replication site setup question

[hamel01]

Hi All,

So i am looking for input on this setup.  We have one office that houses or servers and a remote office that is going to be used as our DR site. Both are connected via fiber internet circuits and have a vpn tunnel between them.  At the primary site we have 2 dell esxi 5.1 hosts with a Nimble SAN.  At the remote site i will have 1 ibm 3560 M3 with processing power and storage to match the servers at the primary site.  I have but that ibm host into management under my vsphere box and have installed and setup vsphere replication and am successfully replicating server to the 3rd host. Note that it is still in the primary site until the initial sync's are done.   My questions are this:

Should that 3rd server be managed by the same vsphere box as the other hosts?

Should it reside in the same site (vmware site)?

My vsphere box is virtual and lives at the primary site.  If i get into a DR type situation and i don't have access to that vsphere box how do i get the replicated machines back online?

Should my vsphere box live in on the 3rd host?  Or do i need 2 vsphere boxes?

Thanks!!

Mike

[vbrowncoat]

Should that 3rd server be managed by the same vsphere box as the other hosts?

- It depends on what you are trying to accomplish and what your requirements are. I'm assuming that by "vsphere box" you are referring to vCenter. If you want to use a tool like Site Recovery Manager then you will need a second vCenter. If you want to use vSphere replication without SRM and recover a VM when the primary site isn't available, you'll want a second vCenter. There are a number of other factors as well but it's kind of hard to get into without more information.

Should it reside in the same site (vmware site)?

- see above - I'm thinking you are talking about vCenter in which case it will be on it's own (that's just the nature of vCenter). Within vCenter you can have Datacenters and Clusters, though keep in mind that from a VMware standpoint these are not location concepts.

My vsphere box is virtual and lives at the primary site.  If i get into a DR type situation and i don't have access to that vsphere box how do i get the replicated machines back online?

- if you are using vSphere replication and you don't have a second vCenter running your second site, you don't. VR requires a vCenter to function

Should my vsphere box live in on the 3rd host?  Or do i need 2 vsphere boxes?

- Not sure if you are asking if you deploy a second vCenter where it should reside or if you are talking about the first one? Answer is, it depends, what are your requirements and constraints?

[hamel01]

Thanks for the reply and sorry that i wasn't as clear as I should of been.

My current setup is a 2 host cluster that has a virtual vcenter server.that manages those hosts.  I am adding a 3rd host at a remote site that is well connected and I want to replicate our virtual servers to that 3rd host in case of a disaster at our primary site.  Currently I have the 3rd host in the same site and under the management of the vcenter instance.  I have replication installed and working to send the vm's to the 3rd host.  What i am trying to determine is what is the best way so that in a disaster i can use that host?  From what i am seeing i need to have a separate vcenter instance managing that host with the replication app installed on it as well.  Does that sound right?  is there any good way to do it with one vcenter instance?

[vbrowncoat]

To use vSphere Replication requires a working vCenter so with that as your single point of failure adding a second one at your remote site would be your best bet.

That said, this depends on what RPO/RTO you are trying to meet. If you are ok with a longer RPO/RTO another option would be vSphere Data Protection. In vSphere 6 all the features that were in the VDPA product are included with Essentials Plus licensing and higher. This will give you the ability to backup your VMs, replicate the backups to your remote site, and recover them without a vCenter.

Does this answer your questions?