Replication software

iaind

iaind

iaind

Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2009
Posts
14,817
Location
Exeter
Evening all,

We've been running Doubletake "software" for a year or so now (I use the term loosely, software generally works IME) and I'm finally fed up of it not working properly, if at all, so I want to look at alternatives that I can depend on.

We're running an almost fully virtualised setup (VI 3.5 Enterprise) with a Sun iSCSI SAN at our head office. There's only one server we need to protect that's physical. We've been using Doubletake SRO/Livewire/Backup installed in the guests to replicate changes to an image server offsite - this can then (in theory) be recovered directly to a virtual machine. The offsite server has several TB fast storage and enough capacity to run all our servers in a DR situation (2 x Xeon 3.0 Quads and 32gb RAM), I want to utilise this for DR in future as it's a nice server and works well.

Up until recently it was replicating OK down about 3mb of relatively high latency internet bandwidth (with compression enabled) but it's being moved to a leased line - a 100mb line that we're getting 10% of.

So what else is out there that will replicate our data in real time and provide quick/easy recovery to a VM? We need to be able to exclude files - temp files, indexes etc - anything that changes a lot but isnt vital for recovery. That requirement eliminates most VMware or SAN replication products (we're not using RDMs). Needs to be byte level replication so we're not sending our entire Exchange DB down the line whenever it changes :)

Applications to protect:

- MS Exchange 2007 (Win 2008 64 bit)
- SQL 2000 (Win 2003 32 bit)
- Domain Controller (Win 2003 32 bit)
- Progress OpenEdge 10.1 (Win 2003 32 bit)
- MySQL (Win 2003 32 bit)
- File Server (Win 2003 32 bit)
- Voicemail server - Zeacom if anyone's heard of it (Win 2003 32 bit)

Any thoughts on any decent products/solutions out there?
 
Hi.
The only product I can think of that will do what you want(loosley) is IPStor NSS.
But it effectively *becomes* your storage platform as it virtualises your SAN and ESX hits IPStor first for its LUNS.
We use it and replicate VMdisks to DR site where I can pull back a machine in minutes to DR and if need be reverse replication amongst a lot of other neat tricks. It also works on the delta changes being replicated only so low bandwidth use.

If your not willing to rebuild your entire SAN/Storage(WUSS!!!) then how about looking at:

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html (does repl as well)

http://www.phdvirtual.com/products/esxpress-virtual-backup?start=6

Hope that helps or gives you ideas.

Perry.
 
I'd look at using replication software less and built in HA features more. DC doesn't need to be recoverable, you just need a DC running at the DR site. SQL is likely best handled by mirroring or log shipping and file servers are crying out for DFS.

I've never been a fan of the 'oh virtualisation can solve all our backup and DR problems' bandwagon which people are so keen to jump on. Bringing an exact copy of the machine up elsewhere isn't the neatest way of achieving HA, it's basically just the brute force method.
 
As I said, I cant use any SAN/VMWare products due to the limited bandwidth - I can only afford to replicate critical data, not temp files etc so they need to be excluded.

Acronis has been reccomended to me - not real time replication but can do incremental block level backups direct to a VM image every few minutes - anyone using it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom