Reason to choose vmProtect8
HI,
I am going to use the Acronis vmProtect8,
but I need some clarifications:
Why use Acronis vmProtect8 instead of using VmWare Product like: vCenter Converter, Replication and Disaster Recovery.
I mean:
vmProtect looks like does the same function as the vmWare 5.1 products.
Please could tell me why I should use vmProtect instead of VmWare 5.1 products?

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Hello and many thanks for your reply.
I am still understanding the differences between Acronis and VMWare:
VmWare also offeres VmWare Site Recovery Manager (SRM).
Again: Acronis and VmWare looks similar.
Please could you let me know why I should use Acronis?
Kind regards
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Hi fasttrack,
The VMware SRM is a dedicated replication solution which allows replication of VMs accross different sides. Acronis vmProtect is primarily a backup solution so it's not really right to perform direct comparison between these two products. The choice between the solutions really depends on what you actually need, i.e. which use cases are most important for you and how you are going to use the product (will you do backups? will you do replication? do you need to store backups offsite?, etc. etc.). I'd recommended you to check the following resources which may help to make proper decision: http://www.acronis.com/download/docs/avmp7/compare (Acronis vmProtect is one of the fastest and easiest to use backup solution) + http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/vmprotect/ (see comparison table in the bottom of the page).
Personally I would outlined the following advatages of Acronis vmProtect:
1) Really easy to set up and use
2) Very fast backup solution for vSphere (at least it's the fastest among all similar products I've seen so far)
3) Flexible (multiple backup options)
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
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Hello Vasily,
Many thanks for your very interesting information.
My needs are the following:
1) Reduce the downtime when the system is under maintenance: e.g.: installation of hot fixes, patches, Services packs and so on (at present, it is not clear if the machines will be in a Virtual Environment or Physicals):
So, the solution (let me describe the example in a easy way) will have 2 HOSTS:
HOST A (the production)
HOST B (used only when the HOST A is under planned maintenance).
When the HOST A is under planned maintenance, the HOST B in production to provide Buiness Continuity
Once the HOST A is upadeted is put back into production and the HOST B is down and receive the update from HOST A.
NOTE: RunTime data is collected only in the Database that is shared. No update there are in the HOSTs during production (data saved or changing in the application).
So for this reason I am choosing a solution similar to a but used in the context of Planned Downtime, regardless physical or virtual environment (for this reason I have seen Acronis VmProtect 8 useful, but before purchsing and implemented in several sites I need to be sure that Acronis provides a unique solution compared with the current available VmWare Products)
If you can provide more suggestion about why choose ACRONIS I am able to drive the use of Acronis
Kind regards
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Hi fasttrack,
Thank you for the details. Taking into account that you plan to work with mixed physical/virtual environment, I'd recommended you to take a look at Acronis Backup and Recovery 11.5 solution. You'll need Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 Virtual Edition for VMware vSphere edition (http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/enterprise.html#agents-vmware-vs… ) which supports both physical and virtual machines. This solution allows to backup a live physical machine and automatically convert this backup into vSphere virtual machine (P2V), which means that you can virtualize your physical machines on HOST B so that they can be started.
For pure VMware virtual environments from what I can see you have 2 options:
1) Use VMware SRM which continuosly replicates VMs from HOST A to HOST B and provides failover options
2) Use Acronis vmProtect (not Acronis Backup and Recovery since it doesn't have replication feature) which replicates VMs on demand, i.e. on schedule and also provides failover option
From these 2 options taking into account your requirements I would've chosen the 1st one, since with vmProtect you will need to run replication from HOST A to HOST B right before your planned maintenance (to keep HOST A and B in closest sync), so you will have to arrange this action beforehand which adds impact onto production and may slow it down. On the other side my choice could be 2nd one if I know that I have enough time to prepare for maintenance (i.e. that I can replicate right before maintenance), i.e. that I don't have too strong SLA for services downtime or that I need a simlper solution than complex SRM setup.
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
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Hi and thanks again,
with this last information you are putting me in the right directions.
The Acronis looks (B&R 11.5 ot vmProtect8) looks the favourite.
NOTE:
You have written that Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 support V2P, but Acronis vmProtect. Looking thorugh your documentation provided it looks like that Acronis vmProtect provides V2P: from my side it looks interesting (the IT managemnt want save money and prefers physical machines; therefore my 1st suggestion will be to use phisical machines in production and use Acronis to convert all these machines in VMs in a unique physical host running VM ESXi that works only when the phisical machines are down for maintenance). Please let me know if I am correct.
About the continuos replication: it is assumed that the production machine should not change overtime unless maintenance is applied.
My last concern is the use of SQL Server 2008 R2. Any potential issue?
Please let me know
Thanks
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Hi fasttrack,
The P2V conversion is also supported by Acronis vmProtect, however there is a big difference between it and Acronis Backup and Recovery: vmProtect allows only "cold" migration (boot the physical machine from bootable media, create an image and then covert it to ESX(i) VM), while Acronis Backup and Recovery supports "hot" migration with no downtime for physical machine (the backup agent is installed inside the physical machine, the image is created and converted to ESX(i) VM without rebooting or powering off the physical machine).
The SQL Server 2008 R2 is supported by Acronis Backup and Recovery Advanced Server for Microsoft SQL Server add-on (http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/enterprise.html#agents-microsoft… ). This will require an agent to be installed inside the SQL server machine. Note that if this machine is a virtual one then we will offer agent-less backup approach (application-aware backup) in the upcoming Acronis vmProtect 9 version which we plan to release really soon. This version will be able to back up VMs hosting popular Microsoft applications with granular recovery capability (in 8th version we already support Microsoft Exchange using the same approach).
Thank you.
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Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager
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Hi Vasily,
many thanks for your very useful information.
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Being shipped with the Virtual Appliance is I think the best part here.
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