Building new server with vmware vsphere hypervisor

[caleb73]

I'm somewhat new to veeam and vmware and had a question regarding the feasibility of a possible setup.

I am currently going to purchase a new server to host the free version of ESXi. It is for a small office of 3 so performance is not an issue. I will have 3 vms on the server a DC, File, and Application server. What I would like to do is install esxi on a usb drive attached to this server. Get a NAS with Raid 10 and have all 3 vm's reside on the nas. If the main server ever goes down, I would like to move the usb drive to a spare desktop that has access to the NAS and use it as a temporary solution until the server can be fixed. I don't know if this is feasible as the machines will not be the same (server has xeon 2.4, desktop has Pentium 4 dual core). Can someone please let me know if this is supported and if not what a reliable cheap solution would be that would give me redundancy. I am okay with geting the hard drives and a raid controller for the server, but in the event of a failure I would like to have an easy reliable process to bring up the backup (desktop). Also, the data is being backed up via a Continuous backup solution, I am only concerned with bringing the VM's back up should the server fail.

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

[Gostev]

The minimal vSphere version required is vSphere Essentials. You may want to review the sticky FAQ topic. Thanks!

[averylarry]

1) Though this is a Veeam support group -- Instead of installing ESXi onto a flash drive that you would move to a desktop, simply have a 2nd flash drive and install a separate ESXi installation with the desktop and have it available to run. Simply registering the VMs on it is fast and simple. I don't actually know if you can use the same flash drive to boot disparate hardware. (Hint -- VMware forums.)

1b) You can use VMware workstation (I think it's still called that) to run VMs temporarily in Windows -- but I can't speak to the NAS connectivity in your specific case.

2) VMware requires that you have a paid version of VMware if you use Veeam. ~$600 for Essentials.