Question : Planning the backup of new VMWare vSphere environment

Hi Experts. We are planning a brand new vSphere Enterprise Plus environment with several HP Blade servers with FC connections to a primary HP EVA4400 FC disks array and a secondary HP MSA2321 SATA array, also connected via FC. We also have a FC MSL4048 tape library with two LTO-4 drives and a couple of high-end separate physical servers, one of them has a dual port HBA connecting to the FC environment (arrays and drives), while the other just have several GB NICs.

Initially we were planning to use Veeam Backup 4.0 (installed on the physical server connected to the FC environment), to backup all the virtual servers from the EVA to the SATA array (disk-to-disk backup), and then use Backup Exec 12.5 (installed on a virtual server within the ESX environment) to a) to run daily specific app level backup (SQL, Domino, AD) also to the MSA SATA disks, and b) to weekly/monthly transfer those disk backups from the secondary array to the FC tapes.

Now, I am noticing we may be running into some problem here, since I think the VMWare vSphere does not support FC connected tape drives, so I am assuming those two FC-connected tape drives could not be assigned and used by that virtual BEWS 12.5 server. Am I correct?

I also think the Veeam backup can NOT use physical tape drives, and the Veeam Backup server MUST be physical and not running as a virtual machine, so I am trying to figure out what reliable options we may have here, playing with the two physical servers (one with HBAs connected to the FC environment, the other one without HBAs), to try not to spend more bucks on HBAs cards.

Any creative idea would be appreciated. Thanks a lot.

Answer : Planning the backup of new VMWare vSphere environment

Since you the enterpise plus license, have you considered using VDR?
With VDR you can backup VMs to shared drive where you installed backupexec, then use backupexec to backup to tape
By the way how many VMs you have? With VDR you should not exceed 100 VMs but you can run up to 8 backup jobs
Cheers!