Cheap man's drq uestion

[said07]

I have two esx hosts and each has about 7 vms.
I also have two datastores.
I don't have Vmotion/Ha.
I do use Backup exec to backup the large vms (260 Gig each) to tape weekly full and daily incrementals.
And I use Vranger for the small Vms (around 40 gigs) as my weekly backup to disk.
I am looking into coming up with a dr plan. Scenarios like this: what if host1 goes down or becomes irresponsive? what should I do?

What would you do if you were in my situation?

Thanks for your time.

 

[said07]

Correction: The title should have been.
Cheap man's dr question.

 

[ArizonaGeek]

I am assuming you are using local storage, as opposed to a SAN or NAS, and probably using the free version of ESXi?

Here is what I would do in your case, I would use vRanger to back up all the VMs to another storage device, and then use Backup Exec to pick up everything to tape. That gives you two sources of back up. One to disk one to tape for off site storage. The reason for that method is that tape is horribly unreliable. Not always but it doesn't take much to make a tape unreadable.

If you are using a SAN or a NAS system you could upgrade your ESX to the advanced or enterprise versions to allow VMotion and HA.

In your current situation if one server goes down your VMs are going down as well.

Hope this info helps...

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[said07]

Rob,

First thanks for taking the time to answer my post.
We have 2 sans -1.2T and 1.6T and we have Vsphere 4 Essentials plus.
Upgrading to Advanced or Enterprise is not in the budget in the near future.
What I was thinking is let's say Host1 goes down, Then I will add my vms to host2 inventory through Vcenter but not all of them just the critical ones because my online second host won't have enough resources -cpu, ram for all of the added vms. All this in the case I can add them. I have seen an instance where they had a lock on them and couldn't do it. In this last case, I am thinking to use my Vranger to restore to host2 until we fix host1. There will be downtime but since data is on the sans, hopefully no loss there.
Or how about cloning the critical ones accross the cluster and have them turned off until needed?
Does this sound as plan?

 

[unclerico]

if you have essentials plus then you have HA

I hate all Uppercase... I don't want my groups to seem angry at me all the time! =)
- ColdFlame (vbscript forum)

 

[said07]

unclerico: Sorry for the confusion. I have Essentials not Essentials Plus.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html

 

[balage0]

cheapest solution to create Clones all of your machines. Save them in a safe place, or server that switched off(no lic needed) and in case of disaster just bring them alive.!

This should be mixed with backup and replication techniques, depending what reaction time are you under, and so on.

regs
Balazs

I assume responsibility for everythin'

 

[said07]

Thanks to all who contributed.