Good day. In the process of deploying the following. Would like recommendations on how to best ensure VMs are locally backed up sufficiently to ensure we mitigate data corruption issues during potential VM backup restores and reverting from snapshots:
- 2 x ESXi servers (7.0) hosting 4-5 Windows VMs
- vCenter 7.0 VM to be hosted on ESXi servers
- single NetApp AFF220 SAN, simple setup, single LUN connected as vSphere shared storage
- Networker clients installed on Windows VM guests to backup critical data to offsite DR location (no DR VM hosting hardware exists now, but will eventually along with likely a vSphere replication site-to-site solution. Just the DR Networker backup servers exist at the DR site now)
I guess my question is, if we have a SAN to provide fault tolerant, redundancy of VM data, leveraging vSphere HA/DRS capabilities between the 2 nodes, do we need to configure single-site automated cloning/backup/replication to keep copies of the VM data on the ESXi local storage RAIDs or potentially another location of the SAN? What would be the recommendation for backing up our data locally? In terms of availability, our servers could be down for 1-2 days without issue. We're looking for the simpliest possible solution that is automated e.g., doesn't require 3rd party software to be procured or involve something as granular as NetApp VSC.
Thanks in advance!
