offsite SAN

[TaylorB]

Can someone give me some suggestions on how I Might use SAN replication along with Veeam? We are adding a second SAN offsite that will have some replication features.

I'm trying to decide if it makes more sense to replicate my backups down there or just use Veeam Replication to directly write replicas to the offsite storage, bypassing SAN replication. Any other ideas or examples of how you are using offsite SAN would be helpful, thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Taylor,

What kind of bandwidth do you have between two sites? One of the biggest decision factor of SAN-based replication is bandwidth requirements, as you will have a lot of data going back and forth. Here is an existing topic that can you give you some thoughts on how to approach your DR plan in the best way > SAN volume replication vs Veeam backup replication

I'm trying to decide if it makes more sense to replicate my backups down there or just use Veeam Replication to directly write replicas to the offsite storage, bypassing SAN replication.

It definitely does make sense to have an offsite copy of your backups for archival purposes as well as have a hot copy of the most important/critical VMs ready to spin up on the DR site.

Thank you!

[TaylorB]

Re: Bandwith

We will have 200-300Mb/s link.

We have LTO-4 library at both sites, too, so we can ship data that way for seeding or for slower replication task. Or we could replicate to keep hot copies and still use tape for archival/dailies.

[larry]

My SAN will replicate off site but I switched to doing it all with Veeam. Using Veeam I have more control over
Which VMs are replicated, SAN is per LUN.
How many versions to keep.
Fail over just a VM and not the whole LUN.
Much quicker DR tests.
timing and bandwidth control

The only thing I wish Veeam did was a backup copy and replicate combo job using the WAN accelerator to send the data over the WAN just once.

[Vitaliy S.]

Taylor, thanks for additional information, seems like SAN-based replication could work here, though it still depends on the number of changes and your desired RPO. I also agree with Larry, as you have more restore granularity and control with Veeam replication jobs.