Disaster Recovery Suggestions

[ROY THOMAS]

We're running a UCS C210 M2 server with raid platform. We also have an off-site redundent server. They are configured with ESXi VMWare supporting our 8.6 Call Manager and Unity Connection. I understand fully the guidelines based on the disaster recovery instructions in the Cisco documentation with regard to the Call Manager and Unity applications. What I'm asking, what is possibly the best VMWare backup software; is it Vsphere? If I were to lose a server; and I had the identical piece of hardware sitting in front of me, what would be perhaps the quickest way of getting a server totally configured, restore the backup and get it back on line.

Is there an all in one solution to this problem or is that not even something we should be looking into? Any suggestions as to what some of you have possibly done already?

Thanks

[Chris Deren]

Getting the UCS server up and running takes less than 30 minutes, you configure CIMC, install ESXi, configure ESXi and deploy the VMs using Cisco OVAs and install the apps.  You could use snapshot feature of vmware to get current states of the VMs but it is not supported.  All supported VMware features are documented here:

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_VMware_Requirements

HTH, please rate all useful posts!

Chris