Disaster Recovery Test with limited hardware

[cffit]

I've been asked to complete a limited scope disaster recovery scenario for my company. I would like to be able to go offsite, and with limited hardware and some backup tapes, recover a handful of servers.

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Here is what my production site looks like:

4 physical ESXi servers with vCenter - Edition is Enterprise
1 SAN, ISCSI (hosts all the VMs)

1 Tape drive

1 vCenter server, virtual

1 physical VEEAM server - Edition is Enterprise Plus
1 SAN, ISCSI (hosts all the backup to disk files)
1 SAS tape drive connected to the VEEAM server

Cisco switches
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My question is, given that I need to restore a hanful of servers offsite, what is my best method that uses the least amount of hardware?

If I just need to do proof of concept, can I just install VEEAM B&R in trial/free mode and do all I need to do? If in my current production environment I am backing up my VMs using vCenter, could I restore some VMs without having vCenter setup? I'd like to avoid having to setup vCenter in my test DR restore if possible as it will take quite a bit of extra time. If for the ESXi server I use the trial license, will VEEAM still work with that? Any suggestions or corrections would be appreciated. Below is what I'd like to be able to get away with for hardware in my test DR site:

1 ESXi server in trial with local storage
1 VEEAM B&R server in trial with local storage
1 Tape drive
Cisco switch

[Gostev]

1. You can install Veeam B&R with your production license, as we do not limit the amount of backup servers (only protected sockets).
2. vCenter is not required, you can connect B&R direct to ESXi hosts.
3. Trial ESXi license is fine.

[cffit]

1. We are currently using all of our sockets with our VEEAM license, but since this environment won't have connectivity to our production environment or the Internet, it should work yes?

2. I know vCenter is not required for VEEAM, but if the backups that I'm restoring from came from an environment where I am using vCenter for VEEAM to backup, will that affect anything? So I can restore back direct to ESXi a backup that I did through vCenter?

Thanks for the input.

[foggy]

1. We are currently using all of our sockets with our VEEAM license, but since this environment won't have connectivity to our production environment or the Internet, it should work yes?

Regardless of connectivity, you're ok unless you start backing up/replicating VMs running on the DR host (only those hosts' sockets are counted).

So I can restore back direct to ESXi a backup that I did through vCenter?

Correct.