Dell EMC ME4 Series Storage Replication Adapter for vSphere User's Guide Regulatory Model: E09J, E10J, E11J Regulatory Type: E09J001, E10J001, E11J001 August 2018 Rev.
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Contents Chapter 1: Installing and configuring the SRA................................................................................4 About VMware Site Recovery Manager.........................................................................................................................4 Planned migration.......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Disaster recovery............................
1 Installing and configuring the SRA The Dell EMC ME4 Series Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for vSphere enables full-featured use of the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) version 6.5 or later. Combining the ME4 Series storage system’s replication functionality with the vCenter SRM, the SRA provides an automated solution for implementing and testing disaster recovery between geographically separated sites. It also enables you to use SRM for planned migrations between two sites.
The recovery site is an alternative facility to which these services can be migrated. The recovery site can be located thousands of miles away. The recovery site is usually located in a facility that is unlikely to be affected by environmental, infrastructure, or other disturbances that affect the protected site. NOTE: The ME4 Series SRA connects VMware SRM with the storage system’s replication functionality, so you might encounter different terminology that has similar meanings.
Install SRM software You must install an SRM server at the protected site and also at the recovery site. After the SRM servers are installed, download the SRM client plug-in from either SRM server using the Manage Plugins menu from your vSphere Client. Use the SRM client plug-in to configure and manage SRM at each site. SRM requires that a vCenter server be installed at each site prior to installing SRM. The SRM installer must be able to connect with this server during installation.
2 Using SRM for disaster recovery After storage system replication and VMware SRM software are configured at local and remote sites and you have configured at least one replication set, use MESM to schedule replications. Then use SRM to create and test one or more recovery plans. At this point, SRM is able to provide disaster recovery, failover and failback, and reprotect operations.
You should run test recoveries as often as needed. Testing a recovery plan does not affect replication or the ongoing operations of either site (though it might temporarily suspend the selected local virtual machines at the recovery site if recoveries are configured to do so). You can cancel a recovery plan test at any time. In the case of planned migrations, a recovery stops replication after a final synchronization of the source and the target.
Reprotection After a recovery plan or planned migration is executed, there are often cases where the environment must continue to be protected against failure in order to ensure its resilience or to meet all disaster recovery objectives. Reprotection is an SRM extension to recovery plans for use only with storage system replication. It enables the environment at the recovery site to establish synchronized replication and protection of the original environment.
3 Troubleshooting VMware vCenter Server uses the SRA to display a detailed error message each time a recovery step fails. The SRA also creates a log file called sra.log that shows each SRM event and each CLI command that occurs on the ME4 Series storage systems. Examining the error messages and this log file will often provide enough information to rectify errors. For additional assistance, contact VMware for support. Table 1.
Table 1. SRA error messages and suggested actions (continued) Message number Message Suggested action 1020 Could not find peer volume for local volume {localsn}. Ensure that the specified volume has been set up as part of a replication set. 1021 Invalid or missing parameters in SRM '{cmd}' request received by the SRA. Verify that the replication sets, remote systems, and SRM configuration are correct. 1022 Invalid or unknown ArrayId '{ArrayId}' in {cmd} request.
Table 1. SRA error messages and suggested actions (continued) Message number Message Suggested action 1105 Failed to run command “{cmd}” on storage system at {system}: {err} Verify the IP address configuration on the storage system and on the host, and check network connectivity. 2001 Volume {volume}({name}) is already unmapped. SRM requested that a volume be prepared for failover, but the volume is already prepared. 2002 No data found for {volume}replication image {imageSn} ({err}).
4 Best practices Specific guidelines and recommendations for using the SRA and replication software in conjunction with the VMware SRM disaster recovery solution include the following: ● Prepare a plan in advance for how you will re-establish replication schedules in the event of a site failover. After performing a reverse-replication operation, you must set up replication schedules in order to ensure periodic replication of data from the new source volumes back to the original source site.
