Questions about running replicated servers at both sites at the same time, continuously

[danielmdm]

First of all, thanks for all the help I've received over the last few days.

I have a few questions below that hopefully are easy to answer for those who are a bit more experienced.

1. After the Initial Full Sync, should the VM be automatically added to the Inventory of the second site? In our case they haven't

2. After an initial full sync, is it safe to turn on the Virtual Machine at the second site, and leave the same VM running at both sites going forwards?

3. If you can do what is asked in Question 2, will replication continue from the 1st site to the 2nd site, even with the VM running on both sites? Will this cause any issues?

A bit of info about the setup

We have two sites, and each site has a vCenter Server Appliance running and a vSphere Replication Appliance Running.

The vCenter Servers on each site are managing two ESXi hosts each, these are added under a Data Center in their respective vCenter Server

We have not configured any Clusters, just added the hosts under a Data Center on each site, replication is setup and is replicating VMs from Site 1 to Site 2

What we want to be able to do

Replicate the Virtual Machines on Site 1, to their counterpart ESXi Servers at Site 2 (We have the Initial Full Sync completed for some VMs, others will complete soon)

Then turn on all of the replicated VMs at the second site - We want to leave those running and still have Site 1 continue to replicate any changes (whilst the second site VMs are still continuously running)

If there is a problem at Site 1, a load balancer will direct traffic to the second site so that service will continue, but from the replicated VMs on the second site - For this to work as intended the VMs must be constantly running at Site 2 and Site 1 must be replicating to them whilst they are running

[vbrowncoat]

1. No, it would only be added to inventory if you recovered it.

2. In general, no, this would mean that you would have the same VM running in two locations.

3. No, replication won't continue if both are running.

If you are looking for the ability to non-disruptively test the recovery of your VMs, as well as something to automate and orchestrate the recovery of multiple VMs, take a look at SRM.

To accomplish what you are looking for would require different technology. Something more like application level availability (like Oracle RAC, SQL cluster or ?) or possibly VMware Fault Tolerance (though it isn't supported between sites).

What you could accomplish with VR & SRM is to have the VMs replicated and in the case of a failure have SRM recover the replicated VMs, changing IP addresses as necessary, and powering them on in the order defined so the application works as expected.