Not able to create Consistency Groups for failback with the EMC VSI - VSphere Plugin

[rmxdavid]

We have successfully implemented SRM and have been able to test & run our recovery plan to move VM's and storage over to our DR Location.  We are now in the process of working with VSI to configure Consistency groups for failover/failback.   When doing so, we get the following error within the VSphere Client.

"Unable to create 1 Consistency Groups, verify their configuration for errors."

We are using EMC Symmetrix VMAX storage with the following versions of software:

ESXi 4.1

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware

VMWare Site Recovery Manager 4.0.1

EMC SRDF Adapter for VMWare Site Recovery Manager 2.2.0

Solutions Enabler v7.1.2.0

SRM Server is a Windows 2008 R2 Virtual Machine running Solutions Enabler to a remote SYMAPI Server that has the appropriate gatekeepers for performing the symmetrix arrays failover failback functions.

Note: Within the  EMC.VSI.VSphere4.Features.SPO.SRAUtilities log file, the following errors are noted:  (See the attached for more detail)

CgException: Exception occured while determining if the CG already exists ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x800706BA): The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)
   at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)
   at System.Management.ManagementScope.InitializeGuts(Object o)

This leads to a couple of questions while trying to find the answer to the problem:

1.)  Does the EMC Solutions Enabler product have all of the components installed locally on the VSI/SRM Server with gatekeepers assigned - Or can it have the base daemon installed and use a remote SymAPI server to create and manage the consistency groups and failover/failback from the remote server?

2.)  Can the VSI/SRM server be a VM?  In our case it is (which I believe is supported) and we are able to test & run our recovery plans with SRM which fails the storage and VM's over to our DR failover site location just fine, but we are not able to failback with VSI

Thanks,
          Ralph

[kirannisarga84]

Hi,

We are also facing the same issue with almost identical setup. Can you please let us know if at all you could resolve this issue and how you resolved this issue?

Regards,

Kiran S

[rmxdavid]

Kiran - It has been a little while since we got this working, I will review my notes and get back with you. Do you know what versions of VSI, SRM and Solutions Enabler you are running? If you can send me the versions you are using I will compare with what we currently have.

Ralph C. David

E-[http://graphics.hotmail.com/ememail.gif] rmxdavid@hotmail.com<mailto:rmxdavid@hotmail.com

[kirannisarga84]

Hi Ralph,

Good news. We too got it working. The issue was with corruption related to GNS in the solution enabler, due to which creation of cg and dg were was failing with VSI. CLeaned up some SE related folders manually and uninstllad & reinstalled SE. Now it is workng fine.

We are using VSI 4.0

SRM 4.1 Update 2

SE 7.3.1.0

SRA 2.2.0.3

[sunvmman]

struggling to figure out how to create consistency groups using vsi ..

any step by step. ? 

[Rags201110141]

Kiran,

I am facing the same exact issue with ESXi 5.0 with SRM 5.0. Could you please share the method you used to resolve the issue?

Thanks,

Raghavendra

[rmxdavid]

A couple of things to check is to:

1.) Make sure you are using the correct version(s) of Solutions Enabler on the SRM server and your Solutions Enabler servers  - In our configuration the SRM Servers only run the EMC storapid (SE Base Daemon) and we point to the actual solutions enabler server at each location that has the gatekeepers for the R1-R2 Primay/DR arrays.  (We had two different versions between our SRM server and our SE server that was causing a problem.)   There could also be a config file (netcng) on the SRM server that needs to point to the SE server if you don't have gatekeepers and all of the Solutions enabler components installed on the SRM Server.

2.) Also make sure that the EMC VSI plug-in is configured with the correct Storage Viewer\Solutions Enabler server for each location (Primary & Recovery locations) and test the connection to make sure it works successfully.   We did not have the GNS issue mentioned by Kiran but definately worth a deeper look as sometimes Solutions Enabler can get corrupt and a uninstall/re-install after removing the files and the symapi Database can clean things up.

- RCD

[sunvmman]

your response worked thank you