VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.
Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Terminology .................................................................................................................................................................... 3 About This Evaluation Guide ..............................................................................................................
Introduction Site Recovery Manager a site migration and disaster recovery solution from VMware. It is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server™ and VMware vSphere® Web Client. Site Recovery Manager provides orchestration and non-disruptive testing of centralized recovery plans. Site Recovery Manager works in conjunction with various replication solutions including VMware vSphere Replication™ to automate the process of migrating and recovering virtual machine workloads.
Recovery point objective (RPO): Maximum age of files recovered from backup storage for normal operations to resume if a system goes offline as a result of a hardware, program, or communications failure. Array replication: Replication across one or more storage controllers, which eliminates the processing overhead from servers. vSphere Replication: Host-based virtual machine replication technology created by VMware included with vSphere Essentials Plus Kit and higher editions.
About This Evaluation Guide The purpose of this document is to provide a structured guide for IT professionals to evaluate the primary features and benefits of using Site Recovery Manager to automate planned migration and disaster recovery workflows for applications and services running in virtual machines. The exercises in this guide should be completed in the order prescribed for best results. Some exercises have dependencies on previously completed items.
The figure below shows a logical diagram of how the evaluation environment can be configured. Network connectivity is required between the two sites, but they do not have to be geographically separated to satisfy the requirements of the evaluation exercises. Figure 1: Example evaluation environment. Recommendation: Use default settings for all components - installation paths, TCP port settings, and so on - wherever possible, to minimize complexity in the evaluation environment.
The following checklist can be used to track the progress of the evaluation at a high level. The sections after the checklist provide more details on each exercise, including recommendations, documentation references, VMware Knowledge Base articles, and other resources. This document does not contain detailed, step-by-step instructions for completing the tasks in each exercise. These instructions are documented in items such as the Site Recovery Manager documentation.
Evaluation Checklist SUCCESS CRITERIA RESULT Sites paired Inventory mappings configured Placeholder datastores defined Array managers added and enabled (if using array replication) Protection group created Recovery plan created Test a recovery plan Run a recovery plan Reprotect a recovery plan Run a reprotected recovery plan (fail-back) Customized virtual machine recovery properties Run a recovery plan with virtual machine customization NOTES: VMware, Inc.
Exercise 1: Pairing Sites It is assumed that Site Recovery Manager has been installed in both sites, a replication solution has been deployed, and all virtual machines that will be protected by Site Recovery Manager are being replicated. Site Recovery Manager is managed using vSphere Web Client. During the installation of Site Recovery manager, a plugin is installed in vSphere Web Client and an icon labeled “Site Recovery” is displayed. Figure 2.
Figure 3. Shared Recovery Site for Branch Offices See the Site Recovery Manager documentation for details on site pairing. After completing this step successfully, information on the paired sites is displayed in vSphere Web Client. Figure 4. Paired Sites in vSphere Web Client Site Recovery Manager also provides a guide to track the progress and assist with configuration. Clicking on a step in the guide takes you to the user interface for that particular activity.
Figure 5. Guide to configuring Site Recovery Manager in the User Interface Exercise 2: Configure Inventory Mappings Inventory mappings consist of three types: Resource mappings, folder mappings, and network mappings. These mappings provide default settings for recovered virtual machines. For example, a mapping can be configured between a network port group named “Production” at the protected site and a network port group named “Production” at the recovery site.
Folder mappings can also be configured automatically when the names are the same. Resource mappings are configured manually. Reverse mappings can be created automatically. This provides default settings for both failover and failback operations. Figure 7. Reverse Mappings It is possible to have multiple items at the protected site mapped to a single item at the recovery site. For example, two resource pools at the protected site can be mapped to a single resource pool at the recovery site.
Exercise 3: Configure placeholder datastore Site Recovery Manager creates a placeholder virtual machine at the recovery site for every protected virtual machine. Placeholder virtual machines are contained in a datastore and registered with vCenter Server at the recovery site. This datastore is referred to as a “placeholder datastore”. Placeholder virtual machines do not have virtual disks (VMDK files) so they consume minimal storage capacity.
Recommendation: Use vSphere Replication for this evaluation. While array replication has some advantages over vSphere Replication, it is also more complex to install and configure and it usually requires additional licensing from the array replication vendor.
A protection group is a collection of one or more virtual machines that are failed over and failed back as a unit. In many cases, a protection group consists of multiple virtual machines that support a service such as an accounting system. For example, a service might consist of a database server, two application servers, and two web servers. In most cases, it is not be beneficial to fail over part of a service (only one or two of the servers in the example).
When array replication is utilized with Site Recovery Manager, protection groups are created based on the datastore groups that are available. Consider this example: There are two LUNs that make up a consistency group in the array replication solution. Both LUNs contain virtual machines for a total of five virtual machines. The two LUNs are treated as a single datastore group in Site Recovery Manager. When a protection group is created, all 5 virtual machines are included.
After a protection has been created and the virtual machines have been successfully protected, placeholder virtual machines will be visible in the vCenter Server inventory at the recovery site. The presence of placeholders provides a visual indication to Site Recovery Manager administrators that virtual machines are protected. Placeholder virtual machines have a unique icon in vSphere Web Client. Figure 15. Placeholder Virtual Machines.
Figure 16. Protection Groups and Recovery Plans Creating a recovery plan for each application enables testing and failover of individual applications. Creating a recovery plan that includes all of the protection groups is useful when testing or failing over all applications at a site. NOTE: Concurrently testing or running multiple recovery plans that contain the same protection group will produce error messages in the Site Recovery Manager.
Figure 18. Portgroup Configured as the Test Network in a Recovery Plan Recommendation: When implementing Site Recovery Manager in a production environment, utilize a dedicated VLAN at the recovery site for recovery plan testing. This VLAN should be available to all vSphere hosts at the recovery site, but routing should not be enabled to any other networks to prevent interference with workloads outside of the Site Recovery Manager test environment. This is not a requirement for evaluation.
A question often asked is whether replication continues during the test of a recovery plan. The answer is yes. Site Recover Manager utilizes snapshots - either array snapshots (or clones) with array replication or virtual machine snapshots with vSphere Replication - as part of the recovery plan test process. This approach allows powering on and modifying virtual machines recovered as part of the test while replication continues to avoid RPO violations. Figure 20.
Figure 22. Recovery Plan Test Cleanup See Clean Up After Testing a Recovery Plan in the Site Recovery Manager documentation. History Reports When workflows such as a recovery plan test and cleanup are performed in Site Recovery Manager, history reports are automatically generated. These reports document items such as the workflow name, execution times, successful operations, failures, and error messages.
Clicking the Run Recovery Plan button opens a confirmation window requiring the selection of a recovery type - either a planned migration or a disaster recovery. In both cases, Site Recovery Manager will attempt to replicate recent changes from the protected site to the recovery site. It is assumed that for a planned migration, no loss of data is the priority. A planned migration will be cancelled if errors in the workflow are encountered.
Exercise 9: Reprotect a Recovery Plan and Fail Back Site Recovery Manager features the ability to not only fail over virtual machine workloads, but also fail them back to their original site. However, this assumes that the original protected site is still intact and operational. An example of this is a disaster avoidance situation: The threat could be rising floodwaters from a major storm and Site Recovery Manager is used to migrate virtual machines from the protected site to the recovery site.
Figure 26. Change the Virtual Machine Recovery Settings NOTE: Changes to virtual machine configuration properties apply to the virtual machine in all recovery plans. For example, if a virtual machine is configured as a member of priority group 3, it will appear in priority group 3 in all recovery plans. In this exercise, there are no specific steps that must be performed.
NOTE: A virtual machine dependency is ignored if the virtual machines are not in the same priority group. Recommendation: Limit the use of dependencies where possible to minimize the amount of time required to recover virtual machines. Shutdown Actions Shutdown actions apply to the protected virtual machines at the protected site during the run of a recovery plan. Shutdown actions are not used during the test of a recovery plan.
Pre and Post Power On Steps Site Recovery Manager can run a command from the Site Recovery Manager server at the recovery site before and after powering on a virtual machine. A common use case is calling a script to perform actions such as making changes to DNS and modifying application settings on a physical server. Running a script inside of a virtual machine is also supported as a post power on step. Site Recovery Manager can also display a visual prompt as a pre or post power on step.
IP customization can also be configured manually for a virtual machine. Network settings such as the IP address, DNS server(s), and DNS suffixes can be modified on a per-VM basis for failover and fail-back. Figure 30. Manual IP Customization The two methods above are the most popular ways to customize network settings when migrating and failing over virtual machines. The third option is configuring customization using the DR IP Customizer Tool, which involves the use of a CSV file.
Conclusion The primary features of Site Recovery Manager are covered in this evaluation guide. There are additional items such as implementing Site Recovery Manager across multiple sites, automation with VMware vRealize™ Orchestrator™, and integration with VMware vRealize Automation™ that are not discussed. More details on these solutions can be found in VMware Documentation and in other resources such as VMware Blogs and the VMware Knowledge Base.
