basic setup questions for version 6 replication over the WAN

[theanykey]

I have read through the user guide and I am a bit lost on the best practice to setup and configure replication over the WAN to a DR site.

The protected site has vCenter/ESXi version 5.
We want to replicate 4 virtual machines (all of which are 2008 R2)
We have Veeam B&R v6 installed into windows 2008 R2 (which is a virtual machine)

The DR site is a standalone ESXi5 host.
There is also Veeam B&R v6 installed into windows 2008 R2

There is a windows-to-windows VPN setup between the two proxies (the windows 2008 R2 installs that house the Veeam installs)


The problem arises when we create a Veeam Replication job.
- If we create the job on site2-DR, we can not get the proxy to see the "production" VMs listed on site1-Protected.
- If we create the job on site1-Protected, we can not get the proxy to see the "DR" ESXi5 local VMFS storage on site2-DR.


I am curious if I require to implement a site-to-site VPN for this to work? I was assuming that as long as the two proxies could see each other without any port blocks that this would work. I am looking for confirmation.


Also, is this best practice? I see in the user guide that replica seeding might be a better approach. However, it is not clear on the steps required to set this up if this is indeed the best practice. My guess is:
- setup backup job for 4 VMs on protected site
- save backups to local repository
- setup replication job where the source is the backup images on local repository and destination is the DR proxy.


However, I am unclear if the destination repository can be ESX local storage and if so if it will be seen by the Protected site Veeam proxy

[tsightler]

Certainly the proxy servers need to be able to see each other, but the B&R server must also be able to communicate with the ESXi host and/or vCenter at both sites (it wasn't clear to me if you had a vCenter). I think that's the piece of information your missing.

[theanykey]

ended up getting everything working. The catch was the VPN. The documentation refers to the Veeam installs as a proxy and the term proxy usually signifies that the proxy is the only point of connection. However, it became clear to me that Veeam needs to talk to veeam (proxy to proxy vpn) but also esx needs to talk to esx on the other side of the wan (site to site vpn). I did not find this under the requirements for a dr replication deployment over a wan. I had to rely on support to confirm. may want to add that to the documentation (or make it more clear if in the case i overlooked it) - just my 2 cents.

[foggy]

To leverage replica seeding functionality, please use the step-by-step procedure described here.