Before I ask this, I am aware that I am trying to get something for nothing but since we've paid for the Essentials Plus bundle I think it should provide us with the tools to replicate offsite.
I have my main office with two hosts, SAN and one vCenter Virtual Appliance running things. I have a second site nearby linked to the first site with a wireless connection. If I replicate the VM's from my main site to the secondary site and the main site is destroyed by fire, can I bring the VM's up at the second site without it having a separate vCenter and replication appliance?
I understand that having a second site in vCenter hierarchy means having another vCenter licensed (something I'm not keen to investigate; we'll probably look at Veeam instead) but if this can be done without licensing a second vCenter instance I will be happy.
Do the vCenter Appliance and Replication Appliance allow themselves to be replicated and if so, would they be in a fit state to operate if the main site goes down in a DR scenario?
If anyone can offer any insight I would appreciate it.
Chris
Hi Chris,
First of all let me clarify that replicating via vSphere Replication allows you to:
However it order to recover replicated machines you need the vCenter Server and VR as they are the management layer that will trigger the recovery process. So if you lose the vCenter Server or VR you won't be able to recover. Here is a link how you can recover a VM (no matter of its content) but keep in mind that it is not officially supported. Another think that you should consider is that there another features, such as HA, that you can use to have your management layer up and running without replicating it.
Regards,
--Martin
As to the usage of Veeam, you can set replication jobs between two standalone hosts or between two hosts one of which is a part of vCenter infrastructure, meanwhile, the second one is a standalone server. Should any disaster happen, each scenario would work fine and there wouldn’t be any need to have vCenter server or whatsoever.
However, it might be worth replicating the whole infrastructure to the target host, including vCenter appliance. In case of DR, you will first failover a vCenter server and, then, other depending VMs. This way, once the DR operations are finished, you will have the exact copy of production environment.
Cheers.
