VizionCore: ESXReplicator 2.0 Beta 8 preview

EsxReplicator is a real-time replication solution for the VMware ESX Server environment. A beta is now available to the public with support for VI3. I must admit that I was fairly impressed by this beta version. VizionCore has done a great job. We had just 1 small problem after setup (a Next->Next->Finish install BTW).

OK, let’s check the necessary steps (besides installing the .msi):

The first step is to configure your SMTP settings, and fill out the recipient and from mail address. Also, you can set your VC Tree Expand Level (tree level expansion).



Then, next steps include adding, configuring and connecting to your VirtualCenter and/or ESX hosts.



Ok, now comes the fun part: replication. Just add a replication job via the GUI by selecting the appropriate VM and selecting Add Replication job or Assign a New Job.
A Replication Job Wizard is displayed. Note the intervals: a minimum of 15 minutes in between replication steps:



You can specify to disable quiescing, the target host and datastore. That’s about it!



You can see a nice progress summary when a job is executed. This is useful to quickly determine when & where a job failed.



Job details are shown after a replication process. Check out the giant clock! BTW, all replication job details are saved under C:\Program Files\vizioncore\esxReplicator\Logs folder.

Some remarks:

• As you can see, this is a very simple and straightforward product
• As does Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure, ESXReplicator makes use of VM snapshots on the source VM during replication
• ESXReplicator did not detect that my VM was already on the same LUN as the to-be- copied replication, so my replication job failed.
• Also, a 2nd server with the name SR-LIC01 was added to the inventory. So effectively, we had 2 SR-LIC01’s in our VC inventory! Not a good thing and something that Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure does not allow to happen (it registers the VM for a brief period and then removes it from the inventory).
• We saw a rather high impact on the service console (CPU0 and vmnic0), but this is normal considering it is an ESX to ESX host action.
• It looks like ESXReplicator is VMotion aware, nice!

Conclusion: VizionCore ESXReplicator 2.0 for VI3 looks like a very promising product. It is simple & easy to use.