SRM 5.1 & NetApp - VM with RDM and MSCS

[jldavidson]

Hello,

I'm implementing SRM 5.1 with NetApp (With SnapMirror) and I have several questions:

- Replication of volumes through the array manager, run correctly

- How do the replication of virtual machines with RDM? can also be done through array manager (with SnapMirror) or better do it with vSphere Replication. Can be performed by vSphere Replication?

- Do any advice for replication of virtual machines in a cluster of Microsoft?

thanks for all!

[mvalkanov]

Hi,

vSphere Replication does not support replicating virtual machines with physical compatibility mode RDM (a.k.a. pass-through RDM) disks.

However, replicating with VR virtual machines with virtual compatibility mode RDM (a.k.a. non-pass-through RDM) disks should work fine. On the secondary site placeholder disks need to be manually provisioned (A. with vmkfstools or B. as part of a dummy virtual machine which is used only to setup the VMDK file for the RDM and then removed from vCenter Server inventory, but the VMDK left over) and then used as initial copies (replication seeds). If initial copies are not used, for RDM disks at the primary site VR will by default create preallocated lazy-zeroed disks at the secondary site.

Regards,

Martin

[mal_michael]

Hi,

First of all, try to get rid of MSCS . This will greatly simplify your setup (speaking not only of SRM).

Since you must use pRDM for MSCS, array-based replication is the only option.

Do you have stretched VLANs in your environment or you have to re-IP the VMs during recovery?

SRM is able to re-IP the VMs, but not the cluster IP addresses. This must be done manually / via script.

Michael.

[jldavidson]

Thank you very much to you both for the answers.

There is a MSCS that I can not delete. How could configure replication with rdm disks? I think that the virtual machine and volume by rdm, must be all in the same volume. What other considerations should I have? Do you know where I can find a help document on this?

Thanks again.

[mal_michael · Accepted solution]

I am not a NetApp person, but this should be documented in SRA documentation.

Additional point is that MSCS RDMs cannot be configured with Round Robin policy (which is usually is the default for NetApp LUNs). You should reconfigure the LUNs for MRU.

Edit: Just've performed a quick search on Google and found this pdf that looks like what you need:

http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4064.pdf

Michael.