On April 5th, VMware announced that they would discontinue VDP, vSphere Data Protection – VMware’s integration backup solution. Now, VMware will not have an integrated backup solution but instead will rely (as they should) on partner solutions that utilize official vSphere APIs.
Several years ago, VMware had 2 versions of VDP – standard and Advanced, and both were based on EMC Avamar technology. I’ve played around with it and had it deployed at a couple small customers. However, the product was not the best in terms of recovering from backup. In 2015, VMware dropped the Advanced, and put all the features into standard, and offered it for free with most vSphere subscription levels.
Now, with the announcement that VDP is on of life, VMware is recommending that customers migrate to EMC Avamar. While the adoption rate of VDP is quite low, I think that Avamar is not the correct solution.
I would strongly recommend that customers using VDP look at deploying Veeam into their data center. Veeam is the perfect solution for virtualized DC, and has proven reliability in both backing up data, and restoring what you need when you need it.
**Disclaimer** Veeam is a sponsor of this blog, however, they do not have any involvement when it comes to content.
VDP wasn’t ever the most feature rich or fantastic solution but it made SRM deployments easier having it all in one place. Whilst other providers such as Veeam deliver loads of unquestionable additional value it is an extra cost over and above a simple SRM solution leveraging VDP.
The complimentary Avamar licenses won’t cut it if you have more than 4TB of data (which isn’t a lot these days lets be honest!). Good for other players though like Veeam though.
Kim. Thanks for commenting. Although VDP and SRM don’t integrate. I think you are referencing vSphere replication? VMware is just discontinuing the backup product.
Doh! Of course I am 🙂 I blame Sunday and always linking the pair together as ‘inclusive’ – good news though 😉 Thanks!
No worries! Thanks for reading!
Good article. I too have deployed VDP Advanced for a customer to integrate with a Data Domain appliance, not my recommendation. Fortunately the client kept their Veeam licenses and quickly switched back. I recommend Veeam to all my clients now.