Real Time Replication and Failover for VMware
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However it must be noted....
The best possible solution on VMware here is Starwind. The same solution with Hyper-V works better. This is definitely a case where even "already paid for" VMware is holding us back and not delivering as much, even when all this money has been spent, as Hyper-V.
Using VMware here would be falling to the "sunk cost fallacy." That money has already been spent on it doesn't matter. Working with what we have to work with today, the VMware licensing is unfortunate but already wasted. Hyper-V is the better solution for this.
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Starwind doesn't do backups though does it? So if you are already using Veeam for backups, the replication bit is effectively "free" here.
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Or equally good depending on some other factors, XenServer + HA-Lizard. Recent tests from @dengelhardt showed that he was getting 20% better performance from XS over the VMware machines that he was replacing. So you get lower technical debt and better performance plus more features and no licensing restrictions all at once.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Starwind doesn't do backups though does it? So if you are already using Veeam for backups, the replication bit is effectively "free" here.
I didn't say that it wasn't "Free", I said that it was not as good as "free" should be. It isn't good enough to use anymore because all of the negatives are shared by both solutions and both are free, but Starwind does full failover and full replication so no downtime, no dataloss.
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You had mentioned that Veeam was the cheapest, but it is at best only equal in cost to the standard option but does not do nearly as much. If Veeam incurs any cost at all, like paying for an update or maintenance, then even if paid for for the current version, it's not actually free. I believe that the functionality for this is in a free version of Veeam, but even free costs too much in this case
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I just figured that if the OP had Veeam for backups already then using it for replication might be good. It was a suggestion, I wasn't trying to start another argument. I was just trying to help.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I just figured that if the OP had Veeam for backups already then using it for replication might be good. It was a suggestion, I wasn't trying to start another argument. I was just trying to help.
Not arguing, just pointing out that while Veeam used to be a viable solution for these cases before Starwind was around OR if the OP did not already have Essentials Plus, it no longer is in these cases (or it pushes you to Hyper-V as it is completely free there on both sides.)
It's tempting to use Veeam here because of sunk cost, sunk effort or other "it is already in house" ideas, but these all leave you with having lost a lot - and would not utilize the Essentials Plus license, not that that isn't a sunk cost, but it highlights the issue.
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Well, if it was me, I'd use Veeam.
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Veeam should absolute be used in this case for backup... But not for replication. Using Veeam for replication actually puts your environment at more risk because it's not a real time replication like Starwind. And since Starwind is free for two hosts.... Why not use the best product?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, if it was me, I'd use Veeam.
Why? It's all negatives, no benefits. Just to be stubborn? Would you be okay telling the owner of the company that you intentionally avoided protecting the data from loss, downtime and forcing crash consistency instead of full consistency?
I know that you are trying to make a point. But as you've not mentioned any reason why this isn't just risky, I don't understand why you'd take this stand.
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@Dashrender said:
And since Starwind is free for two hosts.... Why not use the best product?
It's not free though is it? It's free as in no licencing costs, but the costs to set it up, learn how it works, configure it, and maintain it...what are they? How long would it take the OP to get this up and running in their existing environment? A couple of days maybe? At $1500 a day. Even then, I'd be a reluctant to trust my entire infrastructure to a product I'd only been using for a couple of days. I expect I'd use Veeam because I'm very familiar with it, I get good on-site support from my vendor, and I reckon it would be simpler and quicker to set up.
I'm not going to write a white paper on why though. That's just my initial feeling. I may well be wrong!
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@scottalanmiller said:
Just to be stubborn? Would you be okay telling the owner of the company that you intentionally avoided protecting the data from loss, downtime and forcing crash consistency instead of full consistency?
I'm just stating what I reckon I would do on a forum. People can ignore me or disagree. But I get this? I'm done.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It's not free though is it? It's free as in no licencing costs, but the costs to set it up, learn how it works, configure it, and maintain it...what are they?
Veaam isn't free either in that vein. Their replication is a different function than the backups, to some degree.
The bigger issue, though, is that it doesn't even meet the stated needs plus it introduces risk. It doesn't do real time replication at all. It does async which requires quiescence so needs things like databases to flush to disk and can fail. It is only crash consistent. You lose data.
I get the idea that learning things has cost, but losing data does too.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Just to be stubborn? Would you be okay telling the owner of the company that you intentionally avoided protecting the data from loss, downtime and forcing crash consistency instead of full consistency?
I'm just stating what I reckon I would do on a forum. People can ignore me or disagree. But I get this? I'm done.
You didn't state any reasons why you were eschewing the stated needs and why you would introduce risk, just that you'd not consider the only free option that met the requirements. You said you'd not meet the requirements that your business gives you and gave no reason for doing so. How do you expect that to sound? It actually sounded like you stated that you would outright put the business at risk and not do the job you were told to do and gave reason, just that you would refuse to do your job.
What do you expect?
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@anonymous said:
What options do I have? Just a simply 2 host setup. No SAN.
Like @SAM mentioned StarWind two-node setup is free. You can use Hyper-V as a basic OS inside VM to make it 200% free.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free
For hyper converged offering please kick me PM as we're working on a special offering for MangoLassi people.
