VMotion Alternative?

[davidshq]

Just wondering if you guys have considered including VMotion-like functionality into Veeam? Been looking at VMotion recently and its featureset is extremely attractive - the ability to seamlessly migrate a guest from one host to another, but the cost is pretty astronimical. I know it falls out of the main purpose of Veeam, just figured I'd ask.
Dave.

[Gostev]

Dave, unfortunately VMotion is nearly impossible to provide without having the access to hypervisor source code. By the way, cost is not really astronomical if you look at competitive hypervisors which all provide this functionality for free (Hyper-V R2 and XEN Server). I am pretty sure we will be seeing huge SMB move towards these hypervisors soon, unless VMware has adequate response.

[davidshq]

Yes, I am hoping that the move (especially by Microsoft) will force VMWare's hand...but we are already ESX, so I'd rather not have to move to Hyper-V if possible. :-/

[Gostev]

Well... for Veeam dev. team there are no impossible features really, but this one is very special for a number of reasons. First, it is very costly in terms of dev. effort. Secondly, it will be too easy for VMware to break since they own hypervisor code (and they will obviously do this immediately since at this point we will be directly competing with their offering).

Are you looking for VMotion specifically, or what Microsoft used to call "Quick Migration" would also work for you? Meaning, copying live VM to another host/storage, and then cold starting it on new host. Drawback is that it will have a short downtime during cold start, but nice thing is that this functionality would not require shared storage (so should be appreciated by small customers without SAN).

[davidshq]

The latter option would be fine...and I totally understand that its not a priority right now for Veeam, just figured I'd check...it could almost be a whole separate product.

[Gostev]

Well, the latter option is definitely much more realistic, so who knows...