vSphere Replication

[joemailey]

I just have a few questions on vSphere Replication, I've deployed the appliance on one of my ESXi hosts and I've setup replications for a few of my VMs.

They have replicating successfully, these replicate to a host that is located at another one of my sites(although there all on the same network, as the other site is linked directly via 100mb BT fibre link)

My issue is this: if something happens to the building where our core servers are located and also where I have vCenter server setup for managing my ESXi environment, how do I get the replicated VMs to work on the host they've been replicated too?

Hoping this makes sense, I know I can use the web management interface to manage vreplication appliance to recover VMs and deploy them to any host you want. But if the core site is down I won't have access to the vsphere web management interface or te vreplication appliance.

So how do you bring the replicated VMs online?

I have been using vranger for replicating VMs and when replicated to the host that is off site, they just appear as VMs and I can power them on by logging in to the server directly using the vsphere client, as they just appear normally as VM's on that host. But that doesn't seem to be the case with the vSphere replication appliance.

Hoping someone shed some light on this.

[LucD]

Moved to the vSphere Replication community for better visibility

[memaad]

Hi ,

As per your desription, I understand that you are using one vCenter server to manager both the ESXI host , local one and remote one.

Regards

Mohammed

[joemailey]

I have 3 hosts all togather. 2 local and one remote and I'm using vCenter to manage them.

The 2 local hosts replicate to the remote host.

I have one local physical server that has vCenter installed on it and use it for managing the 3 esxi hosts.

Vsphere replication appliance is installed on one of the local esxi hosts.

[memaad]

Hi ,

Then from my understanding , we have to manually register the VM on DR site if Primary site goes down, since we dont have any management serve available.

Regards

Mohammed

[joemailey]

How do I do that that??

[memaad]

Hi ,

You have to create Virtual machine with no VMDK and use existing vmdk option while creating VM on the DR site , then use replicated VMDK .

Regards

Mohammed

[mmarinov]

In the case where you have one vCenter and vsphere replication replicating between hosts you always need them in order to do recovery as this is manual step of the process. In the case of replications between hosts in different vCenters you need the target vCenter and its VR appliance to do the recovery. But again - it requires manual intervention for the recovery using the vSphee Web Client. In case you are searching for orchestrated process you will need Site recovery manager, which however won't work in the case of one single vCenter scenario.

[joemailey]

So what are you saying?? You can't recover replicated VMs??

[Biliana]

Hi,

You can recover VMs with vSphere replication. However, in case you are using a single VC topology and you are replicating between ESX hosts managed by that VC, you will need the VC and its VRM server to be up and running in order to trigger Recovery operation. The use case here is that you can replicate between ESX hosts and be able to recover your VMs when the ESX host gets down.

In case you are using two remote sites, each one having its own VC and VRM server, then you can recover from complete site failure in site A, where all your infrastructure (including the VC) on site A can be down.

[memaad]

Hi,

In short, if you have one vCenter and if it is down, then you have manually create new   VM  and add replicated vmdk to it.

Regards

Mohammed

[joemailey]

So how do you do that?

Create a new VM, then on the hardware config screen, add existing drive, save it and then that should be it?

[mmarinov · Accepted solution]

As vSphere Replication is a feature of vSphere it's functionality is accessible on vc level. Thus in order to do recovery through the ui in single vc use case you need the vc and vr servers up and running. If there is crash of the vc then you can check this article http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/09/21/can-i-protect-my-vcenter-server-with-vsphere-replication/. It is for recovering of vc but is should work for every virtual machine