• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

VM Backup & Replication for $1/socket

T

Thuleman

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
5,833
Quite a few years ago Kevin Roberts came up with the idea of Lovemarks. The basic concept is that goods and services are becoming commoditized and the only real distinction between vendors or brands is how they engage with the consumer to make you "love" that relationship.

To illustrate that point, a ATI HD7970 is an ATI HD7970 no matter whether it's made by MSI or Gigabyte (considering same specs), so why are you buying one over the other? Because you like one brand more than the other for reasons other than the specs of the card.

Anyway, I participated in the Alpha test of Nakivo Backup and Replication which is basically a Veeam VBR clone. I am using Veeam in production and have zero complaints/issues with it. I also find Veeam's product and support pricing acceptable.

Having said that; The Nakivo people are setting out to compete with Veeam and while they are still a ways off from providing an actual clone the product and pricing is going to be of interest to those need to save money on backup and replication.

Obviously Nakivo is in alpha and not production ready, although I ran several replication jobs and didn't encounter any issues with the core of the program. There were some cosmetic issues with the interface.

The Alpha test was nicely done. It was a 2 phase test where during the first phase testers were invited to a webex during which testers RDPed into a Nakivo server to install the product and perform a replication job setup and run the job. The Nakivo team observed how the user interacted with the program and took feedback on usability and functionality.

The 2nd phase was to install the software on your own system, try it out, and then join the Nakivo team for a 30 minute webex where the tester would provide feedback on how the testing went and answer some more questions the Nakivo team had.

Overall this type of testing feedback was labor intensive for them but provided a great way for the tester to interact with the engineers who actually made the software. It was also good to see that many testers seem to have found the same issues. For quite a few things that I brought up I heard that they had already made a note of it from previous feedback.

While quite a few of the engineering team are veterans of the software industry, and the CEO is Bruce Tally who used to be with what's now Quest (also working on vRanger), Nakivo is a relatively new company (Aug 2011) and there is the issue as to whether you'd trust them to deliver software that works and will continue to work.

One way they are attempting to entice early adopters is by pricing the product at $1/socket till the end of July 2012. It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek $1 because you also have to buy $99 worth of support for that socket for the first year, but that still comes out to only $100/socket which is $500+ lower than the next competitor.

If you buy now then you will be in the beta and will receive the final release version planned for probably closer to Q4 2012 than to Q3. I think the beta is planned for September 2012. The "one year" of support and upgrades starts when the general availability version is released. It's worth noting that you will be charged now rather than on delivery of the GA version.

Like I said, I run Veeam and I am happy with it, but I'll still buy some sockets from Nakivo just because I liked the way they did the testing and it will undoubtedly shape up to become a great product. At the current $100/socket I can just chalk it up as product evaluation expense and if it turns out that it will be better than Veeam once released then I can always make the switch at that time.

P.S.: Ignore the meh web page design, they are working on it.
 
Do you work for Nakivo? Are you a partner with Nakivo? Sounds like you're trying to sell something.
 
No and no. As I said, I took part in the alpha test and am making folks aware of the price they picked to push the product out to early adopters. I found the test phase to be very different from other software testing I participated in previously and decided it's worth to write it up.

I recommended JetStor in another thread, that doesn't make me a JetStor employee or a VAR. In fact, you can probably find a thread on here where I recommended Veeam.

It's just a user experience post, nothing more.
 
Hmm, could be interesting, as they say if you pre-order at this price your support and upgrade fees will never go up (so $100 per year). Might be worth buying a couple copies just on the chance it turns out to be somewhat comparable to veeam.
 
If their intent is to copy Veeam and be cheaper they don't deserve the support. Veeam puts a lot of resources in to their R&D and supporting the community as a whole.
 
NetJunkie said:
If their intent is to copy Veeam and be cheaper they don't deserve the support. Veeam puts a lot of resources in to their R&D and supporting the community as a whole.
Click to expand...
Most everything out there is a copy of something else, that's actually how competition works.

That Nakivo's product is a Veeam clone are my words, not theirs, but for me it's the easiest way to describe the product quickly. Replication and backup is replication and backup, there are only so many (few) ways to achieve that. In essence all replication/backup products do the same thing, the only difference is the user interface and the price.

There are lots of companies out there that have put in substantial resources to invent stuff we use every day. Daimler invented the vehicle radiator, does that mean you will only buy Mercedes? What about what Bell has done for phones, are you using an ATT branded phone and ATT service because of that?

Again, I am a Veeam user and I am satisfied with their product, but I don't have an emotional attachment to it. If there is a different product out there that does the same thing at a lower price then I may just go for it, whether that's Nakivo or Joe Shmoe's VBR that he will code tomorrow.

Strictly speaking businesses are obligated to select products that provide them with the best value to maximize their own profit and provide a return to their shareholders. That doesn't really relate to Nakivo since I doubt that any large scale enterprise will switch to them, but the point is that no one will continue to pay more for a product/service if a viable lower cost alternative is available.

You made an argument based on emotions, which is fine, but for others the bottom line is more important than any sense of allegiance because of times past.
 
As the others have said, as long as they aren't stealing actual code, I'm fine with it, it's competition. VDR & veeam do essentially the same thing already (basic mechanisms anyway. veeam obviously takes it further), if someone else can join the party and save me money, that's good for me and my clients.
 
Thuleman, has any of the feedback been about incorporating an actual backup process (to disk, NAS, nfs/smb etc)? I installed the alpha on a test box, and while it looks like is has potential, it's appears it is replication only at this point to another vsphere box. The backup part of 'nakivo backup and replication' appears to be a bit of a misnomer.
 
I got my question answered, and the backup function is coming in the beta. Good to hear. I went ahead and purchased a couple licenses on the promo, if it works out like they hope, that will be some real money savings for people in small business (like me).
 
vm backup scene is getting real hot

good for customers bad for vendors

checked nakivo sounds primising but still a long way to go to catch up with veeam
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top