Newbie question for Replication

[ssSFrankSss]

Hi,

Suppose I want to create a Lab environment and I have two ESXi.

vCenter is running on one of them.

I want to have high availability of a VM and be able to back it up also.

I could enable high availability from vCenter. (1) But that means I should have a shared storage in both ESXi Right? For shared storage could I use two SSDs in RAID1 and a Synology for example. Would this lead to high lag? (1gbit Network connection)

I believe the following option is better:

(2) In the case of not having a shared storage wouldn't it be best to replicate the VM from one ESXi to the second one. In that case I do not need a back up or shared storage since I have two copies. If one server fails I have the second one.

(3) In the case of replication is it possible for the second server to go online the VM (and the vCenter itself) as long as the first server fails automatically?

Thank you,
Frank

[GregPatria]

Hi,

1. enable high availability from vCenter. vCenter can do this. vCenter can maintain VM high avaibility. Key capabilities enabled by vCenter Server include VMware vSphere vMotion® (can move VM from one host to another host), VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™, VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) and VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vCenter/vmware-vcenter-se...

     but, your storage (any other storage protocol) should be connected to both of host. like this :

2. If you have simple design like that, VM access in one storage, so if one Host ESXi fail, dont worry because VM automatically move to the other ESXi host and data storage not change.

     But you can make some additional backup technology that can copy backup you data storage to another storage. This step need backup software

3.  with vCenter HA, Automatically move VM and that have host failed without manual intervention.

thanks

[vbrowncoat]

What do you mean by "high availability"? In a VMware context this would be vSphere High Availability that as you said would require shared storage.

For a lab environment a synology (depending on model, network, etc) could work fine. As with most things it depends on what kind of VMs you are running and what kind of synology you have and how you have the synology configured, your network, etc. I would recommend searching google for other home labs and seeing what others have done. Another option is vSAN depending on your servers, etc.

You could use vSphere Replication to replicate a VM from one host to another. A few things to keep in mind though:

- vSphere Replication requires vCenter to conduct a restore so if the host that vCenter is running on fails you won't be able to recover your VM

- You can't protect your vCenter with VR (see above)

- Replication is not backup. VR supports multiple point in time snapshots but that still isn't backup. If it meets your needs it could work, just keep in mind that it isn't the same thing as a backup (more like a backup with a very short retention).

It is not possible to have VR automatically recover a VM. If you were using SRM to orchestrate VR you could use that to automatically recover your VM, though I would recommend you don't: Automating Failover with SRM