SRM with vSphere Enterprise and vSphere Advanced

[edricklkh1]

Hi,

I saw the SRM license FAQ saying that SRM does not require all vSphere to be the same edition, and the functionality will be impacted by which edition is being used.

That triggers a few questions in my mind.  Say if my environment is as such:

• Production site with multiple ESX using Enterprise Plus with Nexus 1000V
• DR site with multiple ESX using Advanced edition
• Sufficient SRM and vCenter license to configure for both sites

I assume network should not have much issue, as I can manually map the network port group at the recovery plan.

Thus my questions:

1. Can I manually configure which ESX does the SRM uses to start-up the VMs when running the recovery plan?
   • I do not have DRS at the DR site to distribute the VMs and utilize all resources.
2. What happens when SRM tries to boot up a VM with more than 4vCPU in the DR site?
   • Advance Edition limits my VMs at 4vCPU

Cheers,
Edrick

[mal_michael]

Hi,

Regarding the network configuration, you are correct. You can map vDS portgroup to vSS portgroup via Inventory Mappings (recovery plan's network settings are used only for running test recovery)

1. I believe that you can distribute the placeholder VMs manually, and they will power-on on the hosts you put them on.

2. I am almost sure the VM will fail to power-on.

Michael.

[mbaecke]

Is there any particular reason not to have DRS at the recovery site?

Would make your life a lot easier looking at configuration.

1. Yes this is possible, if you use multiple protection groups.

2. No this will not work.

[edricklkh1]

Due to cost constraint, can only afford to go with Advanced Edition, thus do not have DRS feature.

In your suggestion, does that mean I can have inventory mapping configured base on each protection group?  Btw, while configuring inventory mapping, can I assign a Virtual Machine to individual ESX? Or I can only select base on resource pool?

Cheers,

Edrick

[mbaecke · Accepted solution]

Indeed your correct, overlooked the Advanced part, DRS isn't supported. But another question for you : Do you only use the hardware ont the recovery site for DR purposes or do you also make use of the hardware for other purposes like for example testing? Is not you can always create a business case to buy an Enterprise license and use the recovery site for testing purposes. In case a disaster happens and a failover is invoked you can add to the recovery plan to shutdown your test VMs on the recovery site, before starting the SRM protected VMs. This way you make full use of all hardware on the protected and the recovery site.

Looking at you question again, it makes me think. If you create a cluster on the recovery site and map that cluster to you cluster on the protected site. All VMs that are protected will be booted on that cluster during failover. Ok you won't have DRS so resources aren't distributed over the hosts, but they are running and you can manually vMotion VMs to one host to another.

Point is that is you want to map individual VMs to ESX host, your making your SRM design very complex and hard to maintain. Rather go for the mapping of clusters and take into account that you have to manually vMotion VMs between hosts to create a balanced resource distribution (or buy DRS ). It makes your life a lot easier.