VM Replication/HA Solution

[BryanADM]

Our current setup is

1 vCenter Server (Physical)

4 ESXi Servers

1 EMC VNXe 3100 SAN (with 4 additional DAE's)

What i am looking to do is have a secondary location act as a failover/second cluster.

IE in the event of an issue at the current location, It fails over to the new location. At the same time i do no want this new location to just be a failover site. i would like it to use the resources and utilize HA/DRS etc.

I plan to purchase 4 more servers and another SAN to accomplish this. However i am not sure how to actually accomplish this. Any advise?

[rcporto]

To achieve this, you may need implement a Stretched Cluster and SRM, take a look at this paper: https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Stretched_Clusters_and_VMware_vCenter_Site_Recovery_Manag...

And here is another good article: http://up2v.nl/2014/09/02/combine-the-best-of-two-worlds-vsphere-stretched-cluster-and-site-recovery...

[vbrowncoat]

It sounds like you're looking for a solution like SRM (Site Recovery Manager). SRM will automate and orchestrate your recovery plan as well as give you the ability to non-disruptively test it as frequently as needed/desired.

SRM supports bi-directional protection (each site protecting the other) as well as the ability to power down non-critical/unimportant VMs at the recovery site as part of the recovery plan (to allow you to use resources at the recovery site when it isn't needed for a failover).

You can use vSphere Replication or Array Based Replication to replicate your VMs between sites (check the compatibility matrix to confirm that your arrays are on the list).

There is a lot of information about SRM available on the VMware site and elsewhere.

Does this answer your questions?