Hello Everyone,
I’m looking for some help in verifying a replication setup I plan to implement using Veeam in early 2011. I plan to replicate from my main location to a co-location using rented rack space. The setup at each location will be as follows:
Main Site
3 x ESXi 4.1 Advanced hosts (3 x 2 Socket hosts)
1 x Vcenter Essentials Server (support for only 3 hosts)
11 x Windows VMs (2k8R2 SQL, Exchange, AD, File servers, etc.)
Bandwidth – 100MB Shared Fiber line
Storage – EMC iSCSI SAN
Co-location
1 x ESXi 4.1 Essentials host (1 x 2 Socket host)
NO VCENTER SERVER
A few VM’s just to allow communication back to the Main site
Bandwidth – 3MB’s of dedicated T1
Storage – Drobo iSCSI SAN
I planning on buying 6 Enterprise licenses of Veeam Backup and Replication, I think you only need to license for the main site (?). From there I plan on using the virtual appliance setup of veeam on the main site and use it to replicate VM’s at the Co-location which I assume will need a veeam virtual appliance as well or could it dump straight to the iSCSI SAN at the co-location?
If we do into Disaster Recovery mode I plan to turn on the replicated VM’s at the Co-location and use a failover DNS provider to redirect traffic to the Co-location. Once our main site is backup and running I plan to either move the VM’s back over or use Veeam to replicate them over if that is allowed.
Is my line of thinking correct? Is there something I’m missing in order to get this up and running (license, software?). If anyone can let me know that would be great, thanks!
Yes, you only need to license source sockets. If you want to setup Veeam Backup in source site, I recommend using full ESX in target site for significantly more efficient replication. Otherwise, if you have to stick with ESXi on target, then placing Veeam Backup in DR site will provide better replication performance. Note that you can still have own Veeam Backup install in main site too for local backup, vPower stuff etc. as we do not charge for number of backup servers (only source sockets).
Before you ask, yes we are working on enhanced architecture of replication over WAN to ESXi located in remote site, this functionality should be released before next VMware release (which will be ESXi only). New architecture will provide even more efficient replication than to full ESX today. Thanks.