SRM Beginnings

[RParker]

I am not confident SRM will do much for our site, but that's what I want to know.

We have 2 sites, both Fiber backend storage.  The site we are shutting down has HP EVA storage, but some of the VM's are using iSCSI direct connect storage.

Question 1) will these files get picked up, or are they required to be VMDK files for this to work?

We also have many VM's which have RDM as well, is that a problem for SRM?

Question 2) SRM uses snapshots to replicate data or is there some other function used to keep the data in synch?

I am not doing the SRM myself, but just want to be prepared in case something goes wrong.  Anyone have any suggestions or tips?

[weinstein5]

Are you looking at SRM for DR or as the tool to migrate to the new data center?

SRM typically relies on SAN to SAN replication either provided by the SAN System or via vSphere Replication - SRM is aware of what LUNs are being replicated -

Question1 - Since the replication is done outside of SRM the LUNs used for iSCSI or RDMs will get replicated - SRM will be able to recover the VMs that are using the RDMs with out issue - for the VMs with iSCSI they will be recovered but there might need to be some manual reconfiguration before you can bring up those VMs

Question 2 - SRM relies on other replication technology - ether provided by HP EVA or with vSphere replication.

[RParker]

Are you looking at SRM for DR or as the tool to migrate to the new data center?

Migrate, it's a one time migration.

SRM typically relies on SAN to SAN replication either provided by the SAN System or via vSphere Replication - SRM is aware of what LUNs are being replicated -

Question1 - Since the replication is done outside of SRM the LUNs used for iSCSI or RDMs will get replicated - SRM will be able to recover the VMs that are using the RDMs with out issue - for the VMs with iSCSI they will be recovered but there might need to be some manual reconfiguration before you can bring up those VMs

Well that's going to be another problem then, because the iSCSI storage is on Dell Equallogic.. not the HP EVA.  Can SRM do both at once.. or we migrate HP EVA then do the Dell after?

[TimOudin]

SRM typically relies on SAN to SAN replication either provided by the SAN System or via vSphere Replication - SRM is aware of what LUNs are being replicated -

Question1 - Since the replication is done outside of SRM the LUNs used for iSCSI or RDMs will get replicated - SRM will be able to recover the VMs that are using the RDMs with out issue - for the VMs with iSCSI they will be recovered but there might need to be some manual reconfiguration before you can bring up those VMs

Well that's going to be another problem then, because the iSCSI storage is on Dell Equallogic.. not the HP EVA.  Can SRM do both at once.. or we migrate HP EVA then do the Dell after?

If I'm understanding you correctly, and your intent is migrate complete from an EqualLogics to an EVA, then SRM cannot help there.  To use SRM the iSCSI volumes on the EqualLogics would need to be migrated to VMDK files and then replicated with VR.  For that use case, technically SRM wouldn't really be required either as it could be done either with VR or by simply converting to VMDK on the EVA after migration the virtual machine.

Tim