore planned product price, as that was committed by VizionCore & that will not change based on technology.

We have worked hard to verifying each of the above modifications & tried to keep it as accurate as possible. If you have any points which you still think it has to be modified please point it out in the next 3 days, as we need to close the lab for this comparison. Any comment will be posted after three days it will be posted to the blog, but will not affect the comparison unless its a serious mistake.

Enjoy,
ITComparison Team

Veeam will offer a new version of their backup-solution which contains support for the new vSphere vStorage API in one or two weeks.

This is right timing for us because we must find the a solution for our new environment with 3 or 4 ESX Enterprise Servers while next month - at january 2010 the new servers should be ready to run and we must find and buy the best solution for it before!

In our actual (very old) environment with physical servers we use Symantec BackupExec v12. They offer an addon to backup ESX-Servers / VMs. But is it a good idea or was another solution a better choice? We try in moment the new solution from Acronis, “Backup & Recovery” v10, a week ago we have seen a presentation about the bundle of a quantum DXi (with dedup) and esXpress which works as virtual appliances and it looks / sounds very smart.

We need definitely help to find the right solution but we haven’t the hardware and the time to make all the needed tests for different products on market. Your site and you was the only help, because no other does compare the products…

A big point for us is the support for MS SQL 2005 / 2008 and Exchange 2007. Both products should have VSS-Support but is it enough to make consistent backups of these servers? What is with logfiles? While a “normal” backup with integrated mechanism you can cut them after backup. Is this also possible when I use “Veeam Backup” or “ESX Ranger” with VSS? If I follow the message from Anton from Veeam above VSS isn’t VSS…why that? I thought it is a standard API?

What I noticed in both product managers replies is how Veeam seem to like to beat up Vizioncore. Come on guys say positive things about your own software and dont bash the other. Thats our job as customers.

I agree that the ability to power on a vm in isolation is important, how else will you be able to tick the box in your audit that states ‘dr environment tested and works’. Vizioncore take note before I fork out for my 24 enterprise cpu licenses…

What I would like;

dedup
compression and network throttling
failover and failback
better linux support
Ability to purchase direct!

1. Veeam supports ESXi as replica source, Vizioncore does not support ESXi at all. You would think - no big deal? But we have

customers who are 100% on ESXi in their production, while using single “full” ESX as standby host because this is what our product requires - and they are quite happy. Can Vizioncore work in such environment? No. Thus, I believe our ESXi support on source is very important and must be reflected in comparison.

2. You said both products has VSS integration, but they are dramatically different as for depth and maturity. You have even run into the actual issue demonstrating that Vizioncore approach to VSS integration is flawed, and does not let the product produce *working* replicas. Forget about all the other features both products have, and please tell me: what is the use from replication products that produces replicas which cannot be powered on in case of emergency without manual intervention? To me, this issue alone means big red sign to any DR product, no matter how fast it is, and how great other features are. More on this here: http://veeammeup.com/2008/08/vss-and-vmware-esx-what-your-vmware-backup-vendor-isn%E2%80%99t-telling-you.html (and

you’ve run into the actual issue yourself anyway).

3. What I believe is extremely important for a replication product, but not mentioned in this comparison, is network traffic compression. Would you agree that this feature is absolutely critical for WAN replication? Now Veeam has it, Vizioncore does not have it.

Other than this above, comparison looks good, thanks for being objective to both vendors.

On a side note:
a) “Though both are promising to support [ESXi] in 1st half of 2010″ - are you sure you heard about this from Veeam? I am actually product manager for Veeam Backup and Replication, and I am a bit surprised to see this statement. I am also surprised to see this statement from Vizioncore given the recent post on their forum from one of their officials stating H2 2010 timeframe for ESXi support. OK OK, I will mind my own business here

b) Thank you for NOT updating comparison with the next version’s features. Some companies out there love to sell future. I would even kindly ask you to remove the pricing change remark. Let’s deal only with software that is available for download today, and prices you have to pay if you would by the software today. Would you agree? Up to you, of course.

Yes, we are also releasing new major release of our product later this month with lotsa great new features, but it does not matter for this specific comparison, right?

I think this is it from my end, and yet again - great job - thanks so much for taking time to evaluate both products and post such a great summary. It will be even better if you consider some of my bullets above