Vmware vsphere 5 advice

[milton123]

I have run in to a client that has vmware vsphere 5 essentials on one  server and the other server has vmware vsphere 5 essentials plus. The  way they are setup is vmware is installed on a usb dongle and the local  hard drives in raid 10 are set to be LUN. How do I go about setting some  type of redundancy if one of the servers is to go down? What is the  best way to back this solution up? Currently they have a NAS device they  want to use as a back up device.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers, Yours Udin

[a_p_]

... a client that has vmware vsphere 5 essentials on one  server and the other server has vmware vsphere 5 essentials plus

Can you please explain this? Does this mean the client has two hosts with different licenses or two vCenter Server instances with some hosts (how many hosts)?

If no shared storage is available, you could take a look at e.g. Quest's vRanger Pro or Veeam Bacup which both offer backup and replication.

André

[peterdabr]

Can this be done the other way around, meaning use NAS for shared storage and local disk for VM backups (VMware Data Recovery 2.0 or similar third party solution). One host would need to have license upgrade to Essential Plus to allow for HA/vmotion/DRS.

Edit:

Hmmm..after reading your description for the second time I realized that ESX hosts installed on USB need user swap if they were to be put in the cluster (at least that was the case in 3.5) so unless it is changed in 5, it may not be the option...

Peter D