Hi @JustineP, as far as I know, direct replication between VMWare and Nutanix is not possible. You can look for instant recovery from you backup repo to the Nutanix environment as a possible solution.

Yes, veeam replication must be the same hypervisor. Is there way like backup copy job, work around so that customer will use the veeam for their requirements?

A possible workaround could indeed be a backup copy job where you copy the backups to a repo which resides in a VM which is allocated on the Nutanix environment. In this VM you also have a Veeam VBR running which regular refreshes the repo and performs a scheduled restore to the Nutanix AVH.

I really like this topic, inter Hypervisors workarounds!

I would suggest to keep it very simple.
If your storage is fast enough, and is a DR solution, I would suggest to have a Veeam B&R Installed on the Nutanix AHV Cluster, with visibility of the Backup Repos, or at least with the Backup Copy repo, so in case of need, you can restore your VMs to AHV and keep operating.

After the DR, you will need to move those vis back to the Vsphere environment, maybe with a backup + restore, or other methods.

hope this helps a bit.

The objective is must have a copy of backup data from Prod to DR, thanks

This is the high level diagram, they must have a replicated/backup copy of data from prod to dr and can failback from dr to prod

At the moment I would see two possible scenarios:

Create a backup copy repo on the DR site and do instant recoveries from there via the VBR server on the Prod site.

Create a backup copy repository on the DR site. Install a second VBR server on the DR site rescan the backup copy repository with the second server and do instant recoveries from there with the second VBR server.

This scenario has the advantage that you can restore in the case the Prod site is down. But has the disadvantage that two VBR server access the backup copy repo. So there is the possibility that there is something changed or overwritten...

I like the @JMeixner approach

As I said, it would be good to have a VBR server in the NTX cluster, a local / dedicated storage for the backups, and these backups should be backup copies of the prod VMWARE site.

you will have the ability to power on those backups as instant recovery, but then the fail back, it will have to be a restore, not like a “normal” Replica fail over and fail back (I assume you wanted something like this)

Very Important, if you do this, inter Hypervisor thing, you need to install the Nutanix Tools on all the VMS that will be possibly restored in the NTX cluster, if not, those vms won't boot.

I will try to run a demo on my lab, to give you some more advice on this topic.

Thank you @HunterLAFR , the two scenarios are not perfect yet. I don’t have a Nutanix cluster available. So, I cannot test anything of this...

Nutanix itself supports cross hypervisor replication between AHV and ESXi.

Hi, after some tests, I’ve found this info in the Veeam docs.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbahv/userguide/overview.html?ver=40

Welcome to Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV

In this article

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV is a solution developed for protection and disaster recovery tasks for the Nutanix AHV environment. With Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV, you can perform the following operations:

• Create backups of Nutanix AHV VMs and store them in backup repositories.
• Create snapshots of Nutanix AHV VMs and protection domains.
• Create VeeamZIP backups of Nutanix AHV VMs.
• Create several instances (copies) of the same backed-up data in different locations.
• Restore VMs from Nutanix AHV backups and snapshots to the original Nutanix AHV environment.  
• Restore VMs from VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V backups to the Nutanix AHV environment.
• Restore physical machines from backups created by Veeam Agents to the Nutanix AHV environment. 
• Restore VMs from Nutanix AHV backups and snapshots to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud environments.
• Restore VMs from Nutanix AHV backups and snapshots to VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
• Perform Instant Recovery of VMs to Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
• Restore files and folders of Nutanix AHV VM guest OSes.
• Restore application items (such as Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server).
• Restore Nutanix AHV VM disks and attach them to VMs running in Nutanix AHV clusters.
• Export disks of backed-up Nutanix AHV VMs to VMDK, VHD and VHDX formats.

So for me, 

The way to act (easy) would be

From your Veeam B&R backup your machines,

Create a copy to a second repository (located at the NTX Cluster, DC, etc)

Then, Install a Veeam B&R for AHV in the NTX Cluster and show the repository (with the copies), to be able to see the backups.

In case of DR, you can spin those backups with Instant recovery, or even recover those machines in the NTX cluster Fully.

IMPORTANT, you need to have installed on the machines (before the backups) the NUTANIX TOOLS.

if not, the vms won't boot, and you will need to start doing weird things in between.

Then, the workaround back, after the DR, it would be a bit “complex”.

Even Move the VMs from the NTX cluster to the Vsphere one (Like a migration)

Or, a full backup at the NTX side, and a Full restore at the Vsphere side, for example.

Hopefully it helps, I’ve been playing the whole weekend with AHV,

Very interesting, so, thanks for that!

Cheers.