Automatic Failover

[HamR]

In a tightly controlled environment where very little changes - the Protection Groups are static and the single Recovery Plan is well-defined - is it possible to automatically execute the Recovery Plan if the appropriate instantiating conditions can be measured/quantified? With PowerShell for instance?

I know there are risks with this approach and the Business Vs Technical war to define and meet RTOs will be waged in due course.

I'm just interested to know if it's possible and how it might be achieved. Incidentally, a virtualized storage layer is not an option.

TIA,

HamR.

[Michelle_Laveri · Accepted solution]

I'm going to say it can't be done...

I was chatting to Carter Shaklin (the PM for the VMware PowerCLI) about what tasks could be automated with powershell for SRM.

I take this a good sign, that VMware is starting the process of powershell enabling their high-level management products as they have done with ESX/vCenter.

I would be VERY surprised to see that resultant SDK for SRM would expose to ordinary users the object/properties/methods required to actually trigger an execute of a DR plan. I believe VMware will remain committed to the position that order to issue a "GO" on the DR plan will require high-level C-class management approval first....

If you looking for some thing that would allow an automatic failover - you really looking at other vendors 3rd party availability products that allow you to affectively create a "stretched cluster". The problem with these techs is that they are NOT designed for multisite DR, but component failure - such as the death of an individual host or VM...

Regards

Mike Laverick

RTFM Education

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk

Author of the SRM Book:http://stores.lulu.com/rtfm

Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy

[hkrishnan]

As Mike mentioned, there is currently no powershell or other forms of CLI to trigger a recovery plan. There is a SRM API (XML/WSDL) that can be used to execute/pause/restart/cancel a recovery plan. More details on this interface is at:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/srm-api/srm_10_api.pdf

[dmedvitz]

You could use powershell to automate the failover. To do this, you would need to compile a .NET class from the WSDL definition, then load that class. You can then instantiate an SRM object and run/test the recovery plans. I'm currently doing something like this to do periodic automated recovery plan tests.

Dave

[ferdis]

Hi,

what was result of you testing?

I got question regarding automatic failover from our partner.

Thanks a lot.

Frantisek

[mal_michael]

Hi,

your answer is here:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/253736?tstart=0

Michael.