SRM Placeholder Datastores

[Rajat2013]

Hello,

I would need an expert opinion on designing the placeholder datastores approach. We have 6 clusters at the protected site & same 6 clusters would be created at the recovery site for the DR.

Can someone please suggest what would be the best approach to decide on the number of placeholder datastores to be created for such decision? Should there be one global placeholder datastore for all the clusters or we should create 1 placeholder datastore for each of the cluster.

What are the pros and cons of doing any of these scenarios?

Thanks

Rajat

[rcporto]

Never seen any additional best practices for placeholder datastores, only the requirements:

Placeholder datastores must meet certain criteria. 

■	For clusters, the placeholder datastores must be visible to all of the hosts in the cluster.
■	You cannot select replicated datastores as placeholder datastores.

And some recommendation to use some name conventions to avoid people to store real VMs on it... and in my implementations I have used a single placeholder datatore to multiple clusters.

[abhilashhb]

I would say create a placeholder datastore per cluster. Create small ones that will only have the VM files and will avoid the administrators to create actual VM's on it.

It is all summarized and put nicely in this article.

Assigning Placeholder Datastores | Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.0: Configuring the P...

[settlersoman]

Hi,

It depends on h security regulations, size of infrastructure etc. Please follow http://settlersoman.com/srm-placeholder-datastore-design/

Generally I create shared datastores across clusters because there is no technical limitation to do it and easier for administering.