High Availability solution in case the SAN fails? Application based VM mirroring to another SAN?

[pinkerton]

Hi,

since we are using more and more virtualized systems we are considering to implement a disaster plan in case the single point of failure - the SAN - fails. Currently we are running 25 virtual machines on two ESXi servers with HP EVA 4400 as storage. As we are very satisfied with VMware it is likely that the number of VMs increases to 40-50 systems in the next three years.

Currently, if the EVA fails, the only possibility we have is to restore the VMs from backup. In the worst case we are loosing 25 systems at once and need hours - if not days (depending on the amount of data) - to restore all of them. The current backup solution in place is VMware Data Recovery.

I guess mirroring the corresponding EVA luns to another EVA using Continuous Access might be a solution that could work. However, using a second HP EVA is quite expensive and leads the main goal of using VMware (which is saving money in our cases) ad absurdum.

Is there maybe a cheaper way of mirroring data to another SAN? I.e. to a MSA 2000? Or is anyone aware of application based mirroring of virtual machines, like automatic cloning of virtual machines every X hours?

Any information is highly appreciated!

[AWo]

I would look for a VSAN solution (Virtual SAN). That allows you a transparent SAN failover and is most of the time cheaper than vendor specific mirror solutions (btw. HP themself suggested to use a VSAN instead of CA in case of EVA mirroring when we had a meeting with them). You do not have trouble with scripting, zoning, etc. when the failover occurs.

In addition a VSAN let's you connect SAN's from different vendors so you could mirror between them or migrate from one vendor to a different one.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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[weinstein5]

I would take a look a look at VMWare's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) - this requires SAN replication and will allow you to recover from a SAN failure -

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[Texiwill]

Hello,

There are several solutions to this dilemna available to you and they all depend on how much money you want to spend.

1) Have local drive space on each virtualization host on which when you make backups you also replicate (restore) the backup of you rmost important VMs to the local storage.

2) VMware SRM working with your SAN and a backup SAN, Veeam Backup, VIzioncore/Quest vReplicator, etc.... Pretty much any backup tool has a way to replicate.

3) Application HA type software such as R1Soft, Neverfail, or Symantec HA

Which you use, depends on how much money you want to put at a solution. The simplest is #1, the most complex could be #3.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, 2010

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[AWo]

But the nice thing with a VSAN is, that vSphere doesn't see a failover, so you need no vendor specific SAN replication and no Recovery Manager. It just continues to work. Like FT for servers.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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[pinkerton]

Hello,

thanks for your suggestions. I think the VSAN is not an option as if I understand correctly this would mean we need a new SAN. It however might be an option in the next years when the EVA needs to be replaced.

For now I will have a deeper look at the replication/backup products mentioned by Texiwill. This combined with a cheap SAN like a renewed MSA 2000 with SATA hard drives seems to be payable and also not so difficult to set up.

Any other suggestions are still welcome, especially those regarding replication virtual machines to another SAN.

Thanks!

[chadwickking]

Have you looked much into other products like OpenFiler, Hp Lefthand, and Starwind? These products allow you to provision storage from your local storage which can save you a fortune when it comes to increasing shared storage for your vsphere enviroment. Hp Lefthand also is a product we use currently and works really great. It has the ability to replicate and a slew of other features.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/vsa/trial/index.html

I am currently looking for a low cost Array replication solution for a current customer and so far the virtualized local storage concept is working well for us.

Regards,

Chad King

VCP

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[pinkerton]

Thanks for all your suggestions. It turns out that Veeam Backup & Replication and VizionCore vReplicator are exactly what I was looking for. Since only the Veem product allows replicating to an ESXi target I guess we will end up purchasing the Veem software and replicating virtual machines to another ESXi server connected to a second SAN.

If anyone has experience with those solutions and can provide helpful information I'm glad to hear of you!

[ewanat]

Did you ever find a solution? I'm also looking for a way to replicate VM's . The product from Veeam is slow at replicating to an ESXi target (according to Veaam it is VMware's fault/issue).