DR Solution - Networking question

[bellymonster]

I'm currently looking at using VMware as a DR solution but have a question regarding the networking side of things.

I understand the basic principles of DR and I envisage that I will have 2 ESX farms on different physical locations, connected to a SAN that is replicating between the two sites.

The theory being that if the farm goes belly up at the first location, I can (at the very least) manually start the machines in the second location. Probably not a solution for SQL databases etc but ok for fairly static machines.

What I can't get my head around is the best way for the guest VM's to be networked. For example the two sites would have different subnets, in my eyes the only way to get the VM's back onto the network would be to manually reconfigure them with IP addresses from the second subnet. Obviously this would take too long for a DR solution to be effective.

Is it a case of running VLANs accross the 2 sites? Is this possible over a WAN link?

[mitchellm3]

You could bridge the vlan across the wan link but if your network team is like ours, they really won't like that idea. My company is using a technology called IP mobile. This allows us to use the same vlan # and IP range in both sites without the bridging.

Another possible thing to look at is the new Site Recovery Manager (SRM)...another SRM to make storage and vmware conversations confusing. The product will automate the re-addressing of the vms in your dr site...amongst other things. This isn't out yet but is on the horizon.

[bellymonster]

Thanks mitchellm3, never thought to look for a third party app to fix the problem. I take it SRM is a VMware product, sounds just what I need.