So, I'm one host into my upgrade to ESXi, and I've come across a fairly critical problem. Was hoping to get the insight from some people who use replication software, and are happy (or also important, those who are unhappy) with their replication.
Currently, we use Quest Software's vReplicator (vRanger 5.3). After upgrading my first host to ESXi, I went in-depth into setting up a virtual appliance (since they cannot inject an agent into ESXi, according to their tech support) and I was horrified at the VA's scratch disk requirements. In short, meeting their recommendations means I need about 40TB of disk space for scratch disks... I know in reality it won't need to be that high, but I don't want to use any scratch disks.
So, I'm looking for alternatives. My environment consists of two clusters, geographically dispersed, and directly connected by fibre. I'm planning on replicating about 40 VMs, with varying schedules (critical VMs such as Exchange, SQL, and file servers get replicated at 15 minute intervals, LOB app servers that remain static are replicated once per week, for example). Enterprise storage on both sides.
Existing Solution:
1) Nightly tape backup for application-consistent backups, tapes stored off-site
2) vReplicator replication on custom schedule to DR site <-- This is what I'm looking to replace
3) VDR 2 backup to an old SAN using default retention, for VM recovery and alternative to tape backup
I've researched SRM 5, and although it would work, it is far a preferred solution (largely due to its limitations, of which there are many).
I've contacted Veeam for more info about their B&R v6 solution, but I was hoping to get a sense from the people in the community who use it, to see if they like it.
- Pretty sure it requires a virtual appliance (which in itself is fine)... does this VA require scratch disks? Do said scratch disks have high space requirements?
- Replication from ESXi cluster to ESXi cluster - does it work reliably? What kind of job failure rates do you see?
- Interface - do you find the interface friendly to use? Is it responsive (or at least, scalable depending on the mem/cpu you give it)?
Double Take
- They're oddly specific about protecting windows servers. Is it agent based? If so do they have linux protection?
- Not too sure about this particular one.
Others
- There are a few other smaller ones out there... anyone have any other recommendations that they're happy with?