Architecting a DR Solution - Best Practices

vCenter Site Recovery Manager™

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vCenter Site Recovery ManagerLegal

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•Basic SRM Functions•Planning•Designing & Architecting SRM•Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks•Maintaining, Migrating & Upgrading

AgendavCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerHow SRM Works

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• Test– What does “Non Disruptive” really mean?

• Cleanup– What happened to my test VMs?

• Recovery– How does it really work?

– Planned vs Unplanned

– How do I “Fail Back”?

• Reprotect– Under the hood

Basic SRM FunctionsvCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerPlanning to use SRM

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• What apps should you protect?• Where and how should you recover applications?• Vendor Support• SRM Operationally• RPO

– vSphere Replication = as low as 15min

– NetApp = as low as 5min

– EMC CRR = <5min

PlanningvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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vCenter Site Recovery ManagerPlanning

Priority 1

Priority 2

Priority 3

Web server

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External website

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• Networking– Guest IP Reconfiguration

– Extend VLANs

• Storage– EMC RecoverPoint

• Journal Space

–EMC Recommends 20%

• (Datastore Size) X (Percent Rate of Change) X (Days of Test) = Journal Size

• 10TB, 6% RoC, 7-day SRM Test: 10 X .06 X 7 = 4.2 = 4.2TB total Journal space

– NetApp SnapMirror

• 20% SnapReserve

• Plan to Test

PlanningvCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerDesigning & Architecting SRM

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• Documentation is KING!• Management Cluster• vCenter Simple vs Custom Install• vCenter Appliance or not?• Where to install SRM• Configure firewalls to allow communication

– Between Protected & Recovery vCenter & SRM servers

– SRA to talk to storage

– Storage replication traffic

ArchitectingvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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ArchitectingvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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ArchitectingvCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerDeployment Considerations & Road Blocks

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• Installing SRM on different disk other than C:\ may cause an error if spaces in path–D:\Program Files\VMware\Site Recovery Manager

• VMware KB Article 2076347–NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation

–Doesn’t fix the problem

–Use path without spaces• D:\ProgramFiles\VMware\SiteRecoverManager

Deployment Considerations & Road BlocksvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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• Third party certificates–CN = “SRM”

–SAN = server.fqdn

–extendedKeyUsage = serverAuth, clientAuth

–Microsoft’s CA may ignore SAN, use an alternate openssl.cnf

• Database Password for SRM–Some special characters break installer, ! specifically

• SRA requirements• Permissions

–Only “Administrator” role is propagated

Deployment Considerations & Road BlocksvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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• Array Pairs require special permissions per vendor • Protection Groups

–Grouping of datastores (ABR) or VMs (VR)

–Datastore or VM can be a member of only one (1) Protection Group

–Protection Group can be a member of multiple recovery plans

• Recovery Plans–Can have multiple Recovery Plans for different Tiers or Apps

• VM Boot Priority–Boot priority of 1-5 at VM level, attribute of VM across ALL Recovery Plans

• VM Boot Dependencies–ONLY within same boot priority in same Recovery Plan

Deployment Considerations & Road BlocksvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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• Additional Options– IP changing is an attribute of a VM

• Can set different IPs for both Protected & Recovery sites

• Only One IP per NIC

• Shutdown or Startup Actions–Pre-Power On: User Prompt or Script on SRM server

–Post-Power On: User Prompt, Script on SRM server, Script/Command within guest

• Suspend VMs at Recovery site–Use hardware for Test

• Resume standby hosts–Use DPM to save power & cooling costs

Deployment Considerations & Road BlocksvCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerMaintaining, Migrating & Upgrading

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• Add Datastores to Protection Groups–Volume/LUN is member of replication and visible in Array Manager

• Adding VMs to existing Plan–Configure Protection in Protection Group

• Removing VMs from existing Plan–Remove Protection in Protection Group

• Removing Datastore from Protection Group–Remove from replication, refresh Array Manager, delete datastore

• Migrating–Only install SRM on new server and point to existing database

Maintaining, Migrating, & UpgradingvCenter Site Recovery Manager

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• Upgrade path:–Protected Site vCenter, SRM, SRA, vSphere Replication Appliance & servers

–Recovery Site vCenter, SRM, SRA, vSphere Replication Appliance & servers

–Re-establish SRM & vSphere Replication Connections

–Recovery Site ESXi Hosts

–Protected Site ESXi Hosts

–Upgrade virtual hardware version

–Upgrade VMware Tools

Maintaining, Migrating, & UpgradingvCenter Site Recovery Manager

vCenter Site Recovery ManagerQ&A

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