Hello, I currently manage two hosts with 5 VM's that total about 3tb of storage. This is done on a vSphere Essentials licence.
I am about to replace the main host with a much faster unit and demote the current 1st host to replace the current 2nd one.
After this upgrade I will have two hosts both with DAS 8tb storage so they will be equal in storage but not in power and speed.
I would like to change things up and put all the VM's on the 1st host SSD storage and make the secondary host a live replicated set for failover purposes.
This does not have to be a full HA configuration, there is no problem in the case of failure to have a bit of down time while I boot up the 2nd host VM's.
What I do want tho is live data so that the secondary host always has identical VM's as the primary host.
No loss of data is MUCH more important than a few hours of down time.
I am uncertain if VMware replication that is included in the Essentials PLUS licence can do live full time replication or if its scheduled the way that veeam replication and NovaBackup work.
We have NovaBackup business essentials running our TBU so I have access to its VM replication system already. Still testing to see if it can handle it but it does not seem promising.
Due to the size of the replicated data, would any of these snapshot -> replicated VM solutions work? I am very uncertain.
I am also concerned that the VMware essentials plus licence may not allow replication thru the same Vcenter and thus require dual licences. This would also shoot down the budget to make this happen.
Carbonite has been suggested, price is a bit high for this one need.... $999 USD per year...
Any suggestions or direction appreciated
Thank you