I've got a client inquiring about putting in a single DL380G5 (2CPU/16GB of ram, 8 x 72GB 15k HDDs) running 1 Win2008 (x64) VM and 2 x Win2003 (x86) VMs under ESX35 U3 (Infrastructure Foundation edition). The 2008 VM will be a basic Windows File & Print Server (and AD) for 20 typical small office users. One 2003 VM will be a Citrix XenApp server for 5 users (out of the 20), and one 2003 VM will be an AD controller with a few apps that are 32bit Windows 2003 specific (such as Watchguard System Manager) - nothing special but they just will not install on x64 2008, nor are they supported on Windows 2008. What the client would like to do is hang a rack mounted HP Ultrium 920 (LTO3) SAS tape drive off the DL380G5 (via a SC44Ge SAS controller) and do a direct scsi passthru to the Windows 2008 VM and use BackupExec 12.5 (installed in the 2008 VM) to backup via BackupExec agents all three of the VMs to tape.
I understand that this is not the recommended way to do things (and I plan to explain and caution the client aswell and try to direct him to a separate backup server), but I am pretty sure this will probably work with a few hiccups along the way. But my real question is does anyone know if this sort of scenario is supported by Symantec for BackupExec or by VMware for direct attached tape storage?
Thanks
dcc
