Virtual BE Servers in VMWare Hotadd mode

[mgmasterv2]

hi

i got 10 ESX Host with VMs on Local Storage ( Not SAN), all of my ESX hosts  have HBA and they are Connected to SAN Switch ., also i got 1 vCenter that managing Virtual Infrastructure.

when i use Hotadd Mode for backuing up my VM's Do i need to have 10 BE server or 1 BE on a Host is ok?

[pkh]

1) Are you on SP3?

2) What is the version of your ESX?

If you want to use 10 BE media server, then you would need 10 BE core licences.  Do you have this many BE core licences?

[mgmasterv2]

1) yes

2)ESX 4.1, 5 & 5.1

i got 13 core License :)

so 1 Virtual BE server is enough for me to use hot add or i must have 1 Virtual BE Server per ESX Host?

[Colin_Weaver]

I think but am not 100% sure, that as Hotadd works by presenting the snapshot directly into the server performing the backup, that because you are using internal/local datastores on each host that you may need one media server per host

However easy way to check this - configure a media server on one host, test hot add with a VM that is definitely on that host (which should work) then use the same media to test HotAdd using a VM that is definitely on a different host (obviosuly configure all test jobs via the VCenter server object)