Questions from potential Customer

[JaFF]

Hi,
I am about to trial Veeam Backup and Replication in a test lab.
At this stage I am more interested in the replication side of the product as I do not have enough storage for the backup component.
Basically I have a Prod site with about 10 VMs (DC, File-Print, SQL, Exchange, AV, custom app servers), vSphere 4.1 and a HP MSA 2012i storage device.
I currently use Vizioncore (Quest) vReplicator to replicate all of my VMs to the DR site which has identical vSphere 4.1 hosts and a HP MSA 2012i storage device.
We have 1GBps fibre between the two sites.
With my current set up I am able to replicate my VMs in very short replication cycles. For instance, SQL runs a replication pass every 10 minutes and passes are generally completed in 5 - 6 minutes. Exchange runs every 15 minutes with the same completion time.
The current product is ok but we have some issues with failed passes every now and then so we are looking at other options.

I am a bit concerned with the recents posts on this forum in relation to Exchange and SQL in particular. People mention that passes are taking up to 4 hours in some cases. I was wondering how often people set their replication intervals with the Veeam product and if there is any limitation to this. My thoughts are the more often you can replicate the smaller the data sizes are to replicate and the less you have to restore once in a DR scenario. a 4 hour replication pass would not be acceptable in our environment.

I'd also ask the community for any information on issues they have encountered with Veeam B&R in terms of intermittent replication failures. We are hoping that this product is a bit more stable than our current solution. We have had a few instances where the product seems to lose track of the VM changes and then requires a full replication to get back on track.

Thanks for the help.

J

[Gostev]

At this stage I am more interested in the replication side of the product as I do not have enough storage for the backup component.

Generally speaking, backup requires significantly (a few times) less storage than replication because of compression and deduplication, so you may want to reconsider this...

We have 1GBps fibre between the two sites.
With my current set up I am able to replicate my VMs in very short replication cycles. For instance, SQL runs a replication pass every 10 minutes and passes are generally completed in 5 - 6 minutes. Exchange runs every 15 minutes with the same completion time.

I am a bit concerned with the recents posts on this forum in relation to Exchange and SQL in particular. People mention that passes are taking up to 4 hours in some cases. I was wondering how often people set their replication intervals with the Veeam product and if there is any limitation to this. My thoughts are the more often you can replicate the smaller the data sizes are to replicate and the less you have to restore once in a DR scenario. a 4 hour replication pass would not be acceptable in our environment.

These reports are for slow WAN links, and in many cases for daily jobs. If you continue to replicate every 10 minutes with our product on 1Gpbs connection, replication passes should complete under 5 minutes (speed will be mostly defined by how much time VSS freeze will take).

I'd also ask the community for any information on issues they have encountered with Veeam B&R in terms of intermittent replication failures. We are hoping that this product is a bit more stable than our current solution. We have had a few instances where the product seems to lose track of the VM changes and then requires a full replication to get back on track.

The problem of losing VM changes does not exist in our product for sure. Replication typically only fails due to bad network connection (when connection drops). But in your case you pretty much have full-speed LAN connection there, so connection should be solid and replication should fly.

I'd say definitely go ahead, install and test our product to see how it works in your environment, because from our point of view the conditions you have described are pretty much ideal for us.

Thanks!

[JaFF]

Generally speaking, backup requires significantly (a few times) less storage than replication because of compression and deduplication, so you may want to reconsider this...

We require DR replica's of our VMs ready to power on within 15 minutes if necessary.
Our current datastore usage is averaging 85% so we really don't have the space to have replica's and backups at this stage.
The backup option is attractive - when we get more storage.

[Gostev]

We require DR replica's of our VMs ready to power on within 15 minutes if necessary.

Did you know that we do provide ability to instantly power on backed up VM, and run it directly from compressed backup file? If you are interested to learn more, check out Instant VM Recovery section of sticky FAQ topic.