Anyone used Double-Take?

brad-

Curious if anyone had any experience with Double-Take software. Particularly, using it in a DR role converting P2V and V2P, and/or replicating VM's.

I've only used Symantec BESR in a test environment and it was pretty good.

ajs1976

Yes, but looking at replacing with SAN to SAN replication.

What kind of questions do you have?

t3ch_guru

We use double-take on our micros server at one of our sites.

brad-

ajs1976 wrote: »

Yes, but looking at replacing with SAN to SAN replication.

What kind of questions do you have?

Do you like it for P2V and V2P? Does it do a baremetal restore without fuss?

What capacity do you use it in? What do you like about it? Dislike about it?

ajs1976

brad- wrote: »

Do you like it for P2V and V2P? Does it do a baremetal restore without fuss?

What capacity do you use it in? What do you like about it? Dislike about it?

Most are P2V, one P2P, and one V2V. P2P is to similar hardware. Using the the Full-Server failover option. Everything on the Source server is replicated to the target server. When you failover settings are applied the the target becomes the source. Works OK, but if it fails, you might have something usable might not.

Using it to replicate to a remote DR site.

OK if it is a couple of servers. I little harder to manage with 10 servers.

one problem I am seeing is with failover testing. Failover and testing works fine, better as we install updates. After done with testing, need to rebuild the target. remove from domain, uninstall Double-take, rename, new sid, fix IP settings etc. Recreate the connection and remirror. After a couple of these, target servers start to become unstable. almost need to refresh.

arwes

We're using Never Fail for replication, and I'm not impressed with it at all. I wasn't involved in the process of researching the options available, but I did ask my boss after the fact about Double-Take and apparently it was too expensive. We got Never Fail and they failed to mention a few important things, like it can't be used to replicate domain controllers. And for replicating file servers, you have to purchase a separate addon for that (which they said was included during the original discussions).

We haven't setup our backup servers at the backup site yet (thank God it's in town, not in Dallas like we originally planned), but when we do I foresee many trips to fix things when stuff should've automatically failed over.

ajs1976

arwes wrote: »

We're using Never Fail for replication, and I'm not impressed with it at all. I wasn't involved in the process of researching the options available, but I did ask my boss after the fact about Double-Take and apparently it was too expensive. We got Never Fail and they failed to mention a few important things, like it can't be used to replicate domain controllers. And for replicating file servers, you have to purchase a separate addon for that (which they said was included during the original discussions).

We haven't setup our backup servers at the backup site yet (thank God it's in town, not in Dallas like we originally planned), but when we do I foresee many trips to fix things when stuff should've automatically failed over.

Double-take is expensive. A couple of thousand per server pair.

Tried using Platespins Power Convert for some servers at first to save money. Worked inhouse but failed over the WAN.