Replication Over WAN

[VirtualD]

Hi,

I have 10tb of servers in the US that I need to transfer to the UK. The servers in the US are physical and we plan to virtualise out there and then migrate. I am trying to establish the best way that Veeam could assist with this. The replication looks good but with that volume of data I could really use the compression and deduplication features of the backups.

1) Is it possible to create local replicas on removeable storage, post to the UK, copy to our San and then continue the replication to the new location so we only have to replicate the changes over the WAN?

2) Could we backup in the US, transfer to the UK, restore to the production environment and then replicate subsequent changes over the top?

What would you recommend for this scenario.

Many thanks

Darren

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Darren,

1) Is it possible to create local replicas on removeable storage, post to the UK, copy to our San and then continue the replication to the new location so we only have to replicate the changes over the WAN?

Actually, this is exactly what "Perform initial replication over this removable storage" is intended to do. Please have a look at our User Guide to get all the details: http://www.veeam.com/files/guide/veeam_ ... _guide.pdf (page 68)

2) Could we backup in the US, transfer to the UK, restore to the production environment and then replicate subsequent changes over the top?

No, that's not possible. As soon as you add any VM to inventory it receives a new moref ID and in order to continue replicating changes, Veeam backup server should be aware about both new VM ID and VM current state, which is not possible if you do everything manually. That is why you should stick to replication scenario 1 mentioned above.

Thank you!

[VirtualD]

Thanks for the response. I have a couple more questions if you don't mind.

Several of the servers are Windows 2000 boxes, can veeam still create a consistent replica without VSS?

Is it possible to backup/replicate a server when it is switched off, ideally just before switchover I would like to power off the machine and run the replication job to make sure the image is consistent.

Thanks

Darren

[Vitaliy S.]

Several of the servers are Windows 2000 boxes, can veeam still create a consistent replica without VSS?

You need to use pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts with VMware Quiescence (eg. for Windows 2000 VMs). To get more details on these scripts please search through these forums > http://www.veeam.com/forums/search.php? ... e+postthaw

Is it possible to backup/replicate a server when it is switched off, ideally just before switchover I would like to power off the machine and run the replication job to make sure the image is consistent.

Yes, that's also possible, though this option is not available within the GUI. You need to use custom scripting to achieve that.

[Gostev]

This should work:
1. Power off VM with VMware PowerCLI script.
2. Run Veeam backup job via Veeam PowerShell SDK cmdlet.
3. Power on VM with VMware PowerCLI script.