Questions on Replication and Best Practices

[Michael_6835]

Hello Veeam Community, I am looking for real world advice on some issues. Your input is greatly appreciated.


We are looking at creating a DR plan for our infrastructure and we came across some design/set up questions. We sort of have a direction that we want to go in, but we ware in the research phase. I figured what better place to get some more insight than Veeam community.

Some notes on our current infrastructure.

99% virtual:

2 ESX servers running 4.0 U1 (Hosting around 17 VMs, Exchange, SQL, Some in house apps)

1 physical Dell Server (Domain Controller/Backup/Utility Server)

Multiple sites (6 VPN) connecting back to Central Office

I have 1 machine that needs to be available at all times, it services a line of business application that we use, other sites connect in to this service.

We use Veeam Backup/Replication (v5) to backup the VMs.

We have identified a location for the DR site (60 miles from the office) Close enough for us to test and maintain as well as keep the recovery window small.

Our proposed plan, Use Veeam to replicate data to the other site.

Questions;

1. How are you configuring your DR's Network? Is it a environment with a completely different IP scheme? Do you multihome your servers \ give them another nic/ip for the other network?

2. How reliable is Veeam on the replication? As i understand it, veeam will replicate similar to how it does backups. the speed of the replication will be dependent on the intervals of the job. What we would like to know is what happens during an actual failover? And upon restoration of the original network, how does it fail back and what has to happen?

3. What about my VM that I need to keep up and accessible to all sites?

What options do I have there?

4. What kind of bandwidth should we have between the two sites?

Thanks for your help

[Vitaliy S.]

1. How are you configuring your DR's Network? Is it a environment with a completely different IP scheme? Do you multihome your servers \ give them another nic/ip for the other network?

Generally speaking, I would use the same IP subnets for two sites to make the life easier, however you can use the setup options I've described in this very post.

2. How reliable is Veeam on the replication? As i understand it, veeam will replicate similar to how it does backups. the speed of the replication will be dependent on the intervals of the job. What we would like to know is what happens during an actual failover? And upon restoration of the original network, how does it fail back and what has to happen?

It is reliable

As to you questions then please look through this topic for all the details: DR Site Replication
Moreover, we've got a failover description in our User Guide (page 22)

3. What about my VM that I need to keep up and accessible to all sites? What options do I have there?

You need to have a rounting established to the DR site, that would make this VM accessbile to all sites.

4. What kind of bandwidth should we have between the two sites?

The answer is - it depends, but basically we have have customers who have 10 or less MB links between Main and the DR site. On top of that you can try this bandwidth calculator to determine the required value: http://read.virtualizeplanet.com/?p=91

If the bandwidth you have now is not enough,you may consider using WAN acceleration tools, such as HyperIP for example.

Thanks!