Dell PowerVault MD Storage Array VMware Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) 5.
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Contents 1 Data Recovery Using VMware And Dell MD Storage Arrays..............................................5 SRM Overview.......................................................................................................................................................... 5 SRA Overview........................................................................................................................................................... 6 2 Setting Up Your Environment...............................
5 Testing And Running Recovery Plans....................................................................................25 Testing Recovery Plans.......................................................................................................................................... 25 Running Recovery Plans.................................................................................................................................. 26 6 Failback Procedures...............................................
Data Recovery Using VMware And Dell MD Storage Arrays 1 In an effort to consolidate and more efficiently use server resources, many applications formerly run in a dedicated physical server environment are being migrated to virtual machines (VMs) or virtual servers operating in a VMware ESXbased virtual infrastructure.
Figure 1. SRM Architecture SRA Overview The MD-specific Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) interacts with the SRM to discover, replicate and when required, failover to the storage arrays between recovery sites. Also, the SRA interacts with the storage array to provide test failover capabilities to the SRM.
Setting Up Your Environment 2 This section details initial setup requirements for using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and the Dell MD storage array-based Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) 5.1. Installation Prerequisites Implementing a successful recovery solution using VMware and the remote replication features of the Dell MD storage array requires specific installation and configuration tasks on the VMware application platform and MD storage array.
• Remote Replication • Snapshot Virtual Disk For more information on obtaining and activating MD premium features, see the Dell PowerVault MD3600f-series Storage Array Owner's Guide, Dell PowerVault MD3200-series, and Dell PowerVault MD3600i-series or go to dell.com/ support and select your array model from the product selector.
Figure 3. Multiple Virtual Disk Replication Setting Up Remote Replication On The MD Storage Array NOTE: You must activate the Remote Replication premium feature before performing the steps below. For step-bystep instructions on using MD Storage Manager (MDSM) to set up Remote Replication, see the Dell PowerVault MD3600f and MD3620f Storage Arrays Owner’s Manual available at dell.com/support/manuals. Before installing and configuring SRM 5.
Figure 4. Fibre/iSCSI Channel Multi-path Configuration Switch Zoning Requirements Switches used in a fibre-channel and iSCSI configuration must employ zoning. These switch zoning requirements must be observed: • Each host bus adapter (HBA) on the host server must connect to a separate switch zone; no more than one HBA may be connected to one logical switch zone. • Port 3 on each of the MD storage array controller is reserved for Remote Replication. This is required for fibrechannel only.
Installing The Recovery Solution Components 3 The recovery solution described in this guide is based on the concept of a protected main site (host server or virtual machine) connected to an identically configured recovery site ready to take over should the protected site become unavailable. For this type of failover to be possible, both sites must have independent installations of the required recovery solution components.
The following sections describe each task in more detail. Where indicated, refer to the VMware documentation to install non-Dell platforms. Installing Supported Standalone Database Both vCenter Server and SRM Server require a standalone database to maintain environment-specific information. For smaller environments, vCenter Server can be installed with Microsoft SQL Runtime Server, which eliminates the need for an external database server.
Figure 5. vSphere Site Recovery Manager Downloading And Installing The MD Storage Replication Adapter SRA is available as a self-extracting, self-installing file from the Drivers and Download page at dell.com/support. To download SRA: 1. Go to dell.com/support and select Drivers and Download. 2. Use the Dell product selector to find your MD storage array model. Choose Select Model → Servers, Storage & Networking → PowerVault Storage. 3.
4. Click Save. NOTE: Support for mixed authentication types is not supported with the SRA 5.1. If any storage array within the SRM configuration has password authentication enabled, all other storage arrays will require password authentication. Passwords between storage arrays are not required to be the same. 5. Restart the vCenter SRM Server service from the services.msc console. This allows the SRM to detect the newly installed SRA and register any changes made to the SraConfigurationData.xml file.
Configuring The Recovery Solution 4 Before configuring your recovery solution, make sure the following components have been successfully installed on both the protected and recovery sites: • • • • • Supported database server with 32-bit ODBC properly configured vCenter Server 5.0/vSphere Client 5.0 Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0 (on physical or virtual machine) SRM vSphere Plug-in Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) 5.1 Starting Site Recovery Manager To begin configuring your recovery solution: 1.
the steps described in the following sections, you can return to this Getting Started page to launch specific configuration steps using the active page links, or use the drop-down menus available in the standard menu bar at the top of the page. Depending on the task you are performing, a command link may also be displayed at the top left of the screen. Figure 8. Selecting Configuration Tasks For more information, refer to VMware vSphere Basics at vmware.com/support/pubs.
8. Click Finish to complete the connections wizard. Once these steps are complete, a two-way connection between the protected and recovery sites is established. Set Up Inventory Mappings After making the connection between the protected and recovery sites, configure the resource, folder and network mappings necessary between the protected and recovery sites. These mappings provide default locations and networks used when placeholder virtual machines are initially created on the recovery site. 1.
Once complete, you will have established one-to-one mappings between the protected site's resources and the recovery site's resources. Assign Placeholder Datastores For each virtual machine in a protection group, SRM establishes a placeholder at the recovery site to support failover and re-protection. As part of configuring the recovery solution, you must identify the datastore that SRM will use to store the placeholder data. 1. Click the Placeholder Datastores tab. Figure 11.
Configuring Storage Array Managers Once the protected and recovery sites are connected (for more information refer to the topic Connect Recovery and Protected Sites), the storage array managers on both sites must be configured so that SRM can discover remotely replicated data and devices, manage datastore groups and perform storage operations.
Figure 14. Array Manager Parameters 6. Click Next to validate the information and discover the storage arrays. 7. Click OK to complete the array manager configuration on the protected site. 8. Repeat these steps for the recovery site. Rescan And Enable The SRAs Once the storage arrays on both the protected and recovery sites have been discovered: 1. From the Array Managers view, click the SRAs tab. The SRAs tab should look similar to this: Figure 15.
2. Select the protected site and click Rescan SRAs. 3. Select the recovery site and click Rescan SRAs. 4. Select either the Protected or Recovery spindle in the Array Managers view. 5. Select the Array Pairs tab. 6. Click Enable to activate the SRA on both the protected and recovery sites. The SRAs should be loaded into SRM. Check the Summary tab to ensure that they display properly.
Figure 17. Creating a Recovery Plan Figure 18. Select Protection Groups 3. In Select Protection Groups, select the protection groups for the plan to recover. 4. Click Next. 5. In Test Networks, select a recovery site network to which virtual machines will connect during recovery plan tests. 6. Click Next. 7. Enter name and optional description for the recovery plan and click Next.
8. Click Finish to create the recovery plan. 9. Click the Summary tab and review the recovery plan information shown. Figure 19.
Testing And Running Recovery Plans 5 Testing Recovery Plans After creating a recovery plan, test it to verify that it functions as expected. 1. From the Recovery Plans view, select the Summary tab. 2. Select a recovery plan in the left pane and click Test. 3. Choose Replicate recent changes to recovery site to ensure that the recovery site has the latest copy of protected virtual machines. Choosing this option will cause synchronization to take longer to complete. 4.
Figure 21. Recovery Plan Progress Once the VMs are powered on and the OS heartbeat has been detected, the test failover plan stops and a yellow continue banner is displayed. To verify the functionality of the failed-over VMs, select the Host and Clusters view by typing Ctrl-Shift-H. You will see the VMs powered on under the Recovery Site resource tree. You can open a console to one of the VMs and log in to verify functionality of the guest.
• Remotely replicated virtual disks on the recovery array are promoted to primary status • Source virtual disks become read-only to the mapped hosts • Virtual machines on the primary site are powered off • Network resource configurations are applied to the virtual machines at the recovery site In the event communication between the recovery site and the protected site is unavailable, the recovery plan is executed and the following occurs: • The remote replication relationship of the affected virtua
Failback Procedures 6 In order to failback virtual machines from the recovery site to the original protected site, the same procedures for configuring array managers, inventory mappings, and creating recovery plans and protection groups must be performed on the opposite vCenter Server site. 1.
Troubleshooting and Miscellaneous Issues 7 This section contains common troubleshooting information and describes miscellaneous issues that might occur during your installation. Rescan During Failover Not Detecting Virtual Disk Mappings Depending on the type of Fibre Channel cards and iSCSI configuration used in the ESX hosts, you might encounter errors during the test failover stating that the datastore volumes cannot be located.
Figure 26. SRM Log File This error indicates that a virtual disk is missing a LUN number. Further investigation into MDSM shows the following: Figure 27. MDSM Mappings View The Mappings view shows a defined host group that has virtual disks mapped to it, but no hosts assigned to the host group – this is an invalid SRA configuration. You must either remove the virtual disk mappings from the host group, or assign a host to the host group. Other errors can be debugged using similar methods.
Reference Information 8 Contacting Dell NOTE: Dell provides several online and telephone-based support and service options. If you do not have an active Internet connection, you can find contact information on your purchase invoice, packing slip, bill, or Dell product catalog. Availability varies by country and product, and some services may not be available in your area. To contact Dell for sales, technical support, or customer-service issues: 1. Go to dell.com/contactdell. 2.
Best Practices Guide Provides information on Installing and Configuring, Asynchronous Remote Replication and Snapshot Repository Sizing. VMware Support Information • vCenter SRM 5.0 Documentation vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html • vSphere 5.0 Documentation (ESXi, ESX, and vCenter Server) vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html • VMware Knowledge Base (Searchable Support Issues) kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/microsite.do • VMware Communities (Help Forums) communities.vmware.com/index.
