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Designing a rapid 2 site DR setup for ESX VMDKs

RichardXClark
Level 4

I am looking at options for (semi) automatic replication / backup and restore of  some key systems across our WAN to our secondary site for rapid DR.

Prod site 1
150 VMware servers, on 28 ESX hosts
30 Physical servers
5TB data
NBU 6.5.4 Master, 10 x  3592 tape drives

Prod site 2
14 ESX hosts dedicated for DR use
10TB storage dedicated for DR use
NBU 6.0 MP4 Master, 4 x Ultrium3 drives

Site to Site Comms
1x 1gb WAN
1 x 300mb WAN
No fibre links (at least not allowed for this project)


Requirements
RTO 1 hour
RPO 12 hours
For compliance & granular file restore - Grandfather, father, son backups as well as DR of latest copy.
Utilise existing infrastructure with zero or minimal additional capital spend.
Ideally the lastest version of the VMs are offline on the 2nd site and just need powering on.

We have Vizioncore vReplicator in eval but its not ripe yet and support is woeful.

Using the above infrastructure, is a solution possible using just NBU features?
Can I send a diff of a VMDK to the DR site, merge it with the last full, restore it into ESX, all this as a linked series of operations, all scheduled and/or scripted and requiring minimal intervention.

The physical servers would be restored into the ESX farm.

Blue sky ? Am I asking too much?

Any ideas.

thx
Rich
 

1 REPLY 1

rjrumfelt
Level 6
by initiating a professional services engagement with Symantec.  Since you are evaluating whether or not to go with NetBackup or a different backup product, Symantec sales may jump all over this and give you the answers in the detail that you are looking for.