Installation location for a replication trial

[StixForBrains]

Hi Folks,
Veeam newbie here. I've read the guide and the Evaluators guide, and I'm still very confused about where I should install this to demo Veeam backup/Replication.
At my main site I have two production ESX hosts (v3.5) running my VMs. The hosts are conected to an IBM FC san. I have vCenter installed on a physical win2k3 server at main site. vCenter controlls those two ESX hosts as well as another at DR site.
At my DR site I have just the one ESX host (v3.5) with local storage.
I want test the speed of replicating VMs from Main site to DR site over a 20Mb WAN connection setup as a lan extension (same subnet for servers on both sides of the connection)

Do I install:
- into a VM at MAin site, or
- onto my vCenter physical server at main site, or
- into a VM at DR site, or
- do I need a physical server at DR site?
- and what "veeam mode"

I will be upgrading to vSphere in the next two months but I'd like to get a feel for Veeam in my current environment since this the setup I had when I tested Vizioncore as well.
I've also read about helper Veeam VMs but I'm even more confused and its not even Friday afternoon yet
Is there a good document with simple diagrams of different installation scenarios for various types of setups?
Eventually I'd like to also test backup to tape for archive purposes, probably done at main site, but I'd consider moving that to DR site.
Any help apreciated
Thanks

[Gostev]

Hello Tony, for your environment with ESX 3.5 hosts on source the only option is installing the product in the source site. I recommend installing on a physical computer which is connected into SAN fabric. You do not really need to use helper VM, as you have SAN, and our product is able to read data directly from SAN (without affecting your ESX hosts or network). Hope this helps!

[StixForBrains]

Thanks Gostev,
I should have clarified, the physical server running vCenter is NOT fibre connected to the san. Its just on the lan. The two esx hosts are:
-connected to lan via 2 x 1Gb ethernet from each host
-connected host to host to via 1 Gb ethernet
- and connected to the san by fibre switch
The San has no directly conected servers, except for the two esx hosts. The san is carved into 3 luns all made available to both the ESX hosts
Thanks

[Gostev]

Tony, in this case I would go with "Network" processing mode (3rd, lowest radio button in the processing mode selection step). This is the next best choice for ESX 3.5 hosts. With this mode, it does not matter where you install Veeam Backup server (physical or virtual), as data movement will be handled by our agent in ESX service console, that will connect directly to the target host.

[StixForBrains]

Thanks. I'm looking forward to trying this out tomorrow, then re-reading everything once I've seen it in action so I can ask more intelligent questions.

On my other question about an architecture document. Is there anything specific to Veeam that shows pros and cons of different scenarios, data movement in different scenarios and how it might be different for backup than for replication? or if you want to do both? or replicate to two different targets at once? or take backups from the replicas rather than from the source?

[Gostev]

Specifics of data movement are actually explained directly in UI, under each option. The engine is the same for backup and replication.

As for what's better - there is really no universal recipe, because every customer's need and every environment is different. But there's a lot of discussions here about specific deployments and needs, so if you are interested I encourage you to research this forum. And of course we are here to assist you with best implementation for your specific situation and needs.

We do not support replication to 2 targets at once, backing up replicas works fine - only drawback is that you are not backing up the "original" data in this case, but data which undergone some processing.

Here's most recent discussion with customer sharing experiences on how they use replication, might be useful:
The real world use of Veeam Replication