Veeam Replication and EQL Replication

[anthonypham]

Our entire environment is virtualized with VMWare. We currently have veeam and are planning to purchase one or two equallogic SANs depending on how we replicate our data. I was wondering when I would use veeam replication and when I would use the replication included with Equallogic?

[tsightler]

Our entire environment is virtualized with VMWare. We currently have veeam and are planning to purchase one or two equallogic SANs depending on how we replicate our data. I was wondering when I would use veeam replication and when I would use the replication included with Equallogic?

We have Equallogic and Veeam. We originally used Equallogic replication but it was so inefficient over the WAN, and required so much space overhead on the SAN, that, while it worked reliably, it wasn't working very well for us. Veeam also provided simple feature like the ability to easily restore individual files from replicas and easily test failover. We're currently using Veeam for 100% of our replication and we're very happy with it.

[anthonypham]

Would using veeam backups be more effective than EQL snapshots VMs and snapshots for SQL, Oracle, etc? Would they be using the same type of VSS?

[tsightler]

Would using veeam backups be more effective than EQL snapshots VMs and snapshots for SQL, Oracle, etc? Would they be using the same type of VSS?

I've found Veeams VSS implementation to be one of the most complete, but I really can't make any statements regarding Equallogic's current VSS integration as I simply haven't tested the newer versions of their product features. We've been happily using Veeam for well over 2 years and decided that it gives us the most flexibility going forward since it's not dependent on a specific vendors storage system.

[sixth]

I agree with everything said above. Since EQL doesn't have WAN compression and their replication piece, albeit highly touted, is one of the weak links in the EQL product line. I have been using Veeam Replication offsite to standby ESXi hosts for 6 months now. It has really cut back on administration overheard, performance problems, space constraints and has really helped with DR amount other things.

I would give the replication a shot! Veeam's VSS has been great for me....no issues here.