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tander
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SRA options for small lab tests?

I need to do some basic lab testing of Site Recovery Manager, in an effort to get a better handle on it for production deployment. But, in my lab I have only low-end NAS services. I use some basic Linux NFS servers for my small lab.

When trying to set up SRM, I quickly found I needed a NAS/SAN with Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) software. Can anyone recommend low-end options for SRA in a lab environment? Is open source an option? How about a low-end VMware certified SAN device, like the Iomega units?

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admin
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Yup, go for the HP Lefthand Networks VSA, it's a virtual appliance, uses almost no RAM (384MB if I recall), and you provide the disk space. A couple of those, download the SRA from vmware.com/downloads, follow the Lefthand guide to setup replication and you can have yourself a working SRM lab in a few hours. Last I checked they had downloads for both Workstation and ESX, I've set up labs on both and they worked very well.

Perhaps someone else knows of a different "lab" type solution, but this one has worked for me in the past.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/vsa/index.html

-alex

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admin
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Yup, go for the HP Lefthand Networks VSA, it's a virtual appliance, uses almost no RAM (384MB if I recall), and you provide the disk space. A couple of those, download the SRA from vmware.com/downloads, follow the Lefthand guide to setup replication and you can have yourself a working SRM lab in a few hours. Last I checked they had downloads for both Workstation and ESX, I've set up labs on both and they worked very well.

Perhaps someone else knows of a different "lab" type solution, but this one has worked for me in the past.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/vsa/index.html

-alex

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bladeraptor
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Hi

An alternative virtual SAN / NAS array is the EMC Celerra VSA - Virtual Server Appliance of our Celerra NAS product

It is fully functioning and can be used in a non-production test and dev capacity to test SRM

It can be found here

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/06/get-yer-celerra.html

A guide to setting up SRM4 on Celerra written by VMware's very own Cormac Hogan can be found here

http://viops.vmware.com/home/servlet/JiveServlet/download/1602-1-8390/EMC%20Celerra%20NFS%20CLI%20&%...

Have a look at these guides and see if the software is something that would work for you

Regards

Alex Tanner

tander
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Thanks for the responses! I will check these virtual SAN options out.

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