replication without vCenter

[chamdor]

Hi,

Is there any disadvantage to doing replication between two licensed ESX ( not ESXi ) hosts over a WAN without vCenter ? As I understand it, CBT works fine without vCenter but the VM ID can possibly change without vCenter which could cause a full replication to occur instead of an incremental. Under what conditions will this cause a full replication over the WAN, or is there no reason to use vCenter with replication?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

If you setup your job via standalone ESX hosts as opposed to vCenter, Veeam Backup picks up unique ID for VM from ESX host's own database, instead of vCenter database (since ESX host is added as standalone, there are no vCenter to query VM info from).

And when you move VM away (with VMotion) from the host, and then move it backup to the host, VM gets re-registered with the host and gets new ID assigned - so old ID no longer works and you have to do full replication cycle once again. To avoid such situation we do recommend using vCenter connection while configuring your jobs. However if you're not going to move your VMs away from the host you may use hosts standalone connections.

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Vitaly is correct - there should not be any issues except due to VMotion. So if you do not have shared storage or VMotion capability available with your VMware license, then you don't really have to create jobs through vCenter.