ESX 3.0.2 and Remote site DR planning

[Mac506]

Hello there,

I am looking into building a Disaster Recovery plan that involves our current VMWare 3.0.2 Hosts  and a remote site that will be used for our DR location.

Currently we have a single location data center, and within this center we have

2 Dell ESX hosts

SAN storage for the hosts. (very little free space left on the the SAN or local storege)

a combo of local and SAN storaged VM guests (all guests are Windows Server 2003) hosting MS products such as SQL file and Exchange services.

Currently we are backing up the Guests via BackupExec 11D via the Windows Agents.

We are looking at adding a  powerful server at the second location, with a large external RAID5/RAID10 Array  (any preferences to the RAID level?  will be using 15K drives in this setup)to have a 3rd VMWare host server.

The second location has a T1 line or better that will be connecting the two offices.

My inital thoughts are how to get a duplicate setup on this new server of what is housed on the current system.

+I have seen some options thatnote the use of the following:

      VCB to backup the guest systems

     BackupExec 11D using the VCB

each of these seem to have issues of its own, from what I have seen.

Once I could get the Images over to the new server, then I would feel more confortable to have these server 'Powered Off', and update the guests on a schedule basis (the whole VM).

Then from a DR place i would be looking at the majority of the ground work completed to bring the VM servers online and restored to the latest backup.

That being said I am sure that I am missing a few things in the overall scheme of this.  One question that I see is moving the VMguests to the new box, and a best method to keep these VM up to a curenlt level.

Any recommendation woud be great.

Thank you.

Adam

[rick-vanover]

Adam: Feels like a time capsule! Can you give any consideration to at least getting on vSphere 4? This can open a lot of efficiencies for the solution.

[Troy_Clavell]

I would second the recomendation to move toward vSphere4, as part of, and prior to your DR Plan.  vSphere4 along with SRM, can make your lives a lot easier.

Plus, ESX 3.0.2 is EOL for general support

[Mac506]

time loop here for sure.

One of the consideration tha twe have to take into consideratoin is the upgrade path.

I have seen most recommending the start fresh from 3.0 to the 4x platform, rather then an inplace upgrade.  What are your thoughts on that since you had placed that as a suggestion?

Or would the 3.0 and the 4 play nice together as we look at a method to update the existing systems to the newer version?  Or would this have to be a all at once process?

Thanks

Adam

[Troy_Clavell]

My opinion, so take it for what it's worth, but since you asked....

I would first start by upgrading vCenter to 4.1.  vCenter 4.1 can manage your 3.0.2 host, but again your EOL for ESX.  A better approach may be a couple rebuild upgrades.

First upgrade to vCenter 2.5.0U6.  From there you can do a rolling rebuild of your ESX Hosts to 3.5.0U5.  Next I would then upgrade vCenter to 4.1 (must be 64bit Host OS, so you'll have to rebuild your vCenter Host OS as well, since 64bit is not support for 2.5 vCenter).  I would also ensure you run a remote DB, which will make the upgrade process smoother, as you have an existing DB to connect to. This may also be a good time to look at running vCenter as a VM...

Once you have vCenter 4.1, you can now manage your newly built 3.5 Hosts, in a supported fashion.  I would say run that environment for a bit, maybe 1 month or 2.  Then prepare for another rolling rebuild to vSphere 4.1.  I would ensure your hardware is on the HCL for 4.1.  during your 4.1 upgrade/rebuild you can start looking at implementing SRM into your DR plan.

This sounds like a lot, but I think it's worth looking into.

[Mac506]

I will be digging more into those points. I can see a factore of existing equipment and if it can be upgraded (on the HCL ,as that could make some decissions for me as well.)

Any thoughts on the other points regarding the all at once or RAID levels?

Any thoughts in making a copy of the VM to the new server?

[Troy_Clavell]

RAID5 is usually very suffcient in getting good performance and speed.  Just be sure to keep your LUN sizes smaller than 2TB minus 512bytes ( my choice would be LUNs around 600GB).  And make sure you have enough spindles to account for your I/O Load.

[Mac506]

Well movement if not progression.  Got my ESX(i) Standard edition licenses.

My server is in 16x 146GB 15k drives.

looking at 2x mirror for ESX + a low I/O VM (print server)

The 14 others Im  looknig at splitting in half and 1 for hot spare.

I was contacting VMware support, and gettign my production systems up into the v4 range is in scope for this year jsut not at the moment.

So what I am looking at is doing a cold copy/backup of the VMs that have been deamed required to the new system.  If I keep the virtual hardware at version 4 they should be able to be run if required on teh newer version of ESX(i).

I was looking at a method to copy/backup-restore the VM to the new system.  It looks like for a 1-time dump it a product like VMX Explorer, would work, then once I get my production and backup sites running current ESXi versions then look at using vRanger to do backups and restores to the backup ESX box.

Anyone have any issues with the VMX explorer?

How about the vRanger/vReplicator product?

Being a MS tech, and this being a *nix world I try and tread on very carefully.

Thanks

Adam

[AndreTheGiant]

How about the vRanger/vReplicator product?

Vizioncore vRanger and Veeam Backup&Replicator are good and simple solution to make (scheduled) VM replication.

If you do not have storage replication this could be a option.

But note that this products work better with latest version of VMware, so be sure to check compatibility and what you loose using an old product.

Andre