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Full server to ESX appliance requirements

Use these requirements for full server to ESX appliance protection.

• Source server—The source server can be a physical or virtual server running any of the following operating systems.
  • Windows—You can use any of the following Windows operating systems for a physical server or a virtual guest.  
    • Windows 2003 SP1 or later and 2003 R2
      • Storage Server Edition
      • Small Business Server
      • Web Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Standard Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Enterprise Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Datacenter (i386 and x64)
    •  Windows 2008 and 2008 R2
      • Storage Server Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Small Business Server (Standard and Premium x64)
      • Foundation Server
      • Essential Business Server (x64)
      • Web Server (i386 and x64)
      • Standard Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Enterprise Edition (i386 and x64)
      • Datacenter (i386 and x64)
      • Server Core (2008 R2 only)

    To support the full server to ESX appliance job type on Windows 2003 servers, the Windows iSCSI Initiator is placed into a folder on Windows 2003 servers during Double-Take Windows installations. You will have to install it manually before creating a full server to ESX appliance job. See Installing the Windows iSCSI Initiator. If you are using Windows 2008, the iSCSI Initiator is already installed, but you will have to enable it through Administrative Tools, if it is not already enabled. (By default, it is not enabled.)

     

  • Linux—You can use any of the following Linux operating systems for a physical server or a virtual guest.
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and CentOS
      • Operating system version—5.7 through 5.8
      • Kernel version—2.6.18.x.x
      • Kernel type for x86 (32-bit) architectures—Default (SMP), Xen, PAE
      • Kernel type for x86-64 (64-bit) architectures—Default (SMP), Xen
      • File system—Ext3, Ext4
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and CentOS
      • Operating system version—6.1 through 6.2
      • Kernel version—2.6.32.x.x
      • Kernel type for x86 (32-bit) architectures—Default
      • Kernel type for x86-64 (64-bit) architectures—Default
      • File system—Ext3, Ext4

    Oracle Enterprise Linux support is for the mainline kernel only, not the Unbreakable kernel.

    You must have lsb, parted, /usr/sbin/dmidecode, and /usr/bin/which on your Linux server before you can install and use Double-Take Availability. Your Linux source server must also have a Linux iSCSI initiator (iscsi-initiator-utils package) that is version 2.0-870 or later. See your operating system documentation for details on these packages and utilities.

     

• Target host server—The target host server must be an ESX server. It can be any of the following ESX operating systems. Note that ESX is commonly referred to as the Classic edition and ESXi as the Embedded and Installable edition.
  • ESX 4.0.x or 4.1 Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
  • ESXi 4.0.x or 4.1 Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
  • ESXi 5.0 Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

  If you are using the Standard edition of ESX 4.0 or ESXi 4.0, you must have update 1 or later.

  If your virtual guest is Windows 2008 R2, your ESX host must have ESX 4.0 update 1 or later.

   

• Virtual recovery appliance—The target ESX host must have an existing virtual machine, known as a virtual recovery appliance. This will be an OVF (Open Virtualization Format) virtual machine included with Double-Take. You must install this virtual machine before you can establish protection. When you establish protection, the virtual recovery appliance will create a new virtual server, create and attach disks and an iSCSI target, and so on. If failover occurs, the iSCSI target is released and mounted and the new virtual machine is prepped and booted. Once the new virtual machine is online, it will have the identity, data, and system state of the source. Since the virtual recovery appliance maintains its own identity, it can be reused for additional failovers. Keep in mind the following caveats for the virtual recovery appliance.
  • The virtual recovery appliance must a standalone virtual machine.
  • It should not reside in any multiple virtual machine vApp.
  • The appliance is pre-configured for optimal performance. You do not need to modify the memory, CPU, or other configurations.
  • You should not install or run anything else on this appliance.
  • The firewall is disabled and should remain disabled.
  • A single virtual recovery appliance can protect a maximum of 59 volumes from any number of sources.
• vCenter—vCenter is not required, but can be used in your envionment. VMotion is only supported if you are using vCenter.

• System memory—The minimum system memory on each server should be 1 GB. The recommended amount for each server is 2 GB.

• Disk space for program files—This is the amount of disk space needed for the Double-Take program files. For Windows 2003, this is approximately 300 MB. For Windows 2008, this is approximately 375 MB. For Linux, this is approximately 285 MB.

  For Windows operating systems, the program files can be installed to any volume while the Microsoft Windows Installer files are automatically installed to the operating system boot volume.

  For Linux operating systems, about 45 MB will be on your /root partition, about 40 MB will be on your /usr partition, and about 200 MB will be in /opt.

  Make sure you have additional disk space for Double-Take queuing, logging, and so on.

   

• Server name—Double-Take includes Unicode file system support, but your server name must still be in ASCII format. If you have the need to use a server's fully-qualified domain name, your server cannot start with a numeric character because that will be interpreted as an IP address.

  If you rename a server that has already has a Double-Take license applied to it, for example if you rebuild a server, you will have to perform a host-transfer to continue using that license. This includes changing the case (capitalization) of the server name (upper or lower case or any combination of case). See Activating a single Double-Take server for details on completing a host-transfer.

   

• Protocols and networking—Your servers must meet the following protocol and networking requirements.

  • Your servers must have TCP/IP with static IP addressing. (Some job types allow you to add DHCP addresses for failover monitoring, although only after a job has already been created. Keep in mind that depending on your failover configuration, a source reboot may or may not cause a failover but having a new address assigned by DHCP may also cause a failover.)
  • By default, Double-Take is configured for IPv6 and IPv4 environments, but the Double-Take service will automatically check the server at service startup and modify the appropriate setting if the server is only configured for IPv4. If you later add IPv6, you will need to manually modify the DefaultProtocol server setting. See Server and job settings for details.
  • IPv6 is only supported for Windows 2008 servers.
  • If you are using IPv6 on your servers, your clients must be run from an IPv6 capable machine.
  • In order to properly resolve IPv6 addresses to a hostname, a reverse lookup entry should be made in DNS.
• Ports—In addition to the core server ports identified in Core Double-Take requirements, you must also allow iSCSI communication using ports 3260, 6325, and 6326.
• Windows source server specific requirements—The following requirements apply only if your source is a Windows operating system.

  • Windows firewall—If you have Windows firewall enabled on your servers, there are two requirements for the Windows firewall configuration.

    • The Double-Take installation program will automatically attempt to configure ports 6320, 6325, and 6326 for Double-Take. If you cancel this step, you will have to configure the ports manually.
    • If you are using the Double-Take Console to push installations out to your servers you will have to open firewall ports for WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), which uses RPC (Remote Procedure Call). By default, RPC will use ports at random above 1024, and these ports must be open on your firewall. RPC ports can be configured to a specific range by specific registry changes and a reboot. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 154596 for instructions. Additionally, you will need to open firewall ports for SMB (server message block) communications which uses ports 135-139 and port 445. As an alternative, you can disable the Windows firewall temporarily until the push installations are complete.

    See Firewalls for instructions on handling firewalls in your environment.

  • Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)—Double-Take is dependent on the WMI service. If you do not use this service in your environment, contact technical support.

  • Microsoft .NET Framework—Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 Service Pack 1 is required. This version is not included in the .NET version 4.0 release. Therefore, even if you have .NET version 4.0 installed, you will also need version 3.5.1. You can install this version from the Double-Take CD, via a web connection during the Double-Take installation, or from a copy you have obtained manually from the Microsoft web site.

  • File system—Double-Take supports the NTFS file system. FAT and FAT32 are no longer supported.

• Linux source server specific requirements—The following requirements apply to a Linux source and to the virtual recovery appliance.
  • Name resolution—Your servers must have name resolution or DNS. The Double-Take Console must be able to resolve the virtual recovery appliance, and the virtual recovery appliance must be able to resolve all source servers. For details on name resolution options, see your Linux documentation or online Linux resources.
  • Security—Double-Take security is granted through membership in user groups. The groups can be local or LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). A user must provide a valid local account that is a member of the Double-Take security groups
  • SELinux policy—SELinux should be disabled on the source.

• Supported configurations—The following table identifies the supported configurations for a full server to ESX appliance job.

  Configuration		Supported	Not Supported
  Source to target configuration1	One to one, active/standby	X
  	One to one, active/active		X
  	Many to one	X
  	One to many		X
  	Chained		X
  	Single server		X
  Server configuration	Standalone to standalone	X
  	Standalone to cluster		X
  	Cluster to standalone		X
  	Cluster to cluster		X
  	Windows Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) guest level	X
  	Windows Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) host level		X
  Upgrade configuration2	Upgrade 4.6 Double-Take for Linux connection to 6.0 full server to ESX appliance job		X
  	Upgrade 4.7 Double-Take for Linux connection to 6.0 full server to ESX appliance job		X

  1. See Supported configurations for details on each of the source to target configurations.
  2. Since the upgrade configuration is not supported, you will have to delete the existing connection before the upgrade and create a new job after the upgrade.

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