Hot DR Site Replication with SRM

[rrz2012]

Hi Gurus,

I am in the process of designing SRM solution to a customer.

The customer needs to replicate some vm's from Primary Site to DR Site.

Some other vm's from DR Site to Primary Site.

In my opininon we can do this with 2 SRM packs for either site.

I need your advise as to how will the vCenter identify the Protected Site and Recovery Site at the same time.

[kermic · Accepted solution]

This is a quite common scenario.

You install SRM in both sites, configure replication for needed VMs and / or LUNs in desired direction, in case of array level replication install and configure SRAs in both sites and then configure protection groups and recovery plans for your protected VMs.

You don't necessarily need "2 SRM packs for each site". Typically it's enough to have a single vCenter and single SRM instance in each site.

Let's assume we have site A with VMs vmA1, vmA2 and vmA3 and site B with VMs vmB1, vmB2 and vmB3. VMs from site A are being replicated to site B and vice versa.

For A protection:

- vCenter-A and SRM-A are managing protection for their VMs, SRM-B holds recovery plans for VMs vmA1,A2 and A3

- vCenter-B and SRM-B are managing protection for B VMs, SRM-A holds recovery plans for VMs vmB1,B2 and B3

If the customer policy explicitly dictates that recovered VMs from either protected site should not be started under same vCenter (i.e. if site B fails and VMs vmB1,B2 and B3 need to be restarted in site A, customer does not want them to live under vCenterA for any reason) then that would require 2 vCenter and 2 SRM Server instances in each site. Normally you should be able to avoid this as it increases management complexity and costs (consider purchasing 2 vCenter licenses for each site). If there are strict isolation requirements, typically you should be able to satisfy them by using either resource pools, different vSwitches / portgroups, appropriate network segmentation, different datastores and possibly multiple clusters.

Hope this helps.

WBR

Imants

[rrz2012]

So can this vSphere Replication scenario as you explained can be done in one vCenter Site Recovery Manager License Pack??

Sorry for my ignorance, but I just need to understand how the licensing works too when proposing the solution...

Thanks in advance,

Rushdi

[kermic]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "SRM license pack".

Basically you need a vCenter in each site (at least 2 vCenter licenses) and SRM license protected VMs, if you're buying SRM in a per-vm model.

In case I want to protect 10 VMs on site A and 15 VMs on site B, is it OK to buy SRM 25VM pack and use it in both sites?

I asked this question about a year ago to VMware representative and got an answer that this is a completely valid scenario. So I tend to think that it still can be used this way however it might be a good idea to double check this with your preferred VMware partner (or in case if you're a partner, then ask your distributor or channel manager).

Here is a licensing quicklink: http://www.vmware.com/products/site-recovery-manager/buy.html

SRM can be purchased as part of vCloud Suites as well, then AFAIR it's licensed per CPU.

Hope this helps

WBR

Imants