Replication between Standalone ESXi hosts

[vmjunkie]

Hello Guys,

I want to implement replication for VM's which are on 2 Standalone ESXi servers with local storage. What would would be an ideal scenario performance wise from the below options:

1) Vmware Backup and Proxy server on same physical machine which is on the network. Perform replication of the VM's on the two ESXi hosts using the network mode. This would be simplest, only problem is the replication will be completely over the network and as I understand will be slower restricted to the speed of network infrastructure.
2) Vmware backup on a physical machine. One proxy VM on each ESXi host. This I understand will use the hot-add Virtual appliance mode. Here, it says it will use the ESXi stack to replicate the VM's, so this will be faster. However, the replication data will still go over the network (as both ESXi are local storage). Will I see an improve in performance here? Also having proxy on each server seems like an overkill for 2-3 VMs I want to replicate.

Since this is local storage, I cannot have FC/iSCSi SAN mode option. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[kjc3303]

My understanding is that option 2 will send compressed data across the wire between the proxies so will be quicker. Option 1 will pull full data to the Veeam server from the Source process and then send full data to the Target

Over a WAN option 2 is essential Over a LAN not so much but still a better design.

Cheers

Kev

[veremin]

Option 2 is always recommended in case of offsite replication. Having proxy servers set up on the both ends will guarantee the data will cross the WAN in highly-compressed and deduplicated state ,etc. It’s considered to be traffic wise setup.

However, in case of onsite replication you can follow with one-proxy scheme: be it your default network proxy, or virtual one residing on the source host. The latter is preferable option, since the data to replicate will be received not through the network, but rather in Hot-Add mode. This, in its turn, is likely to increase performance speed, etc.

Anyway, it might be worth test the available options and seeing which one answers you requirements best.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[vmjunkie]

Thank you kjc3303 and v.Eremin for your valuable inputs. This is a LAN setup, so I would try both the options and see the difference. It will be a few days, but will try and post the findings.

[veremin]

Yep, kindly keep us updated about the results you get.

Should any other questions arise, feel free to contact us. Thanks.