Basic architecture questions.

[sixthree]

Hello,

I Just started a new job and inherited the vmware environment. I have worked a lot with HyperV and VMWare workstation in production and test environments so I am kind of new to ESX. I've never worked for a company that had the money to buy the hardware and the software to implement ESX. Now I'm the guy.

My current environment:

4 ESXi 5.1 Hosts. The ESXi Hosts are standalone machines (No SAN, All internal disks).
Each host is running 3 VMs (Guests) per host so a total of 12 VMs.
I have vCenter running on a standalone physical server as well.
The guest OSes are a mix of FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows. They don't use a lot of storage.

Again the hosts are standalone with no shared or SAN storage. All internal disks. All 4 hosts are connected and managed through vCenter.

My manager said that he was told that vmware has all the tool to backup and replicate the vmdks. I have found this to not really be true unless you are using a SAN and the SAN has some sort of SAN replication. I know that there is VDR with vmware 5.1 which runs a version of EMC's Avamar. So I am looking into this.

So from my research on Veeam it sounds like you need another windows server (either physical or virtual) to run the Veeam backup and recovery. Is that true? Does Veeam replicate between standalone ESX hosts or does it just backup and replicate to the Veeam server or can it do both? If it just replicates to the Veeam server can the Veeam server copy a vmdk to a different host in case you need to bring that up on a different host?

Thanks so much for your help. If someone has a link to some basic architecture slides or environments that would be great!

Thanks again!

-sixthree

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Greg,

So from my research on Veeam it sounds like you need another windows server (either physical or virtual) to run the Veeam backup and recovery. Is that true?

Yes, you will need a Windows server to run Veeam B&R. Please see all supported platforms in the Release Notes document.

Does Veeam replicate between standalone ESX hosts or does it just backup and replicate to the Veeam server or can it do both?

It can do both, Veeam B&R can replicate between standalone ESX(i) hosts and backup VMs to any supported backup target.

If someone has a link to some basic architecture slides or environments that would be great!

Please find all documentation required on our website: http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/resources.html

Thanks!