Veeam to VR migration?

[bunny101]

Good afternoon, all!

I have just completed a project implementing Veeam Backup and Replication.  It's working just fine; does what we want it to.

Now VMware Replication is available.  I'm getting my stuff together to recommend and plan a migration/upgrade to vSphere 5.1....and use the builtin replication.

Question becomes: will there or is there a migration path from Veeam to VMware Replication, or will I need to start over and build new replicas of my VMs?

Thanks to all in advance!

Gregg

[a_p_]

Since the two products use different approaches you'd need to start over. With the Veeam licenses already in place you should consider the pros and cons between the two products carefully. VMware's replication does its job without the need to create snapshots, but not offer advanced options (unless you use SRM). With Veeam you have options to e.g. test the replicas, ...

André

[ch1ta]

As to the pros and cons of two products, you need to know that vSphere Replication is a product which is likely to meet bunch of end users’ requirements. However, it happens even with the good product to have few limitations.

Here is a list of those that cross my mind:

• vSphere Replication in contrast to Veeam provides single restore point only. And it seems to be a limitation number 1.
• No traffic compression.
• No traffic throttling.
• No re-IP upon failover.
• Basic VSS quiescing (no application-aware processing, which is necessary for replicating VM running VSS-aware applications (such as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint), since this functionality guarantees backup transactional consistency of such VMs).

Probably, some of these issues are going to be addressed in the next releases by Vmware, will see.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.