Backup Scenario

[matt19849]

Hi,

I've been looking at Veeam but I'm getting a bit confused with ESXi vs ESX.

Currently we have 4 ESXi hosts at one site and 2 ESXi hosts at the other - are these supported with Veeam Backup and Replication? I've been told I need to purchase ESX licenses to be able to use Veeam is this correct?

What we are planning on doing is creating a snapshot of all VM machines on all 4 ESXi hosts onto a SAN then replicated those snapshots over to a SAN at our remote site. The two ESXi machines at our remote site would have a snapshot created on their SAN and then replicated to the SAN at this site.
The plan was to have a snapshot of each sites VMs at both sites if that makes sense.

Will this work? Do I need to purchase ESX licenses?

Cheers.

[foggy]

I've been looking at Veeam but I'm getting a bit confused with ESXi vs ESX.

Currently we have 4 ESXi hosts at one site and 2 ESXi hosts at the other - are these supported with Veeam Backup and Replication? I've been told I need to purchase ESX licenses to be able to use Veeam is this correct?

Matt, both paid versions of ESX and ESXi servers are equally supported, no need for special licenses. Please see the system requirements FAQ section.

What we are planning on doing is creating a snapshot of all VM machines on all 4 ESXi hosts onto a SAN then replicated those snapshots over to a SAN at our remote site. The two ESXi machines at our remote site would have a snapshot created on their SAN and then replicated to the SAN at this site.
The plan was to have a snapshot of each sites VMs at both sites if that makes sense.

Will this work?

If you are talking about replicating two sites to each other (having replica of all site's VMs at another site), then yes, this is possible.

[matt19849]

The replicas wont be running at each site - they will just be stored on the SAN so basically just backing up locally and backing up to a remote site - i assume thats fine and easily done too

One thing I forgot to ask - we have an iSCSI array attached to one of our vm servers and then shared out across the network, will this be backed up along with that VM? If not how can I back this up?

[matt19849]

Matt, both paid versions of ESX and ESXi servers are equally supported, no need for special licenses. Please see the system requirements FAQ section.

Looking at the FAQ it says the free ESXi isn't supported so I assume I will need to buy licenses (i forgot to mention its the free ESXi we are running - sorry)

[kjc3303]

Matt you do not need ESX, ESXI is supported.

You can create backups to your local SAN and replicate using 3rd party tools, or you can backup directly to remote site(SAN) using Veeam.
You can also Replicate direct to other site which would give you a fully functional ready to turn on VM in the case of disaster

*Paid version is required

[foggy]

The replicas wont be running at each site - they will just be stored on the SAN so basically just backing up locally and backing up to a remote site - i assume thats fine and easily done too

Yes, there are a lot of existing topics on that, please search. Here is one of them: v6 - How to have a local and off-site backup copy?.

One thing I forgot to ask - we have an iSCSI array attached to one of our vm servers and then shared out across the network, will this be backed up along with that VM? If not how can I back this up?

Disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported and are skipped from processing automatically, this is covered in the release notes. The only way to back such disks up is to mount them as vRDM.

[matt19849]

Thank you Foggy, i'll have a read through them