Hello,

Well to answer some of your questions. If you virtualise your physical server you have some options:

- If you want to continue using Replication Manager and present the snap to your Networker StorageNode (which I will assume is a physical machine), you need to have raw device mapping (RDM) for you data luns, because you cannot otherwise assign it to you Networker StorageNode.

This is a setup I have implemented for quite some customers. In most cases, they then run either SQL or Exchange on this VM, and use Replication Manager to make a clone or snapshot and mount it to their backup server (which is then a physical machine).

Ofcourse you can use Replication Manager for a VM without RDM, but you can then not mount it to a physical host.

- Powerpath you will no longer need (multipathing will be done by VMware), but you can use PowerPath/VE on you VMware hosts (requires a licence).

- I dont know how your PtoV would go in the above situation. It might be that you only have to PtoV your OS, and then present your dataluns to the VMware environment, and set up RDM for them to the newly created VM.

- If Replication Manager is not used for application integration, you could also virtualise without using RDM. Backup options could include VCB or normal client backup.

Regards,

Hans Peskens