SRM Intro Questions

[L2_L3]

Hello All:

I have a couple quick questions I was hoping someone could address in regards to Array Based replication on an initial setup I am starting to lab.  Below will state my BARE minimum setup.

3 datastores in each location

1 - will contain the VMS that will be replicated via ABR for DR and SRM testing.
1 - will contain vCenter and the SRM VMs in each location (I am assuming you do not want to replicate these VMs as they exist in both locations already and other vms to NOT be replicated).
1 - Placeholder datastore for the VM files in secondary and primary for failback.

Does that sound valid?  I just want to be sure I do not have to replicate the SRM or vCenter primary vms for any reason (I could not find documentation on this).

Also from my storage provider, I found a snippet in the replication adapter documentation stating - "The recovery/secondary volumes remained unmapped"

So should I not connect my secondary volumes in the secondary site off the bat?  To me that just seemed logical to do so.  I could not find documentation on the secondary site.  All the write ups I saw were the user in the primary site.

Any clarification anyone could provide would be great. 

[vbrowncoat]

This looks good. You definitely do not want to replicate your vCenter or SRM servers. Regarding secondary volumes, what your SRA vendor says is often the case, and since they call it out specifically go off what they say.

Does this answer all your questions?

[L2_L3]

Yes - thank you.  I will ping our storage vendor to confirm the suspicion as the document is quite old.  Even though it shows for ver 5.8

[admin]

SRM will typically take care of mounting the recovery site devices on failover for you. There are a few SRAs that require this to be performed in advance, but most SRAs will take care of it for you.

[odohertyd]

You just need to create your secondary volumes at the DR site and make sure that your hosts have the correct access permissions to mount them. Once that's all sorted the SRA will take care of mounting the volumes during the recovery.