I have an ESXi host with the following virtual machines:
1 x Active Directory Server
1 x Remote Desktop Services Server
1 x SQL Database Server
1 x Accounting Software Application Server
I have a second "blank/empty" ESXi host.
In theory, what I wanted to do was simply schedule the VMs to be cloned the second host as a backup. If something happen to the first server, I could simply boot the VMs on the second machine and resume as if the first never went down.
In practice, this seems a lot less practical having done quite a few searches here on SF.
My main concern is the integrity and consistency of the SQL database... This backup strategy does not seem to be recommended for SQL servers due to unwritten data residing in memory. I suppose I could shutdown the server, clone it, then reboot, but in my perfect world, I'd like to duplicate these VMs at least nightly while still live.
What would be the best backup strategy for replicating these particular types of servers to a second ESXi host nightly while they are still live? Consider separate options for a budget of $1,000 and a budget of $10,000.
Is there a better possible backup strategy as a whole?