[SRM 4.1] Dealing with local datastores?

[cormack12]

Hi,

I'm currently tasked with installing SRM 4.1 onto our companys vsphere and whilst I've done this before I've never worked with VM's on local datastores. There are three additional datacentres to the two I'll be failing over. These three datacenters all run on Cisco UCS 210 M2 servers partitioned into two datastores. The VM's are all located on the second VMFS partition of the UCS'.

I'm not sure why it has been set up this way as I wasn't here when it was provisioned (it seems strange though as they have a shedload of space on the Symmetrix array). So what I'm asking really (of someone with a more experienced eye) is what are the options for local datastores with SRM? I'm guessing limited to no support...so am thinking I might be looking at svMotion

Thanks for any advice.

[mal_michael · Accepted solution]

Hi,

With SRM 4.1 the only option is array-based replication, i.e. SRM is only able to protect VMs residing on supported storage arrays with replication configured between them. SRM itself doesn't perform the replication. SRM is able to view the replicated devices and perform some operations on the storage array through the SRA (Storage Replication Adapter) - piece of software written by the storage vendor.

So, unless you use some storage appliance which can present these local datastores as shared ones and replicate them (and is supported with SRM), you cannot use local datastores. I have a limited knowledge of such kind of things, maybe other guys will be able to assist more.

In SRM 5 additional option has been introduced - vSphere Replication, which allows replication of VMs between ESXi hosts. You will need vCenter / SRM and ESXi 5 for this to work.

I don't fully understand your setup. How many datacenters do you have? SRM only supports one-to-one and many-to-one scenarios.

Michael.

[cormack12]

Thanks. I'll wait and see if anyone else offers anything else before allocating points

The setup is one vcenter at the moment hosting 4 datacenters.  Two of these datacenters just have virtual machines running on local storage. The other two have virtual machines hosted on the storage array (which is fine). But thanks fo rthe reply thus far - much appreciated.

As for the failover, I'm just going to fail them over (the 2 datacenters) into one recovery datacenter.

[vMario156]

I´m not sure if you understood the basic SRM design.

You will need 2 vCenter instance, each paired to its own SRM instance. You can not failover "inside" a single vCenter.

Regards,

Mario

[cormack12]

Hi Mario

Yes I know this. I'm planning to build another vcenter server with some ESX hosts for the SRM.

Thanks