We setup VDR and have it backing up two servers in a test ESXi environment. We added the vCenter appliance and the VDP appliance to our existing test ESXi box in order to do this. I did not want to set up VDP on our production vSphere 5.1 system, and I do not have the free space on our production SAN.
I hate it that I cannot "point to" external storage from the appliance. Instead I must carve out enough space for the pre-allocated appliance. Also, if I choose wrong (i.e. a smaller appliance than what I really need), there is no way for me to move to a larger appliance and keep my backups.
The FLR process is very cumbersome and not very practical. I have tested it and it does work, but wow, what a chore to get a file off a backup! This must be improved.
Lastly, there really needs to be a way to ship the backups offsite. I would love to use Amazon or some other cloud provider. Maybe someone can outline for me how to do this... or maybe there isn't a way. From what I have read, VDP (and its data) just isn't "portable."
What I really want (30,000 foot view) is a system that will run full VM backups that are both runnable and accessible at the file level (for file-level restores). I want to be able to store these backups on local storage and also transfer them to offsite (preferably to the cloud). Lastly, I want to ensure that in the event of a disaster I can connect these backed-up VMs to a completely new VMware environment (if necessary) and crank them up and have them run happily.
Anybody got tips? Veeam, perhaps? Can it be done with VDP? Is it on the VDP road map?
VDP has so much promise, conceptually... it just needs to actually work.
