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tropix
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SRM possible environment

Hello friends!

It´s possible the attached environment?

I mean, there is a uni-direction replication between Site A -> Site B.

All Site B ESX boxes use Storage A as a primary storage.

Both ESX boxes (Site A and B) are managed by vCenter A.

There are virtual machines running on both sites.

So, will SRM works fine with this scenário? I mean, it´s supported?

Thanks.

Eduardo.

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TimOudin
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mal_michael
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No it isn't.To implement SRM you need two SRM servers (one at each side) and two vCenter Servers (two different instances, one at each site), so that each vCenter instance manages its site's ESX hosts and VMs.

update: I don't fully understand the attached design. You mentioned that vCenter A manages both sites and that is not the case on the diagram. Additionally Linked mode is used when you want to manage several diferent vCenter instances from one client. vCenter Heartbeat is designed to protect single instance of vCenter. So the diagram does not make sense.

What do you mean by ESX hosts at Site B use Storage A as primary? Is Site B active, I mean, are there VMs running there?

Message was edited by: mal_michael

tropix
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Hello mal_michel.

There are two SRM instances and two vCenter Server. One SRM and vCenter per site.

My doubt about this environment its about this sentence: "one vCenter (vCenter A) will manange both sites." This means that vCenter B will be used just if Site A fails.

Another consideration is, Storage B will be used just if Storage A ou Site A fails. This means all Site B ESX host use Storage A to storage the virtual machines.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Eduardo.

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mikeddib
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To speak to what mal_michel had already started to explain, SRM is really designed for two independant sites which isn't really the way you have it drawn in your design document. Part of SRM is when you 'protect' a datastore in your primary environment, it looks for the replicated copy of that datastore in your secondary environment and presents something of a shell VM. In the event you want to failover, SRM does some work on the storage side to turn up the replicated side and power those shell VMs online as your actual VMs.

Your design where you have hosts in two sites accessing storage in one site lends itself more to some sort of 'VMotion accross datacenters' design and if you have a true disaster where you lost your SAN, you would manually turn up your storage at your secondary site and put things back online. I guess what I'm saying is SRM may not really be designed to do what you're looking for it to do.

I would recommend the following link (http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/vmware-content/the-rtfm-guides/) for information on SRM. The 1.0 book, while not including the new vSphere enhancements, is a free download in PDF format and will provide a solid foundation for what SRM can and can't do.

TimOudin
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Mike's 4.0 book, also free download...

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2010/03/22/new-administrating-vmware-site-recovery-manager-4-0/

Tim Oudin

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