Eager to install SRM - But not all LUNs replicated (yet)

[jftwp]

I have met/completed all SRM installation prerequisites such as splitting up our single VirtualCenter/vCenter into 2, prepped a couple of SRM servers for installing SRM onto, downloaded the SRA for our storage vendor, etc. etc.

The only thing that's not done/in-place (and it's a BIG thing) is the replicated datastores. They are PARTIALLY done in that we have 5 LUNs that we're going to replicate initially, and only 1 of them has completed.

I originally wanted ALL of them to complete replicating BEFORE I actually installed/configured SRM with my protection groups, recovery plans, etc., but our SAN/networking guys have advised me that the remaining 4 LUNs will take about another month before the recovery site has completely initial sync of the LUNs involved. It is what it is----our bandwidth between sites is an MPLS cloud with close to T3 speed, but based on how long it took the first LUN to complete sync, we estimated this 4 week time for completion of the other LUNs.

So can I get started now with just 1 LUN in place/ready/sync'd? If I do, then I can just 'add' other protection groups and recovery plans as need be as the other LUNs complete syncing, correct?

[JeffDrury · Accepted solution]

Ideally you would want to wait until all LUN's are replicated before configuring SRM. Through the SRA, the SRM server will examine your LUN's and check to see that there are VMDK files present. If the VM has storage on any other LUN beside the replicated lun it will not be able to configure protection for that VM. You can manually set the protection on the VM and exclude any non-replicated storage but that will likely hurt your DR plan.

If the goal is to simply prove that SRM is working by testing the recovery of a limited set of VM's then you can start now. If the goal is to actually implement a full site recovery plan then you should wait for all of the replication to complete.

[jftwp]

Thanks.

[Funtoosh]

So you mean to say if you created brand new replication you have to wait till replication is over before you can configure Array?

In our case we are using S/W ISCSI and we had one lun with VM's on it. We created replication at the recovery site. When I try to configure array I can see protected site correctly configured . I can see peer filer. But when I check the last step where replicated array is shown,it is blank. I tried rescanning array and it still was blank.

Thanks

Funtoosh