Looking for suggestions

[spartridge]

I currently have vCenter 4.0 with two ESXi host servers supporting approx 20 guests. I have just purchased Veeam backup and would like some input on the best way to stup my system. I have a 6TB iSCSI SAN for the ESXi servers. I have a second 9TB iSCSI SAN that I will use as a target for the Veam backups. Veeam is installed on a the server as vCenter. That part is pretty straight forward. What I would like to do is replicate the data to a remote site for DR purposes. I have read several things about needing another Veeam server at the DR site and having backups of the Veeam database. I was hoping to just have some storage at a remote site to replicate/copy the data to for DR. If there was a need for the data I would take that storage and use it with new host servers that I would purchase. 1-2 days downtime is acceptable for the total loss of our building. Like most, my budget is tight so I am looking for some creative ideas. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Shawn,

Your scenario with using iSCSI SAN mode replication looks ok for me. You don't need to have another Veeam server to be able to start your replicas in case of emergency. You can do that manually using vSphere Client. The recommendations you've read relate to the situation when you need to restore to a particular point in time and not to the current state of the VM.

If 1-2 days of downtime is acceptable for you, then you may also consider doing backups (not replicas), that will save you much more storage space at the DR site, as you will store compressed VM images only. But please note that you cannot choose ESXi hosts as backup destination targets.

You may also consider using WAN accelerators to get better performance while replicating/doing backups across the WAN link, might be helpful:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2608

Thanks!