SureBackup Virtual Labs spanning ESXi Hosts, no vCenter

[kacsp]

Could I get advice on the following please:


We're contemplating scaling up the number of ESXi Hosts we use to run SureBackup Virtual Labs but don't, at the moment, have vCenter installed to manage them. So if you could advise what are the likely limitations of doing things this way, running Virtual Labs on a number of interconnected ESXi Hosts , but without vCenter?

Specifically, would it be possible to run a Vlab across Hosts in this configuration? My guess on this is that a particular VLab would be restricted to running on one just one Host, because the 'Virtual Lab' component of the SureBackup Job could only exist on a designated Host when there was no vCenter available?

Or would it be possible somehow, even without vCenter, to make a Vlab run across separate Hosts, with some lab VMs running on one Host & some on another?


My second question: is there a practical size limit to the number of VMs that can run in SureBackup Vlabs, or is the limit just 'whatever's running in production can be run in a Vlab'?


Thanks in advance for your assistance.

[foggy]

You're right, virtual lab is restricted to the specified host, regardless of vCenter availability (with the exception of multi-host SureReplica lab). So to spread the load, you have to create different SureBackup jobs with labs on different hosts.

The number of VMs that you can concurrently test is limited by performance of vPower NFS storage and the repository itself.

[kacsp]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

with the exception of multi-host SureReplica lab

Could you please clarify this...do you mean that with vCenter installed I could run SureReplica labs across Hosts? For performance reasons, our labs are actually Replica-based, not from backups. So is it the case that if I installed vCenter I could run labs across Hosts?

Just an update; it now looks like we may be able to purchase vCenter after all. At present I've just added in a 2nd standalone ESXi Host, though nothing's configured on it yet. All of our SureBackup (SureReplica) Jobs & labs are configured on the original Host at the moment, so what I'd be interested in knowing is once I install vCenter, what are the changes I'd need to make to run labs across Hosts?

[foggy]

Could you please clarify this...do you mean that with vCenter installed I could run SureReplica labs across Hosts? For performance reasons, our labs are actually Replica-based, not from backups. So is it the case that if I installed vCenter I could run labs across Hosts?

What I was meaning, is that in this case VM replicas are started on the hosts they were replicated to.