Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Unitrends UEB - Best Backup Solution Ever!!!

I recently went to an IT conference in Austin, TX a few weeks ago called "SpiceWorld" (not related to the Spice Girls, but nonetheless, just as awesome! HA!).  This was my second time going and if you are an IT guy like myself, who takes care of small to medium sized businesses, first of all you need their FREE software, and secondly, you need to be at this conference!  Great networking, product demos, and presentations to help you stay afloat of the ever-changing IT world.  The second part of that last sentence is what this post is about.  Our company recently went to a nearly 100% virtual server/machine infrastructure and built our own private cloud.  I wanted to find a way to have another server take periodic snapshots of every critical server running in that environment, but could not find the best way to go.  Enter the vendors at SpiceWorld.  There were a few that I wanted to talk to specifically for this, but none moreso than the folks at Unitrends based off all positive feedback listed in the Spiceworks community.  After talking with the reps on-site I knew immediately that I wanted to try the product.  Fast forward a few weeks after conference.  Business is back to it's normal break-neck speed, where I'm jumping from fire to fire, dying to have an assistant to help me, when I get a call from Kathleen at Unitrends.  She said that she got my info from SpiceWorld and wanted to find a time for us to talk.  We spoke and I laid out my goals of finding a backup product for my VM's and she pointed me to the Unitrends UEC free version to test out their product.  I hear that ALL...THE...TIME from vendors, and I wanted to do it, but as usual just didnt' have the time.  She checked back with me a week or two later and I was in the same predicament....needing to find a solution but having no time.  She gave me a link for a demo and so I decided it was time to fit it in the ol' schedule.  I watched the demo and was BLOWN AWAY.  "No way could things be so easy" I thought.  I downloaded the virtual appliance, threw it on my VMWare ESX server and fired it up.  I had it up and running, seemingly, in less than five minutes!  Again, "No way this could be setup that easy" I thought.  Again, wrong.  Everything was up and running.  Now, on to finding the best server to test their backup software on.  I found a small one that wasn't critical, and if something happened and it toasted the server, that I'd be good to go if it was gone forever.  I looked how to set it up for backup and I was up and running AGAIN in less than five minutes!  "This is ridiculously awesome....IF it works."  The skeptic in me blaring loudly.  I wake up the next morning and check my emails.  I see a few from my new Unitrends *FREE* appliance saying the backup was successful.  "Okay, cool."  I thought, thinking about wondering how well it truly went.  I check my server backup and it's totally in tact!  Okay, how does the restore function work you may ask?  I turned off the server, fired up the backup, and everything worked like it should and noone was the wiser!  People...this is a FREEEEEEEEE product that works as well as something I would pay THOUSANDS of dollars to have in my infrastructure!  So much so, that I am in talks with Unitrends now to bring in one of their appliances, or to use some of my equipment, and bring their full-scale backup and offsite replication process in-house!  I cannot wait to get this up and running, and to let me breathe that much easier with a full-blown disaster recovery process at my J-O-B!  You don't even know.  Bust out the champagne y'all, and if you're in the IT game like me, needing a DR software...CALL THESE GUYS NOW!!!  Better yet, just go to the link below, download the free version of their UEB product where you can backup F-O-U-R entire servers FOR FREE and try it out!  (Have I mentioned that it's FREE for up to four servers?  IT'S FREE!)

Click the link and stop wasting time worrying.  Click the link and stop looking elsewhere.  The search is over.  I've already done the research and testing for you.

http://www.unitrends.com/unitrends-enterprise-backup/download 

3 comments:

Unknown said...

"I turned off the server, fired up the backup"

Did you restore the backup to the ESXi server where the backup came from or was the backup running from inside the UEB software?

Unknown said...

Thank you for the awesome words! It was great meeting you in Austin, and we look forward to earning your business.

-Jenn
Twitter: @BackupGal

Want to try Unitrends for FREE – download UEB Free Edition
http://www.unitrends.com/unitrends-enterprise-backup/download

Anonymous said...

interesting stuff, i might search for more information about this, thanks a lot friend.
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