Site-to-Site replication for DR

Prophet · 29 Oct 2015 at 16:17

One of our clients has asked for us to spec up Site-to-Site replication and DR. They currently have 3 Dell hosts with a SAN which is all due for replacement, so we will be it to replicate the new kit to, at another site.

It will be an Hyper-V environment so we're looking for a robust way to sync both sites, either on the fly or at timed intervals depending on network overheads.

Currently we've looked at using Veeam to act as the replication agent but I'm open to other ideas.

They have 20 servers and around 5TB of data to replicate over two 100/100 leased lines.

PooKer · 29 Oct 2015 at 16:18

I've used doubletake in the past for this. That was back in 2003 days mind you....

http://www.visionsolutions.com/products/windows/double-take-availability/overview

nox_uk · 29 Oct 2015 at 17:43

Heh, I'm looking at veeam for this at the moment too

Nox

Caged · 29 Oct 2015 at 19:26

Veeam is good.

Xez · 29 Oct 2015 at 22:30

Veeam is good and it's certainly a very good idea if you are already using it for backup purposes.

Do you have Server 2012/R2 data center edition as this is licensed for Hyper-V replication so it may save on costs. I don't know too much about it compared to Veeam but it seems to work very well in the limited exposure i've had to it.

paradigm · 30 Oct 2015 at 07:37

Xez said:
Do you have Server 2012/R2 data center edition as this is licensed for Hyper-V replication so it may save on costs. I don't know too much about it compared to Veeam but it seems to work very well in the limited exposure i've had to it.

Works absolutely fine for us. We use it to keep around 20 cold standby VMs ready at a 2nd site.

nox_uk · 30 Oct 2015 at 08:36

I didn't even realise that feature was in data centre

. But never had a server with a datacentre license.

Nox

paradigm · 30 Oct 2015 at 08:41

Indeed it is, it's also a breeze to actually configure/use.

nox_uk · 30 Oct 2015 at 08:47

That will keep me quiet on Monday for a bit

Nox

Prophet · 30 Oct 2015 at 09:07

paradigm said:
Works absolutely fine for us. We use it to keep around 20 cold standby VMs ready at a 2nd site.

Are there any issues that you know of replicating onto different hardware? The new kit is iSCSI the old is SAS based..

paradigm · 30 Oct 2015 at 09:24

We have no issues with hardware and architectural differences in configuration of clusters at both ends, the only thing you might need to set is "migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version".

But by the sounds of it the hosts will be the same anyway?

Prophet · 30 Oct 2015 at 10:25

paradigm said:
We have no issues with hardware and architectural differences in configuration of clusters at both ends, the only thing you might need to set is "migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version".

But by the sounds of it the hosts will be the same anyway?

Thanks for that. The hosts are all Dell kit but different revisions.

How behind are your cold VM's?

paradigm · 30 Oct 2015 at 10:34

According to our replication health, they were last synced 5 minutes ago

(built in schedule frequency is 5 minute intervals)

Once the initial sync is done, the rest are incremental so shouldn't be massively taxing on bandwidth.

Prophet · 30 Oct 2015 at 10:47

paradigm said:
According to our replication health, they were last synced 5 minutes ago (built in schedule frequency is 5 minute intervals)

Once the initial sync is done, the rest are incremental so shouldn't be massively taxing on bandwidth.

Excellent! I'll look further into this

Sir SpankalotUK · 30 Oct 2015 at 12:50

I use hyper-v replication and extended replication. DR servers at each branch that extends replication to the other site, using certifcate based replication. So I have local and offsite and have began keeping additional recovery points. It seems to be working very well.

Vince · 30 Oct 2015 at 13:19

I'm currently using Veeam and ESXi alongside 2x HP StoreOnce 24tb 4500's which de-dupe etc. It is well worth looking at dedicated replication kit if you are running a beefy san back end. I have been very surprised at just how much throughput the 4500's can deal with when running on 10gb FC.

Nate--IRL-- · 5 Nov 2015 at 20:10

We are beginning to look at a 2nd Datacentre - would there be any advantage/disadvantage in using SAN to SAN replication over a 1gig WAN link. Or Should I just stick to Hyper-V/Veeam replication?

Also I'd Kinda like to have the 2 sites Hot, but I'm not sure of the possibilities.

Nate

mrbios · 5 Nov 2015 at 20:48

Cheaper alternative to veeam if anyone's looking at that for this but tight on budget: Arcserve unified data protection. Can highly recommend it.

Just thought i'd point that out seeing as it's not that well known yet, (obviously arcserve is, but not for the right reasons...lol.) fantastic product though.

nox_uk · 5 Nov 2015 at 21:06

Arcserve used to be the go to backup software. Then they changed the UI hiding everything, removed features (I used!!) and brought in new ones I didn't want

Nox

mrbios · 5 Nov 2015 at 21:27

nox_uk said:
Arcserve used to be the go to backup software. Then they changed the UI hiding everything, removed features (I used!!) and brought in new ones I didn't want

Nox

Yea they dive bombed at one point and got a really bad reputation for it (albeit still not quite to the level backup exec is at in my opinion...) UDP is an entirely new product though, not associated to the old backup software...although the old backup software can backup UDP recovery points to tape.