E VALUATOR'S GUIDE VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Contents Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 About VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 About This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Getting Started About VMware™ vCenter Site Recovery Manager VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 4.0 is an extension to VMware vCenter - providing disaster recovery capabilities to VMware customers. It enables integration with array-based replication, discovery and management of replicated datastores, and automated migration of inventory from one VMware vCenter to another.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 be moved to non-replicated datastores.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Protected VM A VM that is protected by SRM and it is located on a replicated datastore. Un-protected VM A VM that is not protected by SRM and it is located on a non replicated datastore. Protected site The site that contains the protected VMs. Recovery site The site that contains the replicated protected VMs from the protected site. Datastore group Replicated datastores containing complete sets of protected VM.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Evaluation Worksheet You can use the worksheet below to organize your evaluation process.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Help and Support During Evaluation This guide is intended to provide an overview of the steps required to ensure a successful evaluation of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. It is not meant to substitute product documentation. Please refer to the online product documentation for Site Recovery Manager for more detailed information (See below for links). You may also consult the online Knowledge Base if you have any additional questions.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Overview of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides business continuity and disaster recovery protection for virtual environments. Protection can extend from individual replicated datastores to an entire virtual site.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Site Recovery Manager Configuration and Protection The following workflows for the protected and recovery sites accomplish setup and configuration. Site Recovery Manager is installed as a plugin into a VMware vSphere Client. Site Recovery Manager uses the VMware vSphere Client as the User Interface (UI).
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 • Completes power-up of replicated protected virtual machines in accordance with the recovery plan. • Provides a report of failover results. Site Recovery Manager does not require production system downtime to run tests. This means you can test often to ensure that you are protected in case of a disaster.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 1. Site Recovery Manager Recovery Workflow 1.1. vSphere Linked Mode Site Recovery Manager 4.0 is fully compatible with VMware vSphere. Multiple VMware vCenter Servers can be joined together using Linked Mode to allow them to be managed using a single VMware vSphere Client connection. Taking advantage of VMware vSphere Linked Mode, you can view the virtual inventories of both the protected and the recovery site in a single pane of glass.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 2: Switch between protected site and recovery site 1.3.Replicated Storage Support (iSCSI/FC/NFS) Site Recovery Manager 4.0 expands storage support from iSCSI and Fiber Channel arrays to also include replicated NFS arrays. Configuration of NFS arrays works the same way as the configurations of FC and iSCSI storage arrays6. You can use your replicated NFS datastores in conjunction with Site Recovery Manager 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 1.5. Exercise: Setup Recovery Workflow SRM Recovery Workflow Recovery Workflow Automation Set up Recovery Workflow 60 minutes 1. Set up site-pairing 2. Set up Array Managers for the replicated datastore 3. Set up inventory mappings 4. Set up protection group 5. Set up recovery plan 6. Configure IP customization 7. Trigger a test recovery Step 1: Set up connection pairing To set up connection pairing: 1.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. In the Protection Setup area of the Summary window, navigate to the Connection line and click Configure. Figure 4: Configure connection pairing of protected and recovery sites 5. On the Remote Site Information page, type the IP address or hostname of the vCenter server at the recovery site and click Next.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 6. On the vCenter Server Authentication page, provide the appropriate vCenter administrator credentials (username and password) for the remote site and click Next. Figure 6: Enter vCenter server authentication information If you are using credential-based authentication, you must supply exactly the same information here that you entered when installing the Site Recovery Manager server. 7.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 The Site Recovery Manager and vCenter servers at the protected and recovery sites are connected. Connection information is saved in the Site Recovery Manager databases, and persists across logins and host restarts.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. On the Protected Site Array Managers page of the Configure Array Managers wizard, click Add. Figure 9: Add array manager for protected site 5. Make sure that the SRA that you want Site Recovery Manager to use appears in the Manager Type field. If more than one SRA has been installed on the Site Recovery Manager server host, click the drop-down arrow and select the manager type you want to use.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 9. Click OK. The array manager queries the selected arrays to discover which of their devices are replicated. Detailed information about the selected arrays and the number of replicated devices they support appears in the Replicated Array Pairs area of the Configure Array Managers window. Figure 10: Enter array manager information for protected site 10. Click Next to configure array managers at the recovery site. 11.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 12. Click OK. The array manager at the recovery site queries the selected arrays to discover which of their devices are replicated, and displays detailed information about the selected arrays and the number of replicated devices they support in the Replicated Array Pairs area of the Configure Array Managers window. A green checkmark icon distinguishes arrays that have peers at the protected site.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Step 3: Set up inventory mapping Inventory mappings establish recovery site defaults for the virtual machine 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. Inventory mappings are optional, but recommended.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. To configure mapping for a resource, right-click it in the Protected Site Resources column and click Configure. 5. Expand the top-level folder in the Configure Inventory Mapping window and navigate to the recovery site resource (network, resource pool, or folder) to which you want to map the protected site resource you selected in Step 4. Select the resource and click OK.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Procedure 1. Open a VMware vSphere Client and connect to the VMware vCenter server at the protected site. Log in as a VMware vSphere administrator. 2. Click the Site Recovery icon on the VMware vSphere Client Home page. 3. In the Protection Setup area of the Summary window, navigate to the Protection Groups line and click Create. Figure 17: Create protection group 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 5. On the Select a Datastore Group page of the Create Protection Group wizard, select a datastore group from the list, then click Next. Figure 19: Select a datastore group for the protection group being created The datastore groups listed on this page are the ones that were discovered when you configured the array managers.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 20: Select datastore for placeholder virtual machines 7. Click Finish to create the protection group. Site Recovery Manager creates a protection group that includes all of the virtual machines on the datastore you selected in Step 5. Placeholders are created and inventory mappings are applied for each member of the group.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Procedure 1. Open a vSphere Client and connect to the VMware vCenter server at the recovery site (e.g. site2vc.vbc. local). Log in as a vSphere administrator. 2. Click the Site Recovery icon on the vSphere Client Home page. 3. In the Recovery Setup area of the Summary window, navigate to the Recovery Plans line and click Create.10 Figure 21: Create recovery plan on recovery site 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 5. On the Protection Groups page of the Create Recovery Plan wizard, select one or more protection groups for the plan to recover, then click Next. Figure 23: Select protection group for the recovery plan 6. On the Response Times page of the Create Recovery Plan wizard, specify how long you want the recovery plan to wait for a response from a virtual machine after various recovery plan events, and then click Next.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 25: Configure test network for recovery plan 8. On the Suspend Local Virtual Machines page of the Create Recovery Plan wizard, select any virtual machines at the recovery site that the recovery plan should suspend. Suspending local virtual machines frees resources for use by recovered virtual machines. The virtual machines that you specify here are suspended during a test recovery as well as during an actual recovery.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 To create a customization specification on recovery site: 1. Open a vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter server at the protected site. Log in as a vSphere administrator. 2. Click the Customization Specification icon on the vSphere Client Home page. Figure 27: Customization Specification 3. Select New. Figure 28: Create new customization specification 4. Enter name for Customization Specification (e.g. site1-vm5_custom_network).
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 29: Enter customization specification information 5. Click Next. 6. Follow Customization Specification Wizard through the steps until the Network page. Note the values entered before the Network page are ignored.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 7. Select Custom settings and click Next. 8. Select a network interface to customize and click the button to the right of the selection. Figure 31: Enter network custom settings 9. Configure the IP Address and the DNS Server according to your network environment. Figure 32: Enter IP address and DNS server configurations 10. Follow the Customization Wizard until Finish.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 To associate a virtual machine with the newly created customization specification: 1. In Site Recovery, select the recovery plan that contains the virtual machine to be configured. 2. Go to Virtual Machines Tab and select the virtual machine. 3. Right Click on the virtual machine in the list and select Configure. Figure 33: Configure selected virtual machine 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 site that is isolated from the protected site (production environment) which ensures the protected virtual machines at the protected site are not subject to any kind of service interruption during the testing of the recovery plan.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 When you see the confirmation prompt, click Yes to proceed with the test. Figure 37: Confirmation prompt for test recovery 5. Click the Recovery Steps tab to monitor the progress of the test and respond to messages.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 40: View of Datastores During Test Recovery – NAS store created and mounted For replicated NFS stores, Site Recovery Manager mounts a NAS datastore on recovery site during test recovery. See Figure 39 and Figure 40. Unlike with FC and iSCSI stores, there is no rescan HBA’s when working with NFS stores during test recovery.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Site Recovery Manager provides an audit trail via a report that is generated automatically at the end of each Site Recovery Manager Test or Site Recovery Manager Recovery.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 • Remote Site not responding. • Remote Site heartbeat failed. • Recovery Plan Test started, ended, succeeded, failed, or cancelled. • Virtual Machine Recovery started, ended, succeeded, failed, or reports a warning. As a starting point during the Site Recovery Manager Evaluation it is recommended that you complete the Action setup for the Site Recovery Manager Alarm Events listed below for the protected and recovery sites.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 3. In the main window, click the Alarms tab to display the list of Site Recovery Manager alarms. Figure 43: Site Recovery Manager alarms tab 4. Right-click on Remote Site Down and click Edit Settings. Figure 44 Edit settings for alarm ‘Remote Site Down’ 5. In the Edit Settings dialog box, click the Actions tab. In the Actions window, click Add to add an action.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 3. Site Recovery Manager Roles and Privileges This section provides an overview of the Site Recovery Manager roles and the types of Site Recovery Manager privileges that can be set. Authorization in Site Recovery Manager uses the same authorization model as vCenter Server. Figure 47 show the default Site Recovery Manager roles that become available for use after the Site Recovery Manager plug-in has been installed and enabled for use.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Protection Side Site Recovery Manager Roles Protection Virtual Machine Administrator: This role should be assigned on the protected Virtual Machine object in the VC inventory. It grants the associated user the ability to setup and modify the protection characteristics of the protected virtual machine.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 3.1. Exercise: Create a Site Recovery Manager Custom Role SRM Roles Custom Role Creation Create a SRM Custom Role 10 minutes 1. Create a SRM custom role with SRM specific privileges. Step1: Create a Site Recovery Manager custom role with Site Recovery Manager specific privileges. Procedure 1. Open a vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter server at the protected site. Log in as a vSphere administrator. 2.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. Input the name of the new role (e.g. Site Recovery Manager Custom Role) and select the privileges for the new role. NOTE: In Site Recovery Manager 1.0 U1, a new privilege for running test recovery has been added and in Site Recovery Manager 4.0, a new privilege group Advanced Settings has been added. See Figure 50. You can find more details about Advanced Settings in Section 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. Site Recovery Manager Advanced Settings In Site Recovery Manager 4.0, you can use the Advanced Settings dialog to view or change many custom settings for the Site Recovery Manager service. The Advanced Settings dialog box provides an easy way for a user with adequate privileges to change a number of default values that affect the operation of various Site Recovery Manager features.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 4. In the navigation pane of the Advanced Settings window, click a setting category. Figure 52: Change Advanced Settings 5. In the category window, make your changes. For example, you may want to change the SRA timeout that is represented by SanProvider. CommandTimeout in Figure 52. a. Change SanProvider.CommandTimeout to 2 seconds 6. Click OK to save your changes and close the Advanced Settings window. 7.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 5. Failover from Protected Site to Recovery Site Site Recovery Manager enables you to ‘Run’ a recovery plan that will result in the actual failover of virtual machines from the protected site. Similar to test recovery, failover operations are triggered via a button in the Site Recovery Manager UI on the recovery site. The failover process via Site Recovery Manager is rapid, repeatable, reliable, manageable and auditable.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 54: Confirmation Dialog for Run Recovery Plan While the failover is being executed, the status of each step that makes up the recovery plan can be monitored by going to Recovery Steps tab (highlighted in Figure 53) of the Site Recovery Manager UI on the recovery site. The UI informs you what steps are currently Running as well as what steps were completed.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 • Re-scans the ESX servers at the recovery site. • Registers the replicated protected virtual machines. • Suspends non-essential virtual machines at the recovery site if specified to free up resources for the protected virtual machines being failed over. • Completes power-up of replicated protected virtual machines in accordance with the recovery plan. 6. Failback from Recovery Site to Protected Site Failback in Site Recovery Manager 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Most of the steps for failback are essentially checks but it is worth running through this process thoroughly during this evaluation as not only will this process make any real failover / failback scenarios straightforward it also helps to increase understanding of the architecture and workflow of Site Recovery Manager. You can now go through the steps in more detail. 1. Verify virtual machine failed over correctly.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 56: Review Site 1 storage Figure 56 shows that the export/datastore that used to be presented at Site 1 has now been failed over successfully to the array at Site 2. Figure 57: Review Site 2 storage Figure 57 confirms that the export/datastore is now in read/write mode (R/W) on the Site 2 array.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 58: Site 2 configuration for failback NOTE: If your deployment is active/active which commonly means that from the outset both sites were defined as protected with each acting as the others recovery site then to have built that configuration your array managers and inventory mappings will already be configured at Site 2. If this applies to you skip to the next step.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 60 illustrates configuring the recovery site array. The array credentials entered here relate to the storage array that resides in Site 1. Figure 60: Site 2 recovery site array configuration Figure 61 shows the datastore group that relates to the export/datastore that was used to create a new protection group against and ultimately failback to Site 1.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 61: Site 2 review replicated datastores 5. Configure Site Recovery Manager Inventory mapping within Site 2 Site Recovery Manager server. Other than the array manager configuration, Site Recovery Manager also requires inventory mappings be defined before any protection group can be successfully created. It is highly likely, and shown in this example, that in most configurations the inventory mappings will still be undefined at Site 2.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 62: Site 2 inventory mapping 6. Remove original protection group at Site 1 and recovery plan at Site 2 used for original virtual machine protection. After a successful failover the original protection group(s) (Site 1) and recovery plans (Site 2) will still exist. At this time it is good practice to remove these objects to prevent them being re-used accidentally at some later point.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 63: Site 1 protection group removal 7. Remove from vCenter inventory virtual machine objects left behind at Site 1 for virtual machines that were failed over to Site 2. It is almost time to create the new protection group(s) and recovery plan(s). But before that step, the vCenter inventory at Site 1 is reviewed, and you will notice that a virtual machine object still exists for the original virtual machine that was failed over.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 64: Site 1 vCenter inventory cleanup 8. Create protection group at Site 2 for datastore group containing the NFS export. Follow the usual steps to create a protection group at Site 2 that maps to the datastore/export you are going to failback. 9. Create Recovery plan at Site 1 for the protection group created in step 8. Follow the usual steps to create a recovery plan at Site 1 that maps to the protection group you are going to failback.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 65: Site 2 configuration complete At Site 1, you should find a recovery plan object as illustrated in Figure 66. Figure 66: Site 1 configuration complete 11. Failback using Site Recovery Manager “Run” mode recovery plan functionality. Once a successful test has been performed, failback can be carried out by simply running the recovery plan in “Run” mode.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 7. Shared Recovery Site Site Recovery Manager 4.0 includes shared recovery site support that enables you to protect virtual machines from multiple vCenter Servers at protected sites to a single vCenter Server at a shared recovery site. In a shared recovery site configuration, you need one instance of vCenter Server on the recovery site and a separate instance of vCenter Server at each of the protected sites.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Site Recovery Manager extension name, which is used by a protected site to pair with the matching Site Recovery Manager Server at the shared recovery site. • Whenever a user connects to the vCenter server at the recovery site and clicks the Site Recovery icon on the vSphere Client Home page, Site Recovery Manager displays a dialog box that requires the user to select a specific Site Recovery Manager extension to connect to.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 7.1. Use Cases of Shared Recovery Site With the shared recovery site feature, organizations can use Site Recovery Manager to accommodate use cases in which multiple protected sites are configured to failover to a single recovery site. These organizations include: 1. ROBO: Enterprise companies that have many remote field offices can protect their remote offices by a centralized recovery site. See Figure 69. 2.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Procedure: On protected site 1. Install Site Recovery Manager using the switch /V”CUSTOM_SETUP=1” 2. During the installation, you will be prompted to enter a Default Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID or a Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID. Choose Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID. Figure 71: Select Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID 3. Enter the Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID: SRM ID env1.srm.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Figure 72: Enter custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID On recovery site 1. Install Site Recovery Manager using the switch /V”CUSTOM_SETUP=1” 2. During the installation, you will be prompted to enter a Default Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID or a Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID. Choose Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID. 3. Enter the Custom Site Recovery Manager Plug-in ID: SRM ID env1.srm.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 Step 2: Pair sites Follow the procedure to pair sites specified in section 1. Step 3: Install a Site Recovery Manager instance on another protected site and another Site Recovery Manager instance on the recovery site. Repeat the procedures in step 1 and step 2 and use a different Site Recovery Manager Custom ID for this installation: 1.
E valuator’s guide vmware VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER 4.0 8. Conclusion VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) leverages your VMware vCenter and vSphere platform to make disaster recovery: • Rapid - by automating the disaster recovery process for your virtual machines by eliminating the complexities of traditional physical disaster recovery.
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