Accepted Solutions
The short answer is no... There isn't an alarm, and the problem comes from design, and is not a "bug" as such....
But your problem does highlight an issue with some VMW products that on top of vCenter...
A similiar situation can break VMware View - so create a desktop pool (the lefthand), but then someone or you moves the virtual desktops to another folder/resource pools (the right hand), then everything is broken, as with SRM there is no alert or alarm to tell you this has happened...
In View VMware occasionally "protects" certain objects - such as the ParentVM in the linked clone - to stop a "rogue admin" from deleting the parent, and this making the children invalid. The annoying thing about this system protection - is if something goes wrong in the deletion of a pool - and an ophaned linked clone replica is left behind - even if you logged in as an admin with full vCenter rights - you can NOT delete them. Instead you have to shell out to a CLI tool to purge the ophaned object.
I know this ISN'T a forum about View, but I see similiarities between View/SRM... and if you want to get hairy, you could add vCloud Director to that now. As it created folders and portgroups all over the joint...
There reason you not getting an alert or an alarm - is the inventory mappings could contain objects you don't want mapped at all - such as a folder/resource pool of test/dev machines at the Protected Site. It's like the API isn't sophisticated enough (yet) to deal with all the possibilities. Perhaps a solution for this would be some sort alert that had the logic of - if something was ONCE included in the inventory mapping, and is then removed - then send an administrator an alert. That way wouldn't get an inbox full of false postitives about stuff that was never protected...
I've done experiments like yours - such as moving and renaming folders - SRM seems happy with that - but I didn't test deleting stuff or moving ALL the VM out of one folder into another. So perhaps what we need is the API to say - if object is covered by Inventory mapping, then disable the delete function. A lot of EMC products work like this - like Navisphere.
If does make rip-out and replace process harder - because for every action done, you have do it all in reverse - otherwise like with View you could be left with ophaned objects. Also, it does sometimes feel like your being wrapped up in cotton wool, and protected by the vendor from you own stupidity. So perhaps an additional "are you REALLY sure you want to do this - this object is referrence by SRM..." would be a happy compromise...
Regards
Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
Author of the SRM Book:http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/
Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy
The short answer is no... There isn't an alarm, and the problem comes from design, and is not a "bug" as such....
But your problem does highlight an issue with some VMW products that on top of vCenter...
A similiar situation can break VMware View - so create a desktop pool (the lefthand), but then someone or you moves the virtual desktops to another folder/resource pools (the right hand), then everything is broken, as with SRM there is no alert or alarm to tell you this has happened...
In View VMware occasionally "protects" certain objects - such as the ParentVM in the linked clone - to stop a "rogue admin" from deleting the parent, and this making the children invalid. The annoying thing about this system protection - is if something goes wrong in the deletion of a pool - and an ophaned linked clone replica is left behind - even if you logged in as an admin with full vCenter rights - you can NOT delete them. Instead you have to shell out to a CLI tool to purge the ophaned object.
I know this ISN'T a forum about View, but I see similiarities between View/SRM... and if you want to get hairy, you could add vCloud Director to that now. As it created folders and portgroups all over the joint...
There reason you not getting an alert or an alarm - is the inventory mappings could contain objects you don't want mapped at all - such as a folder/resource pool of test/dev machines at the Protected Site. It's like the API isn't sophisticated enough (yet) to deal with all the possibilities. Perhaps a solution for this would be some sort alert that had the logic of - if something was ONCE included in the inventory mapping, and is then removed - then send an administrator an alert. That way wouldn't get an inbox full of false postitives about stuff that was never protected...
I've done experiments like yours - such as moving and renaming folders - SRM seems happy with that - but I didn't test deleting stuff or moving ALL the VM out of one folder into another. So perhaps what we need is the API to say - if object is covered by Inventory mapping, then disable the delete function. A lot of EMC products work like this - like Navisphere.
If does make rip-out and replace process harder - because for every action done, you have do it all in reverse - otherwise like with View you could be left with ophaned objects. Also, it does sometimes feel like your being wrapped up in cotton wool, and protected by the vendor from you own stupidity. So perhaps an additional "are you REALLY sure you want to do this - this object is referrence by SRM..." would be a happy compromise...
Regards
Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
Author of the SRM Book:http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/
Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy
Agreed an alert and warning when you come to carry out the task...
either that or SRM covered object become more "protected" from administrative cock-ups!
I'm not sure whether we will get this as a feature request. I have a feeling that these sort of issues aren't at the top of VMware's list - whereas stuff like making SRM compatible with vCloud Director, P2V DR, A better way of handling IP - vShield and vApp IPing???
I think theres an element of N.F.I with VMware products. What does NFI stand for? "Not for Idiots"... Not that I'm saying your an idiot if you do delete stuff, after were all human and make mistakes. But that vmware has never really wrapped us up in cotton wool and asked
"Are you sure? I'm mean really really sure? Type in a 4-digit pin to confirm your action". Kind of thing...
Still it would be nice to have a better warning that outline the wider impact of our actions... as sometime the brain only gets engaged after you have click OK. It's what I call the "Homer Simpson" moment.
DOH!
Look forward to Copenhagen. Please come up and say hello before or after the session(s)
Regards
Mike
Regards
Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
Author of the SRM Book:http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/
Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy
Oh and while I remember - I would heartily recommend you attend:
BC8675 SRM Futures: Failback Automation, Workload Mobility and More...
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, first released in 2008, is VMware's award-winning product for disaster recovery. SRM continues to innovate and set the standard for automating disaster recovery in a verifiable manner. With SRM today, you can create a runbook which specifies in detail your organization's DR plan that defines how virtual machines and their configurations will failover. You can test the automated failover scenarios without disrupting the production environment. This talk details SRM's current architecture and provides a preview of how it is evolving to handle the scale and demands of today's dynamic data center. You will also learn about the key advancements and vision towards using workload mobility to provision high availability and workloads across the enterprise infrastructure.
EMEA Speaker: Lee Dilworth Principal Systems Engineer
VMware, Inc.
Jacob Jensen Group Product Manager
VMware, Inc.
Wednesday 09:00 Hall C-M3
Wednesday 13:30 Meeting Room 18
Regards
Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
Author of the SRM Book:http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/
Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy
Great I'm always keen to listen to customers and learn from their experience...
Gee, I'm beginning to sound like a VMware Product Manager! 😛
Regards
Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
Author of the SRM Book:http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/
Free PDF or at-cost Hard Copy