I talked to my rep at dell and was able to talk to existing users who have Dell servers and EqualLogic SAN. I bought them and now have two EqualLogic units. I have two sites with one EQ unit each and PowerEdge2950 servers running my VMs. I've converted almost 90% of my physical machines and will be 100% virtual very soon. It all runs great for our environment.

Eric:

Why would you want to replicate entire Domain controller? I understand that DCs are very delicate when it comes to AD. My recommendation would be to run an additional domain controller in the remote site and let the AD replicate between the DCs.

I intend to replicate only data (not VMs) between the two EQ units. Replicating the system volume of VMs will be too much data because there will be a significant amount of deltas even though nothing changed on the system volume. Also, the SAN snapshot is not "Aware" of the files within the .vmdk file. I am planning to have "Data"on a separate volume on the SAN for each server and use SAN's features like snapshot and replication to my remote SAN. That way, it will be easier for me to restore an individual file when required.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Ram

Separating out Data to another volume will signifcantly reduce the deltas. As you have noticed, system volume will have enormous amount of deltas even though nothing changed. EQ has offline replication which is recommended for the first replication - it replicates to a tape which you can take to remote site and restore.

There is no need to replicate system volumes on a daily basis as they don't change at all unless we install any o/s or software updates. May be you can replicate them on-demand basis (when the production vm is updated) or maintain a set of VMs on the remote site and install o/s of software updates on them when you do the production VMs. I know it is slightly more work but it saves you a lot of bandwidth.

Ram