Hi,
We currently use SRM for handling our Disaster Recovery, it works great - it talks directly to our storage (IBM XIV's) at both sides taking a lot of the headache out of failing over if we had an issue..
One thing we can do is use the built in testing of SRM which again - talks directly to our storage to create snapshots, attach those snapshots to our hosts and then bring up our VM's in an 'SRM Bubble' - a separate network which only these VM's use.
That's great for testing DR failovers,
My question is - is there a way to do this and test within the same Datacentre? - with SRM we protect VMs at one DC, and 'recovery' (or Test recovery) of those VM's at the other DC.
is there a way to effectively 'protect' and 'recover' VM's in the same Datacentre using the SRA to talk directly to the storage and create snapshots etc, map the LUNs through to the hosts - all in that same DC?
We run both our Datacentres Active/Active in that we have systems up in both sides at the same time - so part of the reason I'd like this is to test (using SRM) what really would happen in a DR situation by having systems online (inside the test network) already up at Site A, so that when we test failover of Site B, half of the systems (Domain controllers etc) would already be up in Site A - which is more realistic for us). What I do at the moment is manually snapshot the storage in the XIV at Site A and map it through to the hosts their and then add my VM's to the inventory making sure they are in the SRM Network and not the production network. Doesn't take that many VM's (a few Domain controllers, Exchange servers, file servers etc) for this to become a bit of a headache - only to have to manually reverse it all afterwards.
Is there anything that currently can do this?
Thanks - sorry for the lengthy post
Chris
