Who do you use for DR replication?

[zoltank]

I'd like to see what provider people are using for replication, and how they're actually doing it.

I've talked to several providers, and it seems most of them do not allow access to the hypervisor. It's my understanding that without access to the hypervisor on the target end that Veeam replication doesn't work.

[dellock6]

that's correct, with Veeam you need to configure a second proxy at the target site with the ability to write into the datastore via the ESXi hosting it. We do not give our customers access to the ESXi server, unless they are dedicated to a specific customers.
I read sometimes ago a provider in Australia running nested ESXi over physical ESXi, and thus giving access to the virtual ESXi, but always sounded to me really complex to manage and run.
At the moment there is no multi-tenancy in Veeam...

Luca.

[zoltank]

that's correct, with Veeam you need to configure a second proxy at the target site with the ability to write into the datastore via the ESXi hosting it. We do not give our customers access to the ESXi server, unless they are dedicated to a specific customers.
I read sometimes ago a provider in Australia running nested ESXi over physical ESXi, and thus giving access to the virtual ESXi, but always sounded to me really complex to manage and run.
At the moment there is no multi-tenancy in Veeam...

Luca.

Thank you for confirming what I thought.

So...does any have a recommendation for a good host to handle my replication?

[dellock6]

It all depends where are you from, or better where are your servers located

About the article I was mentioning:
http://blog.cnidus.net/2012/05/20/multi ... on-target/
https://www.zettagrid.com/news/233-15-f ... d-by-veeam

Keep in mind these configurations however are completely up to the provider, you cannot do anything like this in a hosted environment. Also because ESXi guests are not officially supported by VMware vCloud:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=2034491

Luca.

[resruss]

that's correct, with Veeam you need to configure a second proxy at the target site with the ability to write into the datastore via the ESXi hosting it

Luca, I'm just trying to get my head around this.
Even if we create a repository on the cloud provider's side that can write to the datastore, they're still not going to be able to target an ESXi host / cluster, hence it still rules replication out, unless you go with nested ESXi, correct?

[Vitaliy S.]

Repositories are required for the backup jobs, while replication jobs need backup proxies. That said, if you create a repository and target it to the ESX(i) server's datastore (via RDM or in-guest iSCSI initiator), you will be able to store your backups in the offsite location. If you decide to go with replication jobs, you will need to deploy a proxy server on the target host.

[dellock6]

Even if we create a repository on the cloud provider's side that can write to the datastore, they're still not going to be able to target an ESXi host / cluster, hence it still rules replication out, unless you go with nested ESXi, correct?

The repository cannot write to a datastore, it's basically a windows or linux machine with some amount of disks on it. If you go this way, you would use a VM hosted in the cloud provider, and save backups there. To restore VMs back into your datacenter, you would simply retrieve the files back. If you would need to start VMs in the datacenter from your backup, you would need an ESXi host to register the VMs into, or your cloud provider to do it for you.

To summarize:
Offsite backup is easy to achieve, and you would use a Veeam "backup" type job
Offsite replication is not easy to design with Veeam if you do not have control at least of one ESXi server with its datastore

I've seen recently SkyTap (http://www.skytap.com/) offering nested ESXi into their vCloud environment. I do not know how thay managed to do this, because nested ESXi are officially unsupported by VMware on production vCloud (it's not a technical problem, in the console we can choose to deploy also an ESXi server...)
Anyway, they are in Seattle, at least their offices, but probably their datacenter is nearby. That's why I was asking you where are you from...

Luca.

[andersonts]

We have providers offering replication as a service (I know of several in my area). Typically they would want to manage the replication jobs from their side to maintain control of their environment so the proxy at your (the customer) site would basically be a black box. The providers e-mail out reports and manage the jobs. This of course requires that the service provider have an account on the customer vCenter but as with any solution someone has to have permissions to something to make the whole thing work.