Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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Marc.H
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CDP vs. Replication

Post by Marc.H »

Hi,

I did attend the V11 launch event yesterday and noticed especially the CDP Feature. Now reading more details it states it should only be used for critical VM. Nevertheless I though to raise this discussion as I did not find any comparison in regards to standard replication when it comes to workload.

Le me draw a picture of what environment I have and start a discussion on that.

We have a VMware environment with 14 ESXi Servers and two Storages Attached (Netapp AFF220). We have found 400 VM's running. On both Netapps we have one half defined as active and the other as passive. everything is FC based. We have a two replication jobs that replicate all vm's on active_netapp01 to passive_netapp02 and active_netapp02 to passive_netapp01. That gives us the advantage in case of total failure of one netapp to start the failed half of the vm's within minutes and we do not need to restore them from backup. Replication takes place two times a time. So we max. loose 12 hours. The size of the active and passive Datastores are around 30TB. There are vm's with only 80GB but also some with a few TB. We did not want to go for Snapmirror/Snapvault as Veeam was already in place. replication jobs run around 2 hours (with coping and snapshot removing). They are not affecting the IO Speed. so that setup seems to work fine. Veeam environment is based on one Virtual Server (Backup Server/Proxy) and two physical Servers with direct SAN attached as proxies. NIC's are all at 10GB speed.

Question would now be:
Is CDP a valid replacement for this solution? Can it handle that amount of VM's or would it only make sense doing CDP for critical VM's and leave the current setup as it is.

Hope to get some idea's from the community

Regards
Marc
Andreas Neufert
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Re: CDP vs. Replication

Post by Andreas Neufert »

I would say it targets different usecases. You will keep in the Snapshot processing a longer chain, so that you can go back multiple days/weeks maybe month with SnapVault. While here you fokus on the RPO and keep only a day or two in the retention. As well it needs much more space compared with the storage if you want to keep it longer.

You need as well snapshots or backups to restore guest files and application items.
Marc.H
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Re: CDP vs. Replication

Post by Marc.H »

Hi Andreas,

thanks for the comments.
From replication job we only keep one Snapshot, as we do also have Backup to a different Storage besides all this. So CDP/Replication would only be used for case of Desaster of one Storagebox. So no log term retention would be needed here.
Andreas Neufert
VP, Product Management
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Re: CDP vs. Replication

Post by Andreas Neufert »

Maybe a good idea to discuss with our Systems Engineers in the field.
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