VMware is the leading virtualization platform supplier. Many companies choose its products as their cloud solutions.

Virtual machines are the important parts of a virtual environment because many business systems are running on them. To protect data on VMs from unexpected loss, making a backup is the best solution. VMware knows users' needs, so they add the feature, backup and restore, in their products.

What is VMware Data Recovery (VDR)?

VMware Data Recovery is the part of vSphere suite. It helps users backup virtual machine data on a simple interface. After several updates, VMwave announces that VDR is not supported with vSphere 5.1 and higher.

What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP)?

vSphere Data Protection is the replacement of VMware Data Recovery. After vSphere Data Protection serves as part of vSphere suite for several versions, on April 5, 2017, again VMware announces the abandon of vSphere Data Protection. VMware vSphere 6.5 is the last release that includes vSphere Data Protection. This time, it doesn't indicate the successive product after the End of Availability (EOA) of VDP.

According to VMware, after the study of customers' feedback, vSphere Data Protection can't meet the need of customers, who prefer a solution for software-defined data center. VMware doesn't indicate that they would release a new product for this need, but they intend to focus on the research and development of VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection to support the relative solution suppliers, so users need to find a VDR/VDP alternative. Learn more here!