-
ESXi hosts—Your source and target hosts must be running ESXi 5.0 Update 2 or 5.1 Standard, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus. Note that this is ESXi that is supported. ESX is not supported.
- Source virtual machines—Your source virtual machines cannot use RDM (raw device mapping). Additionally, 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.
- 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 on all of the appliances should be the same or within a few seconds of each other. Time differences could cause license invalidation.
-
vCenter—Although vCenter is not required, if you are using it, then you must use version 5.0 or later.
-
vMotion—Host vMotion is only supported if you are using vCenter. Storage vMotion is not supported.
-
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.
-
IPv4 is the only supported version.
-
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.
-
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.
- Target snapshots—You can take snapshots of the source replica on the target. Because of VMware snapshot limitations and Double-Take replication processing, the maximum number of snapshots that you can retain is 29. At this point, the oldest snapshot will be deleted when a new snapshot needs to be created.
-
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 for details on each of the source to target configurations.
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