A client wanted to set up a backup solution for their VMware environment. My preference on the backup software itself was Vizioncore's vRangerPro software, but I couldn't immediately name a storage device. I've played with the Buffalo Terastation and I have a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ for my home storage but they both are lacking horsepower being that they are just larger NAS devices.

Another blog pointed out the arrival of the ix4 series from Iomega, which is now owned by EMC, which also owns a large chunk of VMware. Nice synergy, right?

So, not only will the client get a storage device that is built well, supports rsync for offsite replication and offers a good chunk of storage, but they'll also have a DR-worthy pair of devices to use if needed. A thread on the VMware forums seems to support using one of these to run several, if not a dozen, somewhat demanding VMs via iSCSI or NFS mounts. Nice bonus.

The only disappointment is expected: I was hoping for block-level replication, not file-level. I know rsync is file-level, but I was hoping that some of EMC's data de-dupe functionality would trickle down and make the periodic full backups easier to handle.

Update: So much for good testing. The ix4 does support block-level replication, so only the changed portion of a file gets pushed across. Serves me right for using entirely different contents for a file of the same name. Don't do this at home, folks.