Installing and Testing Vembu Backup and Recovery for vSphere: A Personal Experience
As an IT professional with a focus on virtualization, I’m always on the lookout for new tools to help me manage my infrastructure more efficiently. Recently, I came across Vembu, a backup and recovery solution that offers enterprise-grade features at no cost forever. In this blog post, I’ll share my personal experience installing and testing Vembu in my vSphere lab.
Before we dive into the installation and testing process, let me clarify that Vembu is not just a backup solution for vSphere. It can also be used to backup physical servers, Hyper-V, individual files, and other virtualization platforms. In this post, I’ll primarily focus on the vSphere backup and recovery functionality.
Installation and Initial Setup
Getting started with Vembu is easy. The Windows application can be downloaded from the official Vembu website, and it’s an easy installation process similar to any other Windows app. Once installed, you’ll automatically start the Vembu server and web console.
When you first log in to the web console, you’ll be prompted to create a new account or sign in with an existing one. Once you’re logged in, you’ll see the Vembu home dashboard, where you can select what type of backup you want to perform – vSphere, Hyper-V, physical, or file-level.
In my case, I selected vSphere, added my vCenter Server, and selected the VMs that I wanted to backup. The process is straightforward, and the web console is intuitive and easy to navigate.
Backup and Recovery Process
Once you’ve selected your VMs for backup, Vembu will automatically start the backup process. You can monitor the progress from the web console or the server dashboard. The backup process didn’t take long, and once it was complete, I tested the restore/recovery feature.
There are multiple ways to get your data back from a Vembu backup, such as using the Vembu client software or performing a quick VM recovery. For my test, I chose to perform a quick VM recovery. The process is simple and straightforward, as shown in the screenshots below:
As you can see from the screenshots, the restore/recovery process was successful, and my VM worked fine after the recovery.
Conclusion and Future Plans
Before trying Vembu for myself, I had never heard of them. However, after installing and testing the software in my lab, I’m impressed with their enterprise-grade features and ease of use. I plan to write more about Vembu in the future and continue to explore its capabilities in my vSphere environment.
If you’re looking for a free forever backup and recovery solution for your vSphere infrastructure, I highly recommend giving Vembu a try. It’s easy to install, use, and offers enterprise-grade features that are hard to find in a free product.