I know the UI will only manage one at a time... would a 2nd appliance even work if it's not the one that is currently setup in the vCenter GUI?
Actually that's not true. I have 2 VDR's managed at the SAME time on vCenter. The trick is you have to make sure EACH VDR is unique. So I renamed mine VDR-1 / VDR-2.
Then you can manage one, setup the backups, schedule, target, etc... when you are done with the first appliance, you simply LOG OFF. THEN you connect to the second appliance, set up the identity, schedule, VM's to backup, etc.
Also I made separate roles for EACH appliance. I cloned a simple user (it takes some doing to figure out all the permsissions) but once you have it, you can use one role for first VDR (it's own login, password) and apply permissions to the second.
Once you get everything done, you don't need to login to EACH appliance, they are autonomous. You only need to login to check status of reclaim, integrity check, and backups. Otherwise I know they work fine.
The fact that there is a pull down for the VDR appliance(s) implies that it can manage more than one, and it DOES work just fine. Since the appliance control the backups and NOT vCenter, theorhetically you can have unlimited VDR (provided you aren't going beyond the concurrent user connections to the vCenter of course).
I am doing VDR-3 / VDR-4 as we speak, but given that I make sure ALL appliances use their OWN login, and thus I can give them a subset of VM's to backup / restore, I don't anticipate any issues.
