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virtualhelp
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Add DNS servers to replicas with disaster recovery solutions

Hello there,

We are currently evaluating Disaster Recovery tools, we have Site Reocvery manager and Recoverpoint under observation.

My question comes, since I have the doubt if it is advisable to include the replica servers that have Active Directory and DNS as a role.

Is it advisable to include DNS servers in the replica?

Or in that case, it would be better to create a secondary DNS in the contingency site and replicate all those records and zones from the primary DNS to the secondary DNS, without the need to include this service in either SRM or recoverpoint replication.

I listen to suggestions.

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ashilkrishnan
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi @virtualhelp ,

If you look at previous version of SRM(6.1 and earlier), it was suggested not to use SRM to protect such VMs and instead use native Active directory replication technology to replicate such VMs. This was due to various factors mentioned here --> SRM can protect anything – but should it? 

Current documentation states that you can protect them as an alternative to native(Microsoft) replication and restore procedure's --> SRM and AD domain controllers 

If you are trying to protect a AD-DNS server that is the primary server hosting your current vCenter, SRM and other VMs, I would suggest not to include it in the protection.

For ex: If you perform a planned migration, first task would be to shutdown all VMs part of the plan at the protected site(including AD-DNS servers) and recover them at recovery site. When the AD-DNS servers go down, you will loose access to everything including your vCenter and SRM, leaving the SRM task in a hung state.

On the other hand, it might help in case of a DR activity. Again, during a DR it will try to perform a sync to get the latest state and if even if it fails to get the latest state, it will still perform a recovery.

Hope that helps.

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