I can there are a LOT of people asking similar questions, but havent found an answer that fits my needs. So here goes....
I have ended up with 3 physical hosts... and a vShpere Essentials Plus licence
HostA = ESXi4 + iSCSI SAN
HostB = ESXi4 + iSCSI SAN + Local Storage - Physicallly 1-2km away hooked up via direct fibre
HostC = Win2K3 with vShpere on it
I know I've got VCB somewhere in this, and I started playing with GhettoVCB but found it unreliable, I had to keep tweaking it to work right. So I looked for a commercial tool, and got handed around teams of consultants who came up with some package for $30,000 (pft!)
So I started looking at Veam Backup, the demo on their site looked easy as, but I couldnt get it installed and running here. So I've started looking at VCB Wrangeler and other stuff, but nothing that seems to do quite what I want.
My goal is to simply take a hot snapshot on HostA and then copy it from the SAN to Local disk on HostB. Both HostA and HostB are accessing the same SAN. If the building with HostA burns down or gets flooded, I simply start from the snapshot on HostB and the machine is right where it left off.
I dont want to faf around with tapes or other crap, we dont have any 3rd party backup stuff, and we're not licenced for vMotion or vStorage motion or anything.
So whats the simplest, lowest maintence way to get the job done ? will VCB do it from HostC ?