VMware vSphere 6 Essentials Plus vs Standard

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Paul1977

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#196845 15-Jun-2016 09:35

We are coming up for a hardware refresh and I also plan to look at our back up and failover solutions a the same time.

We currently have vSphere Essentials 5.5 and use third party software for managing backups and head start restores. We have 2 hosts in main office and 1 in a branch office, we also have 1 one non-virtualized Windows server running vCenter in the main office for management.

I don't see in the foreseeable future we will have a requirement for more than 3 hosts.

I am hoping to manage backups and fail over etc all through vSphere so Essentials Plus looks like a good option as far as affordability goes, but I am unclear what I am missing out on as opposed to going Standard? I can find plenty comparing Essentials to Essentials Plus, but not a lot comparing Essentials Plus to Standard.

I believe that Storage vMotion is missing from Essentials Plus. If I have DAS in the 2 hosts in the main office setup as a vSAN, do I even need Storage vMotion?

What other features are missing from Essentials Plus.

Also, can anyone recommend consultant in Christchurch that is experienced with designing VMware solutions? I think I would benefit from a few hours with someone more experienced during the design faze.

Thanks

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lxsw20

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#1572162 15-Jun-2016 09:55

If you don't have storage vMotion nor a SAN, i'm guessing you can't move your VM's from one host to another to perform host maintenance too easy without an outage?

What are you using for backups? Veeam?

Paul1977

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#1572222 15-Jun-2016 10:56

lxsw20:

If you don't have storage vMotion nor a SAN, i'm guessing you can't move your VM's from one host to another to perform host maintenance too easy without an outage?

What are you using for backups? Veeam?

ShadowProtect for backups currently with headstart restores between the hosts, plus replication offsite.

With direct storage and seperate LUNs on each host you are correct, I'd definitely need Storage vMotion to move host storage without shutting down the guests.

But I'm wondering if I have the direct storage the 2 head office hosts configured as a vSAN whether I can achieve what I want without Storage vMotion. I.e. be able to take one host offline without any outage. My understanding was that the whole point of vSAN was that they provide the capability of a SAN without the need for a dedicated storage device. I would have assumed that the vSAN allows you to have all storage replicated across both host devices to allow for failover already?

Note: The 3rd host in the branch office is for spinning up servers from backup in the event of a catastrophic event in the head office. It would have direct storage that is not part of the vSAN in the head office, and would not require vMotion.

So I guess the question is do I need Storage vMotion if I already have High Availability with the vSAN?

Paul1977

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#1572241 15-Jun-2016 11:28

Hmmm... looks like I need a minimum of 3 hosts for the vSAN.

wasabi2k

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#1572298 15-Jun-2016 12:21

HP StoreVirtual VSA works with 2 hosts - there are complexities involved (iSCSI etc)

Obviously you will halve your available storage (as you now have 2 copies of your data, one on each host).

Storage vMotion is for moving between Datastores - do you just have one big datastore? We find it useful as we have lots, across multiple datacentres. If you only have one big one, you won't gain much (until you come to do a migration).