The document outlines best practices for architecting a disaster recovery solution using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM). It covers essential functions of SRM, planning considerations, deployment challenges, and ongoing maintenance, emphasizing the importance of documentation and adherence to vendor requirements. Additionally, it highlights operational priorities and technical specifications for successful SRM implementation.

1. vCenter Site Recovery
Manager™
Architecting a DR Solution - Best Practices

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vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Legal

3. Agenda
•Basic SRM Functions
•Planning
•Designing & Architecting SRM
•Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
•Maintaining, Migrating & Upgrading
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

4. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
How SRM Works
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5. Basic SRM Functions
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

6. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Planning to use SRM
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7. Planning
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

8. www.rackspace.com 8
vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Planning
Priority 3
Priority 2
Priority 1
External
website
Web
servers
Application
Servers
Database
Server
Active
Directory

9. Planning
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

10. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Designing & Architecting SRM
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11. Architecting
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

12. Architecting
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

13. Architecting
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14. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
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15. Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
• Installing SRM on different disk other than C:
may cause an error if spaces in path
– D:Program FilesVMwareSite Recovery Manager
• VMware KB Article 2076347
– NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
– Doesn’t fix the problem
– Use path without spaces
• D:ProgramFilesVMwareSiteRecoverManager
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

16. Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

17. Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

18. Deployment Considerations & Road Blocks
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

19. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Maintaining, Migrating & Upgrading
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20. Maintaining, Migrating, & Upgrading
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

21. Maintaining, Migrating, & Upgrading
• 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
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vCenter Site Recovery Manager

22. vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Q&A
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