I'm trying to come up with a backup strategy and I'd love to get some opinions.
Current backups: Backup Exec with a mix of tapes and external USB drives.
We're a fairly small shop, about 15 physical servers, all Win 2003, with two SQL's and an Exchange. We're early in the conversion process, and will have about 30 or so virtual servers on VI3 Enterprise, running HP servers w/Equallogic iSCSI.
I set up the physical servers to boot ESX 3.5 off the local mirrored drives, and then I have four VLANS on separate physical networks for LAN, iSCSI, Management and VMotion. Everything works great so far. Thirteen VMs up and running in test mode, no problems.
We have another HP server and a smaller Equallogic iSCSI box that we're planning to install at our co-lo facility. Our network connection (DS3, 45Mb) goes to our ISP, where we have rack space for our DR server and the smaller Equallogic iSCSI. The gear will be behind our firewall, which is located at the secure co-lo.
The local Equallogic box has lots of LUNs. One LUN is VMFS, and contains the c-drive VMDK files for the bulk of our Windows servers. Other LUNs are raw, and are accessed directly by the Windows servers (using Microsoft's iSCSI initiator) for the D (data/apps) drives.
So I need to get my VMDK files and my raw data through the DS3, over to the DR site.
Options I've considered:
1. Equallogic replication. Seems good, but how is that going to work when my iSCSI network doesn't span over the DS3? I've separated my iSCSI into it's own physical network as per best design practices, and don't really want to connect it to the normal LAN. Am I missing something?
2. VMWare Consolidated Backup. Requires a 3rd party backup app. Might be ok, haven't looked much at it yet.
3. Backup Exec. Priced per server, so with the huge growth in number of servers in the move from physical to virtual, we'll get killed on licensing.
4. Something new. Vizioncore? Something else?
I've read the Virtual Machine Backup Guide pdf, as well as "What are my options for Backup of a VM" in the documents section of this forum. Just looking for something a bit more specific.
I'm going to VMWorld in September, and will be talking to backup vendors and attending DR seminars, but I'd like to get a jump and get something going sooner if possible. Any ideas, thoughts or recommendations would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
-Kirk
Kirk Smith
http://twitter.com/KirkInSLO
