Introduction
Deployment models
Datamotive deployment topologies — SMB single-node and Enterprise scale-out — and how node counts grow with protected disks.
- Product
- Datamotive Platform
- Version
- v2.0.3
- Last updated
- Updated
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Datamotive is a software-only solution with no dependency on additional hardware or software. All components are self-hosted virtual appliances — shipped as OVAs for VMware and native machine images for AWS, Azure, and GCP — deployed in your own infrastructure on both the protected and recovery sites. There is no external control plane: your data and metadata stay inside your environment.
The solution scales by adding nodes, so the deployment model is chosen by the number of workloads to protect. The recommendations are consistent across all supported platforms.
SMB — single management node per site
For small setups — up to 15 virtual machines or 40 virtual disks — deploy only the Datamotive Management Server on each site. The Management Server includes a replication engine capable of transferring changed data, eliminating the need for separate replication nodes.
If the workload count grows later, additional replication nodes can be added at runtime to handle the increased load — no redeployment required.
Enterprise — scale-out replication nodes
For enterprise setups, add dedicated Replication Nodes alongside the Management Server to balance the data-transfer load. Replication nodes are added in pairs — one on the source site, one on the target site.
Sizing rule: one replication node per 40 virtual disks, with the management node itself handling 40 disks.
| Protected virtual disks | Replication nodes needed (per site) |
|---|---|
| Up to 40 | None — the Management Server handles replication. |
| 120 | 120 / 40 = 3 total; the management node counts as 1, so add 2 replication nodes. |
| 400 | 400 / 40 = 10 total; add 9 replication nodes. |
Additional nodes complete the picture at scale:
- Windows Prep Nodes on the recovery site for Windows recoveries — one per availability zone where recoveries are expected.
- DeDup Nodes on the recovery site when deduplication is enabled.
- An optional Day2Operation Node for centralized monitoring across the DR estate.
See Nodes for each component's role and Sizing guidelines for instance sizes per platform.
Regulated and air-gapped environments
Because every component runs inside your own boundary, Datamotive fits sovereign-cloud and regulated deployments: replication traffic can be confined to private subnets or VPN tunnels, and outbound connectivity is needed only to the platform-manager APIs of the clouds you use (none of your workload data flows over it). See Networking and the Sovereign Cloud platform page.
Related docs
Was this page helpful?