Hi everybody,
i couldnt help myself starting this conversation.
i was very suprised for VDR being shutdown.
i knew VDR would be updated, but was not expectng so soon, since the latest 2.01 was released not so long ago.
i found out VDP was out when updating to vsphere 5.1 and there was no VDR plugin to vcenter.
Anyway i am really dissapointed in VDP, to say the least!
First it depends on SSO and the vmware web client. i couldnt believe: i had to use the slowest gui i have ever used, (not as slow as backup exec 2012 thought!) so much more complicated.
second, you cannot choose the partitions to backup! This is unbelievable! the use i gave VDR was to backup the boot partitions of windows vms!
the other partitions usually have data, that are daily backed up to tape.
so at this time with VDP i have to backup a vm with 700GB in disks, when with vdr i only backup up C: partition with 50GB! hilarious
third, i am obliged to choose between aplliances, that cannot be expanded. In VDR you could mount a partition with any size, anytime!
now i must choose the 2TB VPD appliance because i didnt want to risk not having enough storage in the future, and didnt want to bother having to install more VDP appliances ( they come configured with 4 CPU!)
fourth, it is way harder, not to say impossible, dont know for sure, to reuse a damaged VDP disks, to recover all previous backups.
in VDR all you need was to keep the data partition intact, run a new vdr appliance, mount the data partition from the previous VDR, check integrity and ready to go! VDR lets you use a external disk to store in a safe, using it like tapes!
fifth, minor issue: when backing up, VDP inserts VM costume field "com.vmware.vdr.is-protected" as true
for these reasons, i am forced to use backup exec, without the miracle of deduplication to backup only boot partitions.
i hope vmware solves these major issues very soon, dedup is precious, and VDR was just right.
thanks