SRM Crossover on two Sites.

[AndyMcM]

Hi There,

Looking for some advice, I am looking at setting up SRM between two sites, which will both have a ESX Cluster & SAN on each of them.

Each of the sites will be running production VM's. Is is easy to failover VM's if either site goes down?

From reading the Docs, I am going to have to group the VM's on each site in a Protection Group and then replicate the LUN's between each site, depending on which site has the VM's running.

Does this make sense? Anybody else done something similar that could share there experiences with me?

Cheers.

A.

[Michelle_Laveri · Accepted solution]

Hi There,

Looking for some advice, I am looking at setting up SRM between two sites, which will both have a ESX Cluster & SAN on each of them.

Each of the sites will be running production VM's. Is is easy to failover VM's if either site goes down?

From reading the Docs, I am going to have to group the VM's on each site in a Protection Group and then replicate the LUN's between each site, depending on which site has the VM's running.

Does this make sense? Anybody else done something similar that could share there experiences with me?

Cheers.

A.

Yes, SRM supports a unidirectional (Active/Passive) and bi-directional (Active/Active) configuration. Where the Protection Site and Recovery Site are each others Protection and Recovery Site.

Clearly you will need to replicate production luns from SiteA>SiteB and SiteB>SiteA

Invoking a SRM Recovery Plan is the same in either location....

As for protection groups - it is up to you. You could have a one-to-one relationship - one protection group with one VMFS volume.... or a one to many one protection group with many VMFS volumes. There is nothing arbitary or mandatory about this - it's up to you where location your VMFS and how you store them. The only requirement is to store them on luns that are replicated...

Regards

Mike

[joekim13]

If you do what Mike is suggesting you will need to purchase SRM license for failback / also @ the recovery site.

We got srm setup over a VPN as iscsi does not work well with NAT. Also both VC's will need to be able to talk to both SAN's so if you have a network splitup for iscsi and vm console make sure all 4 networks can talk to each other.

Joe

[Michelle_Laveri]

If you do what Mike is suggesting you will need to purchase SRM license for failback / also @ the recovery site.

We got srm setup over a VPN as iscsi does not work well with NAT. Also both VC's will need to be able to talk to both SAN's so if you have a network splitup for iscsi and vm console make sure all 4 networks can talk to each other.

Joe

Just to clarify - in case I wasn't clear the first time...

In a unidirectional configuation you ONLY need a SRM lic file at the Protected Site. VMware does allow the "temporary" moving of this license to facilate the failback proceedure...

If you want a permamant bi-directional configuration - you would need a SRM lic at both locations...

There is no avioding Vi3 licensing. The Recovery Site is regarded as live site in that respect. I would be nice if they could allow the temporary move of the vi3 licenses. Can't seem them doing that -as they can't see what we are doing with the site!

Regards

Mike