ESX DR Failover

[mstichini]

All,

I'm fairly new to designing a VMWare infrastructure, at the moment I'm busy designing a VMWare infrastructure for my business in which I will have 2 ESX server connecting to the iSCSI SAN at the Production site. The SAN is replicated over to the DR site, I will also have a ESX server there for DR capabilities.

Things I am unsure about, if DR is invoked, then is it a simple case of doing the following to get some if not all machine onlines (will only bring up mission critical servers);

1. Attached the ESX host to the storage

2. Once storage is available, then register each VM to the ESX server so ESX is aware of them.

3. Bring online the DR vCentre Server and connect it to the SQL DB

4. Bring servers online.

Many thanks for you help!

Marco

[Chamon]

You would need to ensure that your ESX has permission to the storage volume and add the storage to your host and then register your VMs to your host. One question. What DB are you attaching your DR VC to? If you only have one ESX host at the DR site what are you using the VC for? If you are connecting it to a backup of your production VC DB then things will change in your plan. How many VMs are you talking about?

[mstichini]

Hi, thanks for your reply.....I am using a SQL DB, the only reason I am using a VC in the DR environment is because I have one in the Production network.

Currently there are 2 ESX servers configured in a cluster with 5 VM servers, from a cost perspective we would only have one DR ESX server and bring up only the critical servers. So perhaps a VC in DR is not needed?

Appreciate your help.

Thanks

[AllBlack]

Did you have a look at SRM?

http://www.vmware.com/products/srm/

Please consider marking my answer as "helpful" or "correct"

[depping]

You will usually need to resignature the VMFS volume before they are accessible.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/12/11/enableresignature-andor-disallowsnapshotlun/

Take a look at my article, it also contains a couple of lines of script which enables you to auto register all the VMs.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

-

---

Blogging: http://www.yellow-bricks.com

Twitter:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".