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Using same DR site for two cluster


Userlevel 2

Dears,

I would like to ask if it is possible to let a sister company to replicate their vmware VMs servers to my replication site.

Keep in mind i am replicating my VMs to a ESXI attached to a storage that has alot free space.

Is it ok to let our sister company's veeam to connect the my esxi and they create replication jobs to replicate to my esxi aswell, so this esxi will be serving two companies as DR site at the same time and two different veeam servers communicating with it.

 

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Best answer by MicoolPaul 25 July 2022, 00:44

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Userlevel 7
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Yes that is possible as we are an MSP and have many clients coming to one site.  So this is possible.

Userlevel 7
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Technically it will work, as Chris said.
 

Theoretically from a license perspective I believe it‘s a grey area.

Having VMs from different companies on the same vSphere license should be checked with your VmWare sales representative. And also from a Microsoft license perspective.

 

From our (Veeam) site, it should be possible as long you don‘t create backups from the replica VMs. If you backup the VMs, then the same license must be used. Which is not really possible if you have two different companies. A rental license should be used in that case for the shared esxi server.
It‘s best to ask your veeam sales representative for that question, if you want to have an official answer if it‘s compliant to our end user license agreement or not.

 

 

 

Userlevel 7
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Hi,

 

Certainly possible. I’d suggest being mindful of security throughout as you don’t want to have scenarios where an attack on one company compromises the other or the backups of both.

 

To that end you could either look at Veeam Cloud Connect for Enterprise (MSPs use Veeam Cloud Connect for Service Providers, same functionality basically but for different use cases), alternatively as you’ve got two Veeam instances, I suggest you deploy dedicated components for the sister company, by this I mean, it’s own backup proxies.

 

Are you planning to use CDP or just traditional replication?

Userlevel 2

Thank you MicoolPaul for your reply.

My plan is to use the regular replication as a second replication for two critical VMs since my ESXI has more resources to run it. 

So you recommendation is to create a new backup proxy and use it while creating the replication job. 

 

Userlevel 7
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Correct I would share nothing between your backup environments, except the host & underlying storage in this case. In an ideal you’d have dedicated compute & storage under a different segregated network, but if the sister company currently has no replication off-site, this is a massive step forward that I don’t want to diminish the value of.

 

I’d pay careful attention to the words of @Mildur, check licensing compliance for Veeam, VMware & Microsoft for starters, as you could be in violation of your product licenses.

 

Do your companies currently have separate networks? If so how do you plan to maintain isolation in a DR scenario?

Userlevel 2

Thank you all for your comments , i will contact our account manager regarding the license to make sure that all license compliances are respected.

currently our DR site in in the same network on a different building since this two buildings has different UPS to maintain service incase of a power issues

Userlevel 7
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Sounds like a plan. Is this site dedicated for DR? Or a production site as well?

Hi there,

Very interesting topic over here.

If you can / don't mind all those VMs from different “companies” to share the same host, and you can configure the networks on the ESXi host to be “compliant”, it is just a matter of licenses and for sure your account manager will help you with that!

keep us posted.

 

Userlevel 2

Thank you all for your help, 

 

As i told you MicoolPaul it is not a site, our company is a divided in two buildings, one is the server room and studios and editing offices and the other one is offices for employees.

So i installed in switch room another rack with one esxi and a storage since this room temperature is controlled. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Dears,

I would like to ask if it is possible to let a sister company to replicate their vmware VMs servers to my replication site.

Keep in mind i am replicating my VMs to a ESXI attached to a storage that has alot free space.

Is it ok to let our sister company's veeam to connect the my esxi and they create replication jobs to replicate to my esxi aswell, so this esxi will be serving two companies as DR site at the same time and two different veeam servers communicating with it.

 

Hi @MHAMADE 
my opinion is to create a multi-tenant Vmware Cluser with all the proper VLAN\security , datastore segregations etc.
 At least 4 esxi hosts ( depends on how many Vm's you have planned god to run on the cluster) 2 hosts in one room and the other two in a different room.

Obviously with all the switch\nexus , HBA\ISCSI network part redundant.
If you don't have the possibility to separate into two different rooms the esxi hosts , split them on different racks and power supplies, Always with the high reliability (compute, storage path and network) and UPS.

Try the CDP solution. :)

as mentioned by @Mildur in theory, you would need to create a dedicated Vmware cluster for each O.S.Windows\Linux\Database type.
So that you can save the licensing expense and not cover too many hosts esxi the expense would be too expensive.

Best regards


 

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