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Hello:

I am in the process of replacing our current backup solution. Single site, 2 physical servers all virtualized, DAS.

I have been reviewing Unitrend and so far it looks like a good solution.

Has anyone used these particular models for DR? We have both our Exchange and file server VM on the same physical box. I need to be able to run both of them on the backup appliance.

My concern is whether it has enough horsepower to do the job?

We have 50 mailboxes and I allocated 32GB to Exchange and 8GB to the file server.

From my understanding I think Unitrend 712/713 only has 8 or 16MB.

I am also considering Quorum but it was more expensive but it did have a lot more CPU and memory.

I am looking for a reliable DR and backup appliance. I don’t want to spend a lot of time with extra steps should disaster strikes.

Any feedback is appreciated.

4 Spice ups
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Dan - Thanks for considering Unitrends for your backup & DR needs. Are you looking at using either the Recovery-712 or the Recovery-713, or both?

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I think we need the 713 because the 712 doesn’t do offsite backup? It’s not in our budget yet to do an offsite cloud backup so I need a way to get it to tape.

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Dan - The Recovery-712 can archive and replicate, but does not connect directly tape. Is tape the only archival medium you’re considering?

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I’m a current Quorum user and I can tell you we’re very pleased with our purchase. We’ve had our appliances for 18 months now and haven’t had any issues and they’ve saved my butt more than a few times. As a company they’ve also been outstanding to work with.

We’ve also run several full scale DR tests with the boxes, and we are consistently able to get our entire data center back up and running in under an hour (30+ servers 5 TB of data) with only a single OnQ appliance. So when you’re considering the cost of the two boxes, make sure to take into account that the Quorum solution is designed around the premise of running and hosting your servers in a major disaster, thats why they throw all the extra processor and RAM at it, it’s not just a big storage repository.

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Thanks Patrick for the feedback!

Hey Dan,

Thanks for reaching out. Based on your description it sounds like you really want a simple and easy to use DR solution that just works when you need it to. Do you know what your RTO (recovery time objective)/RPO (recovery point objective) goals are? As Patrick mentioned one of the great things about Quorum’s appliances is just how easy it is to set up and recover. With literally just a click you can be backup and running without any issues. I would be happy to set up a demo or answer any additional questions you might have. You might also want to check out our 100+ 5 star community reviews to see what others have to say.

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Another Quorum user here. Also very happy with our purchase. Patrick was a great referral when we were making our decision. My setup is smaller than Patrick’s so Quorum can be sized to fit.

As Kevin asked, you need to get your management to understand the RTO and RPO times. Big difference when we talk about spinning up the servers as VM’s on the appliance within minutes versus sourcing/prepping a machine (with tape drive) and then hoping your restore from tape goes fine. Once these times were put in front of my management, the budget grew.

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I meet with our stakeholder in a couple of weeks to discuss the firms RTO and RPO objectives but it’s safe to say they do not want to be down for an entire day.

Depending on the cost of the appliance they would much rather be up in minutes than hours. You made a good point regarding reliability RE: spin up server vs restore from tape etc…

Personally I need an appliance that is very easy to use and reliable because I am the only IT person. I won’t have the luxury to sit on the phone with support or try to resolve a DR issue in panic mode.

In addition it would greatly benefit us if this DR knowledge is easy to learn and transferable should I be on vacation, I would need a non techie to fill in.

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Single IT guy here too. Setup a demo with Quorum. Everything you see in the demo is how it works. The GUI is clean and simple. Support is quick and helpful, and training was a breeze.

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I have a demo with Quorum this week - look forward to it. So far I hear very good things about Quorum, just not sure whether it’s within our budget but it definitely meets our DR and backup objectives.

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Dan - This sounds like you’re describing the Unitrends experience. Have you setup a demo with us yet? Also, you can try Unitrends before you buy it. We have a trial version that will protect everything in your environment for 15 days, and an NFR edition that will protect 2 virtual sockets +2 application servers & includes support for a year that you may want to explore. If you’d like, I can put you in touch with users who have the 712 & 713 so you can discuss their experiences with them. Here are links to user-published reviews of the 712 & 713 .

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Thanks Katie - I have a demo with Unitrend in a couple of weeks. I’ll check out your links.

The spiceworks community has always impressed me. Thanks again everyone for your post and feedback. It was really helpful.

I’ll post another update as things progress.

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Dan - This is great to hear! Please let me know if there’s anything I can do as you move forward in this process.

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Good to hear Dan. Our team will definitely take care of you and ensure you have a great experience and the right solution to fit your needs. Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.

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Go Unitrends, by far the best backup solution I have ever used. We run the 713 here and litterally it is a set it and forget it (almost) device. Our backup run, I get alerts if there are any issues and Unitrends support calls me when they see an issue. Recently we had a disk go bad, I was not even aware until i got the call from Unitrends support. They shipped me a new drive the next day, I plugged it in and set-up the support tunnel for them to connect in and start the rebuild and that was it problem solved. The customer service at Unitrends IMHO is second to none.

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VericomITguy: how easy was it to test a FA and did you find the 713 had enough resources to spin a couple of big VM’s like exchange and a file server.

Does the 713 allow you to archive offsite without using the cloud…ex to USB disk.

So unitrend actually monitors your device?

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This is relevant to my interests.

I’m currently pricing out backup appliances. Unitrends 713 is one of the front-runners, with the ability to temporarily spin up VMs being one of the biggest selling points for us. We’re also looking at Dell/AppAssure, EMC, Barracuda Networks, and HP StoreOnce. I had not previously heard of Quorum but it sounds like it’s worth considering.

At this point, all the features and stats are kind of starting to blend together. I’d be interested to hear the experiences of people who actually own and use these things.

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Since budget is an issue, have you considered a non-appliance cloud approach, rather than appliance + tape? You’d save on the initial capital cost of the appliance, as well as avoiding the cost/pitfalls of tape - you can simultaneously back up to both a local storage device for onsite backups and to the cloud for your offsites. Using cloud without an appliance also sidesteps the capacity issue, since you can just buy as much space as you need and increase/decrease as needs change.

If you were open to using SaaS instead of an appliance, Zetta.net could be a really good fit for your situation. We back up files, full server images and databases like Exchange and SQL, for both physical and virtual servers with 100% recovery reliability - plus we’re easy to use. You can give the product a shot with our free trial and see if it’s an approach that might work for you.

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Hey Ethan,

If you have any questions I can answer for you about Quorum feel free to let me know.

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Quorum’s pretty great for exchange. We have 250gb in store, with 1500 boxes. The brick level restore is pretty awesome too. Very fast and easy.

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