-
ESXi hosts—Your source and target hosts must be running one of the following ESXi versions. Note that this is ESXi that is supported. ESX is not supported.
-
ESXi 5.0 Update 2 Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
-
ESXi 5.1 Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
-
ESXi 5.5 Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
-
vCenter—vCenter is not required, but if you are using it, then you must use version 5.0 or later.
-
vCenter permissions—If you want to limit the permissions required for the vCenter account that you will be using for your agentless vSphere job, your account must have at a minimum the permissions listed below.
- Datastore—Allocate space, Browse datastore, Low level file operations, Remove file, and Update virtual machine files
- Global—Act as vCenter server and Licenses
- Host, Local Operations—Create virtual machine, Delete virtual machine, Reconfigure virtual machine, and Relayout snapshots
- Network—Assign Network
- Resource—Assign virtual machine to resource pool
- Virtual Machine—All virtual machine permissions are required.
-
vMotion—Host vMotion is only supported if you are using vCenter. Storage vMotion is not supported.
- ESXi and vCenter interoperability—Any combination of ESXi and vCenter or ESXi standalone host is supported, with the following exceptions.
- VMware does not support 5.1ESXi hosts on a 5.0 vCenter.
- VMware does not support 5.5 ESXi hosts on a 5.0 vCenter.
- Double-Take does not support the following source to target combations.
- 5.1 ESXi standalone host to a 5.0 ESXi standalone host
- 5.1 ESXi standalone host to a 5.0 ESXi host on a 5.0 vCenter
- 5.1 ESXi host on a 5.1 vCenter to a 5.0 ESXi standalone host
- 5.1 ESXi host on a 5.1 vCenter to a 5.0 ESXi host on a 5.0 vCenter
- Source virtual machines—Your source virtual machines must meet the following requirements and limitations.
- Each virtual machine must be hardware version 8 or later.
- If your virtual machine is using hardware version 9, you will not be able to use ESXi version 5.0. This is a VMware limitation.
- If your virtual machine is using hardware version 10, you will not be able to use ESXi version 5.0 or 5.1. This is a VMware limitation.
- Operating system—The following guest operating systems are supported on the source virtual machine.
- Windows—Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, and Windows 2012 R2
- Linux—Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04, Redhat and CentOS 5 and 6, and SuSE 10 and 11
- Raw device mapping—You cannot use raw device mapping (RDM).
- Change block tracking—Change block tracking must be supported on the source virtual machines, specifically the changeTrackingSupported flag must be set to true. See your VMware documentation for details on change block tracking.
- Independent disks—Independent disks are not supported because VMware cannot take a snapshot of an independent disk, and Double-Take agentless vSphere replication technology is based on VMware snapshots.
- Appliances—Your controller appliance and your replication appliances will be an OVF (Open Virtualization Format) virtual machine included with Double-Take. You must install these appliances before you can establish protection. See Installing the Double-Take replication or controller appliance for installation instructions. Keep in mind the following caveats for controller and replication appliances.
- The appliances are pre-configured for optimal performance for most typical environments. While not required, you can modify memory, CPU, and other configurations to fit your specific environment.
- You should not install or run anything else on these appliances. They must be dedicated to Double-Take processing only. Do not use them for any other activity (web server, database server, and so on).
- The firewall is disabled and should remain disabled.
- A single replication appliance can protect a maximum of 59 virtual disk files (.vmdk files). For example, if your virtual machines each have four disk files, you can protect 14 virtual machines (14*4=56). You may want to balance the replication among multiple replication appliances, depending on various factors such as the number of virtual machines you are protecting and the replication interval for your jobs.
- Because the controller appliance controls licensing for all of your replication appliances, the date and time (relative to UTC) on all of the appliances should be the same or within a few seconds of each other. Time differences could cause license invalidation.
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Protocols and networking—Your servers must meet the following protocol and networking requirements.
- Your servers and appliances must have TCP/IP with static IP addressing.
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IPv4 is the only supported version.
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If you use DNS, you must have the appliances names and IP addresses in a forward lookup zone in DNS. Additionally, you must have the subnet the appliances will be using in a reverse lookup zone in DNS.
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If you are not using DNS, you must configure the hosts file on each controller appliance and replication appliance to include mappings for all other replication appliances, controller appliances, vCenters, and ESXi servers.
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Snapshots—You can use third party tools to take snapshots of the source. Keep in mind the VMware snapshot limits for your version and that Double-Take requires one snapshot of the source, otherwise Double-Take replication will not work. Double-Take will delete its own snapshot on the source at the end of each replication interval.
Third party snapshots of the replica on the target is not supported. You can take Double-Take point-in-time snapshots on the target if needed. Again, keep in mind the VMware snapshot limit for your version and that Double-Take requires at least two replication snapshots on the target in order for replication to work. Double-Take will account for the two replication snapshots by limiting the maximum number of point-in-time snapshots. Also Double-Take will delete any more than two replication snapshots on the target.
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Supported configurations—The following table identifies the supported host configurations for an agentless vSphere job. (These are source and target configurations for the ESXi or vCenter host, not the virtual machines or appliances.)
| Configuration |
Supported |
Not Supported |
| Source host to target host configuration1 |
One to one, active/standby |
X |
|
| One to one, active/active |
X |
|
| Many to one |
X |
|
| One to many |
X |
|
| Chained |
|
X |
| Single host/cluster |
X |
|
| Host configuration |
Standalone to standalone |
X |
|
| Standalone to cluster |
X |
|
| Cluster to standalone |
X |
|
| Cluster to cluster |
X |
|
| Upgrade configuration |
Upgrade 5.3 Double-Take Availability for VMware Infrastructure job to 7.0 agentless vSphere job |
|
X |
| Version 7.0 console |
Version 7.0 console can view or create jobs for 5.3 source and 5.3 target |
|
X |
-
See Supported configurations in the Double-Take Console online help for details on each of the source to target configurations.
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