Hi.
I work with small and mid-sized firms. I have a client with 25 users. I'd like to give them a VMWare virtual Small Business Server on a NAS unit.
Netgear has their NASReady units which include "Replicate." Replicate lets you replicate data over the Net from one NASReady to another. It will copy data files on an incremental basis. *However*, it will only copy ISCSi data on a complete file basis. Thus, if your virtual machine takes up 700 gigs Replicate will only copy all 700 gigs of data to another NASReady unit whether it's on the LAN or outside at another office. There are no "incremental" copies with ISCSi data and NASReady.
I do like the fact that Replicate copies data over a regular Internet connection and doesn't require VPN. (The traffic is encrypted.)
What I'd love to find is a NAS that is powerful enough to run a Small Business Server for 25 users and has some kind of built-in ISCSi copy mechanism that can copy incrementals for the virtual VMWare machine(s) I would be putting on the NAS. I'm guessing I can do this for $20,000 per shared storage device but I'm looking for a lower cost set of units that would do all this.
Thank you for any recommendations!
Mike Gallery
Use local storage for OS and applications. Make sure to have separate drives for OS and applications and data. Use the NAS devce as a file server and let it replicate files. You can use DFS to manage the files on the local device. Use the internal tools to backup system state to the NAS other tools can be used to replicate Exchange mailbox content . . . .
Veeam backup has the ability to replicate.
Hi, DSTAVERT.
I was thinking along those lines. If I can't get total ISCSi replication then I think I'll put the data files on external storage and let them replicate.
Exchange and Sequel are a different matter. I haven't worked with Veeam but I have talked with them.
I think what I'd do with the OS and Exchange/Sequel data is use DoubleTake. Or, as long as I'm going DoubleTake, I could just use it to back up my op system to a local VMWare Server and a remote server. I was hoping for a simple hardware replication solution but for some reason that doesn't yet seem to be possible. I'm waiting to hear back from HP on this. Seagate definitely doesn't do this. Netgear half way does. I'm not sure about QNAP yet.
Thanks for your comments. <-: As always, you're very helpful.
Mike