SRM 8.1 - can HA dedicated failover host be used for placeholder?

[SteveR2345]

Hi, my question is can I store my SRM placeholder on the recovery site on a host that is also a dedicated failover host for HA Cluster in that recovery site?

Site A we have a dedicated failover host for HA events.

Site B has a protected VM that needs an entire host in the event of an SRM recovery.

If we can use s single host on site A for both the HA dedicated failover and the SRM placeholder we do both with one. Of course we can't have both events at the same time i.e. we lose HA is we have an SRM failover and vice versa.

Anyone doing something similar or have any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance and kind regards

Steve

[ashilkrishnan · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve,

To begin with, lets have a look at the functions of vSphere HA and SRM

vSphere HA: If  any of the ESXi hosts in the cluster is inaccessible, vSphere HA will register and restart VMs on a health host in same vCenter server.

SRM: This is a disaster recovery solution, which enables recovery of VMs between 2 vCenter servers. For ex: If Site A is completely down, you can recover protected VMs at recovery site vCenter server.

There is no harm having placeholder VMs on a HA failover host at recovery site

As far as placeholder VMs are concerned, we can only provide a dedicated datastore where they can be stored. When we protect a VM in vCenter at Site A, a placeholder is created at vCenter at Site B.

These are not actual VMs(No disks, network, etc.) , but just inventory mappings which gets converted to an actual VM when a recovery is performed

What Happens to Placeholder Virtual Machines During Recovery

[SteveR2345]

Thanks for the response. As I thought the only risk is that during an SRM site failover then no HA host is available and vice versa.

Thanks again