WAN Question

[blargent]

I have two ESXi servers that are licensed using the VMWare Essentials bundle.

I am attempting to replicate one VM Guest on ESXi-1 to ESXi-2 over the WAN (internet).

To do this, do I have to have have my VMWare Hosts both loaded into Vcenter? I was hoping to not need to open up all the ports required to access my VMware hosts across the WAN using VCenter.

Please advise.

thank you,

Brian

[cag]

The best I can see is the Replica Destination lets you choose only ESX Servers that are known to Veeam. Either via Vcenter or via ESX hosts. My understanding is you must choose 1 or the other.
Add known Vcenter server or add the source and destination ESX Servers.

Adding ESX hosts only, will not allow you to move the source VM's to another server without doing a full replication again.
If the VM hosts are part of VCenter then the VM can be moved without a full replication. There are other items as well, but this is what I have experience.

Doing a full replication across a WAN is painful unless you have very good bandwidth.

Please check other posts that explain the limits of your choice. We have our VM's with Vmotion and HA enable and the VM's will move at some point. I cannot afford the time to re-replicate accross a WAN.

Recommendation seems to be use Vcenter as your first choice.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Brian,

Yes, Conrad is 100% correct. I would also recommend using vCenter Server rather than standalone hosts for the VMotion reasons. Besides, in order to get better performance rates, you may want to place your backup server on the destination site. Thanks.

[larry]

I do this between two differant VM setups. 2 VCs one at each location. If you don't have a VC at remote location just at the remote esx hosts DNS or IP address to Veeam server list. thats it. I would not load a ESX to a VC over a WAN connection which uses the internet.

[blargent]

This is excellent information. I would like to refine my question by stating my objective.

I am a MSP that wishes to use VEEAM to backup my client ESXi servers to my server at a hosted facility. My clients all typicaly have cable modem or fiber with a speed exceeding 14/2MB. My clients will likley never have more than 500Mb of data changes in a single day. My VCenter server is hosted on a 1Gb+ internet connection.

I wish to replicate data from client sites to my server at my hosting facility.

So if If I have two client sites and my vcenter server running on VMWare at my hosting facility is it feasible to run replication in this manner? If it is feasable I will have more questions about how to setup the ports and use VCenter as I continue to struggle with this configuration.

Thank you for all the input thus far!

[Vitaliy S.]

So if If I have two client sites and my vcenter server running on VMWare at my hosting facility is it feasible to run replication in this manner

Yes, vCenter server is not a requirement for backup/replication jobs.