Easy Recovery Options with only 1 ESXi Server?

[JBDive]

ok customer has one Windows Server used a File Share for imaged based backups of an ESXi box running a single SBS08 VM. The Guest VM has backup software creating backups to a share on Windows Server. I suspect the prior techs had planned on using the secondary server as a disaster recovery server in case they lost the ESXi server or just needed to move the VM to real hardware as both were installed at the same time and running Windows Server 08 for no other task than to be a File Share for backups is overkill.

I want to install Veeam so I can have a point in time backup of the VM running on ESXi vs. having to go through any full recovery using the backup software inside the VM. If I lost the VM I want to be able to go in and basically copy back a Veeam backup from last month back to the ESXi server then run the backup software inside the VM to recover to the latest backup (the night before). Veeam seems clear cut enough for me to do this so no real questions yet.

The question is how recoverable is that Veeam Backup to anything else other than ESXi? Let's say in the above case I didn't loose the VM but the actual ESXi server hardware failed. Am I going to need to load up ESXi on this Server 08 box and boot ESXi instead just so I can then load Veeam and then load up the Veeam Backup? I assume I could boot ESXi off USB vs. having to blow away the Server 08 install on the physical disk or pull them and put in a spare HD just for loading up a recovery setup. Of course now my backups which would have been on that Server 08 share are no longer there (they are actually USB drives) so I would have to recover Veeam from directly attached USB drives which I assume is supported in later versions of ESXi but this site has 4.0.

What process would you look at in the about situation understanding that price is important and I am mainly looking at CYA. Granted this is somewhat of an overall ESXi question as much as it is Veeam but I thought I would start by asking here.

[dellock6]

In super-constraint scenario, the easiest way to create a data protection is to have two ESXi server both with local storage, and use Veeam to replicate the VMs from one server to the other. No need for shared SAN or anything. A third server can be a windows 2008 physical installation holding Veeam backup server and the backup shares. So you can have both backups (for longer retention times) and replication (for faster restart in case of a failure).

You can check if the 2008 server is capable of running ESXi and convert it, or better add a second ESXi server and use the actual 2008 server as the backup server.

Luca.