ESX vs. ESXi replication

[pufferdude]

I am wanting to know if replication to ESX uses fundamentally different networking than to ESXi? The reason I'm asking is that we've starting having problems replicating to an ESX 4.1 host over our 20Mbps fiber (it worked fine between June and a few weeks ago), but replicating to an ESXi host over the same fiber works fine. When going to ESX, we get "connection timed out", "connection was force-ably reset" type errors during replication. But replicating the same VM to a different *ESXi* host causes no such problems. Oh, and to make things even more interesting... copying 5GB file FROM the veeam server to a *Windows* VM on the "problematic" ESX host works just fine. The file makes it across, no problem. It's only when transferring data to the ESX host itself that these errors occur (FastSCP has trouble copying to the problem host too, so it's not limited to replication.)

I'm just trying to narrow things down before calling support, and thought I'd start here... does it make any sense that a replication (or FastSCP copy) would fail to an ESX host but succeed to an ESXi host over the same fiber?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Jim,

Yes, different data transfer protocols are used while replicating to full blown ESX host (with service console credentials specified) and ESXi host. Most likely you don't have all required ports opened.

As a first troubleshooting step, I would recommend using agentless mode on ESX host via disabling "Use service console connection to this server" checkbox in the ESX host connection settings or choosing "Force agentless mode" option in the Data Transfer tab. If you do this, data will be transferred in agentless mode, similar to what you have with ESXi targets.

Thanks.

[pufferdude]

Thanks for the info. I disabled connecting to the service console and restarted a replication and so far it's looking good... several gigs into the VM and no connectivity problems yet. Assuming this does work, I guess I'm better off just leaving it that way vs. trying to figure out why the agent mode is broken... since with VMware v5 ESXi is the only hypervisor anyway... is that about right?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, that's right. I wouldn't spend your time while trying to troubleshoot service console connection issue either, as I guess you've already heard that our new version 6 will introduce a new replication engine, which should be much more efficient with ESXi targets.