HP StorageWorks SVSP Virtualization Adapter for VMware Site Recovery Manager Application Notes A cost-effective disaster recovery solution is a critical need for businesses of all sizes. It is essential that mission-critical data be protected from storage, site, or regional disasters. Furthermore, the rapid spread of server-based virtualization suggests that disaster recovery (DR) will increasingly take place in the context of virtualized environments.
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Site Recovery Manager overview Site Recovery Manager is a disaster recovery (DR) workflow product that automates the setup, failover, and testing of DR plans. Site Recovery Manager leverages storage vendors’ mirroring capabilities to create a workflow that automates many tasks in a true DR situation. Site Recovery Manager relies on storage array-based block replication that is provided by the storage array vendor.
Restrictions Application-level data synchronization and recovery must be considered a part of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan before Site Recovery Manager is configured. This activity is critical, because without additional interfaces into the application, Site Recovery Manager and the HP SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) asynchronous mirrors can only create crash-consistent copies of the data.
4. Configure the SVSP to connect to the remote site. Refer to the HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform Administrator Guide. Supported storage arrays appear in the Site Recovery Manager compatibility matrix. 5. Set up asynchronous mirrors for each virtual disk containing datastores that will be mirrored between the two sites. Refer to the HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform Manager User Guide. 6.
Figure 3 Test configuration . To maintain and protect the data repository (vCenter and Site Recovery Manager databases), make sure that the database servers are in a cluster configuration. Site configuration Site Recovery Manager is installed as a plug-in to VMware vCenter (VC) server. Both Site Recovery Manager and VC require a back-end database to store metadata necessary to facilitate normal operations. Both the protected site and recovery sites require local databases to operate.
NOTE: Any VMs that are located on a protected datastore will be included in the DR plan; therefore, if not all VMs need to be protected, careful consideration of virtual disk layouts should be addressed. 1. Ensure that sufficient unused HP Continuous Access SVSP capacity is available in both SVSP domains along with Basic Capacity under Licenses. 2. Create any new storage pools and virtual disks for the environment. 3.
4. Assign host permissions to the virtual disks to be used (Figure 5). Figure 5 Host presentations . Installing the Site Recovery Manager plug-in The Site Recovery Manager plug-in lets the VI client manage and configure the site recovery options for Site Recovery Manager. You must connect the VI client to a VC server that has Site Recovery Manager installed before you can download the Site Recovery Manager plug-in application. 1. 8 If not already installed, install VMware’s VI client.
2. Select the Plugins menu option, and then select Manage Plugins. 3. Locate the “vCenter Site Recovery Manager Extension” plug-in and select Download and Install... 4. After the plug-in is installed, close the window. A new Site Recovery icon appears in the VI client. All further management is done through the Site Recovery icon link. Installing the HP SVSP Storage Replication Adapter Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) is an interface between the storage array and Site Recovery Manager.
Pairing the primary site and the secondary site The first task after installing SRA that must be completed is pairing the primary site to the secondary site. You can accomplish this task by selecting the Configure link next to the Connection header under the Protection Setup section from the Site Recovery window. 1. In the Site Recovery window, click Configure. The Connect to Remote Site dialog appears. 2. To establish the site roles (protected and recovery), perform the following steps: a.
2. Click Configure next to the option you want to configure to start the setup wizards. The options available for the protected site include: • • • • Connection Array Managers Inventory Mappings Protection Groups Recovery plans are only created on the recovery site and not on the protected site. Before configuring the storage, you must pair the protected site and the recovery site: 1. Click the Configure link next to Connection. 2.
NOTE: In this document, array manager is a Site Recovery Manager term referring to the two VSM servers for each domain being mirrored. The two array managers are the protected site array manager and the recovery site array manager. The protected site storage array is the HP SVSP system on the primary site. The recovery site array manager is the HP SVSP system on the secondary site. The IP address of each VSM server is needed for the sites. 1.
1. Click Configure in the Inventory Mappings tab. Figure 6 Inventory mappings . This screen shows how the resources that are in use on the primary site map relate to the recovery site resources. 2. Double-click each line that states None selected in the Recovery Site Resources field to select the appropriate recovery site resource. Creating a protection group Protection groups are groups of virtual machines that are failed over together.
Creating a recovery plan NOTE: In VMware terminology, the secondary site is referred to as the recovery site. A recovery plan is the sequence of steps that are performed by Site Recovery Manager at the secondary site when a true DR scenario occurs or when a DR plan is being tested. A recovery plan contains protection groups from the primary site. Recall that the protection groups contain VMs. All of these VMs will be recovered by the recovery plan. 1. Log on to the recovery site vCenter server. 2.
Figure 7 Testing failover . This process will create a snapshot of the last PiT for the replicated virtual disk and assign host permissions for the recovery site ESX host. Once host permissions of the snapshots are assigned to the ESX host(s), Site Recovery Manager will start each of the VMs that are contained on the replicated datastores. Once all the VMs have been brought online, the recovery plan will pause to allow verification of the VMs.
that are still running and shut down any designated VMs on the recovery site that were listed in the recovery plan. To run a recovery plan, select the Run button from the menu under the Recovery Plan window. SRA takes the following steps when a recovery plan is run (a failover is issued): 1. SRA turns off the power to the protected site VMs. 2.
5. Allow sufficient time for the mirrors to fully establish. 6. Follow documented procedures for protecting VMs from the protection site (the previous recovery site) to the recovery site (the previous protected site). 7. Perform a test failover to verify proper configuration of the protected VMs, and then perform a failover to move the VMs back to the original protected site. 8.
Inventory mappings establish recovery site defaults for the folders, networks, and resource pools to which recovered virtual machines are assigned. You create these mappings at the protected site, and they apply to all virtual machines in all protection groups at that site. Primary or protected site is the storage array in a mirror relationship that accepts host input/output (I/O) and stores application data.
Virtual disk groups The virtual disk group makes sure that all data blocks from a set of virtual disks are sent in the same order that they were written on the primary system. If a mirroring failure occurs, the virtual disk group also makes sure of data integrity when related data resides on multiple virtual disks. Resignaturing Each virtual disk is internally referred to in ESX by its UUID. Snapshot virtual disks or mirrored virtual disks have the same UUID as their parent virtual disk.
