V6 Replication Accelerated by 10X?

[bobfink]

We are currently using Veeam to replicate to another building at our main location. In the near future we like to move the target site to a branch office and replicate over our WAN. We would like the Priority 1 replicas to be within an hour of production, and to do this we would need to upgrade our WAN speeds.

Are we really going to see anything close to 10X better replication in V6 like what is stated in the press release? If we are going to see anything close to half of that we could save quite a bit of money not having to upgrade our WAN.

I know we should really wait to have the product updated to see our increase in performance, but we are building a new location and we can roll up some of our install charges for the new fiber into our 3 year contract and would prefer if we are increasing speeds to do it up front.

[Gostev]

Yes, at least 10x improvement if you are push-replicating to ESXi target today. Less with other scenarios. What is your target (ESX or ESXi), link speed and backup server location (production or DR site) today?

[ctchang]

Anton, I am sure many would like to know when v6 is going to be released approximately?

[ctchang]

In additional, I am particular interested in v6's new feature

Enterprise scalability
- New lightweight proxy and repository servers allow easier distribution of processing and placement closest to source and target
- New intelligent load balancing maximizes throughput
- Automated deployment and maintenance streamline ROBO and large-scale installations

What does it mean by Backup Proxies? We no longer need multiple backup servers? and the MSSQL database will be shared by backup proxies?

Finally is it true for the current v5 users with maintanence, we will get the lic for Hyper-V free of charge as well?

[Gostev]

You are correct on your assumptions regarding backup proxies.

Multiple backup servers may still be needed in many cases, but not for scaling capacity (isolation for security, political, geographical etc. reason). In other words, same reasons why most larger customers have multiple vCenter when they don't really need them for scalability. Internally, I like to refer to that as "Veeam Backup domain" (just like Active Directory domain) - which is a single Veeam Backup server controlling multiple backup proxies. You can have multiple "domains" like that, and roll them into Enterprise Manager for centralized reporting and delegated job control.

Yes, you will be able swap your licences between VMware and Hyper-V sockets for free. Socket is a socket.

We are certainly planning on public webinars down the road to discuss new features in greater details (just like we did for vPower functionality before v5 was released). I will notify when they will be coming, but they will also be recorded.

v6 will be released in Q4 2011.

[ctchang]

Thanks for your quick reply.

I can't wait to test the new features, hopefully, we can try it in Sept.

[Gostev]

September is Q3 though

[lobo519]

Should we expect replicating to ESXi to be equivalent or faster than replicating to ESX?

Thanks!

[Gostev]

There will be shared architecture between ESX and ESXi, so there will be no differences any more... and yes, faster than today with fat ESX on target.

[lobo519]

There will be shared architecture between ESX and ESXi, so there will be no differences any more... and yes, faster than today with target ESX.

Nice!

[bobfink]

We currently have a 1 Gbps link between our buildings. Our target is ESX and Veeam is running on the DR side.

Our branch office connections is currently 50 Mbps with a 6ms rtt. With the amount of changes we are seeing me may have to up the bandwidth to 150 or 200 to keep our replicas within an hour.

[Gostev]

Bob, so that's not ideal for v5 with ESX target, as you are loosing light network traffic compression by having Veeam server in your DR site. You may be able to improve performance significantly even today by putting Veeam server in the production site.

[bobfink]

We have had around 5 phone calls with support on figuring out where to put the Veeam server and what options to use in the backups and replication jobs. I think every time we have had a call we get a different answer. We originally had a physical server direct attached to the SAN that we were getting great performance on. A support person told us to have Veeam pull from the DR site to get better performance once we move the equipment to the branch location. Overall we have had to reseed the backups and replicas 4 times because of different opinions by support staff.

Any chance we could get someone to go over our implementation and give us a straight forward answer on how we should be running Veeam? (Preferably not level 1 support)

[Gostev]

v5
ESX target: push replication provides better performance (Veeam server in production site)
ESXi target: pull replication provides better performance (Veeam server in DR site)

[J1mbo]

Gostev, many thanks for putting that - very useful!

Any info on how the replication jobs will be improved?

[foggy]

James, please see Anton's first post in this thread on some info on replication speed improvements.

[J1mbo]

Thanks, but I was looking for some detail on how this is being achieved, if it is something you are prepared to share at this stage. And also how this is likely to impact partners such as hyper-IP and the like.

[Gostev]

We usually keep all details secret until closer to GA for competitive reasons. Hard to say how this will affect partners such as Hyper-IP. As for Hyper-IP specifically, it actually works on a different (lower) level, fixing inefficiencies of TCP/IP protocol, so I am sure it will still provide great improvement!

[st0623]

We currently have a 1 Gbps link between our buildings. Our target is ESX and Veeam is running on the DR side.

Our branch office connections is currently 50 Mbps with a 6ms rtt. With the amount of changes we are seeing me may have to up the bandwidth to 150 or 200 to keep our replicas within an hour.

Bob,
You might want to take a look at HyperIP to help defer the bandwidth upgrade at your remote location. You can evaluate it for free for 30 days to see if we can help get replica windows under an hour.