Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager - Second Edition

By Abhilash G B

If you are a system administrator who is looking for a disaster recovery solution using the latest VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager, this book is perfect for you. You should have a basic knowledge of virtual machines and data center operations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Oct 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785281921

Book preview

Table of Contents

Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Installing and Configuring vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 6.1

Introduction

So what exactly are RPO and RTO?

What is Site Recovery Manager?

Site Recovery Manager(SRM) architecture

Array manager

Storage Replication Adapter (SRA)

Laying the groundwork for an SRM environment

Preparing storage for array-based replication

Host presentation (Zoning) at the protected and the recovery sites

Installing SRM on both the protected and recovery sites

Performing the SRM installation

Pairing SRM sites

Installing the Storage Replication Adapters

Downloading the SRAs

Installing the SRA

Adding array managers and enabling array pairs

Configuring placeholder datastores

Creating resource, folder, and network mappings

Resource mappings

Folder mappings

Network mappings

Virtual machine swap file location

Design choice 1: Separate datastore for the swap files

Design choice 2: Store the swap files in the VM's working directory

Summary

2. Creating Protection Groups and Recovery Plans

Understanding datastore groups

Understanding protection groups

Storage policy-based protection groups

Creating a protection group

What happens when you create a protection group?

Understanding recovery plans

Creating a recovery plan

Summary

3. Testing and Performing a Failover and Failback

Testing a recovery plan

Test workflow

Running the test

Testing a recovery plan – background

Performing the cleanup after a test

Performing a planned migration

Performing a disaster recovery (failover)

Performing a forced recovery

Enabling forced recovery for a site

Running a forced recovery

Reprotecting an SRM site

Performing a failback to an SRM protected site

IPv4 customization rules

Creating an IPv4 customization rule

How does SRM use IP customization rules?

Configuring VM recovery properties

IP customization

Recovery properties

Priority group

VM dependencies

Shutdown action

Startup action

Pre-power on and post-power on steps

Summary

4. Deploying vSphere Replication

Introduction

New features in vSphere Replication 6.1

Understanding the vSphere Replication architecture

Downloading the vSphere Replication bundle

Deploying the vSphere Replication Appliance

How does it work

Setting the VRA hostname and a VRM site name for the VRA

VRA hostname

VRM site name

Configuring a SQL database for VRMS

Deploying a vSphere Replication Server

Registering vSphere Replication Servers

Summary

5. Configuring and Using vSphere Replication 6.1

Adding a remote site as a target

Configuring replication for a VM to the local/remote site

How does replication work?

Using replication seeds

Monitoring replication

Reconfiguring replication

Changing the target datastore

Pausing an Ongoing replication

Synchronize Data Immediately

Stopping replication on a VM

Moving replication to another VR Server

Recovering virtual machines

Configuring failback for VMs

Using SRM with vSphere Replication

Creating a vSphere Replication protection group

Creating a vSphere Replication recovery plan

Testing a vSphere Replication recovery plan

Performing a recovery or a planned migration

Preforming a failback (re-protect and failover)

Summary

6. Using vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) to Automate SRM and vSphere Replication

Deploying and configuring vRealize Orchestrator

Downloading vRealize Orchestrator

Deploying vRealize Orchestrator

Using the vRealize Orchestrator client

Configuring vRealize Orchestrator

Configure vRO database

Configure authentication provider

Enabling vRealize Orchestration for a vCenter

Adding a vCenter Server instance to vRO

Registering vRO as a vCenter Server extension

Install vRealize Orchestrator plugins for SRM and vSphere Replication

Downloading the vRO plugins for SRM and vSphere Replication

Installing vRO plugins

Troubleshooting SRM and vSphere Replication

Getting to the logs

Analyzing vSphere Replication logs

Analyzing SRM logs

Increasing the logging level for SRM

Troubleshooting references

Summary

Index

Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager Second Edition

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Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager Second Edition

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: May 2014

Second edition: October 2016

Production reference: 1201016

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-609-6

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Abhilash G B

Reviewer

Dan Frith

Commissioning Editor

Pratik Shah

Acquisition Editors

Prachi Bisht

Subho Gupta

Content Development Editor

Sanjeet Rao

Technical Editor

Devesh Chugh

Copy Editor

Tom Jacob

Project Coordinator

Judie Jose

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Pratik Shirodkar

Graphics

Kirk D'Penha

Production Coordinator

Shantanu N. Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu N. Zagade

About the Author

Abhilash G B (@abhilashgb) is a virtualization specialist, author, designer, and a VMware vExpert (2014, 2015, and 2016), who specializes in the areas of data center virtualization and cloud computing.

He has been in the IT industry for more than a decade and has been working on VMware products and technologies since the start of 2007. He currently works as a senior VMware consultant for one of largest information technology and services company in the world.

He holds several VMware certifications including VCP3, VCP4, VCP5-DCV, and VCP-Cloud. He also holds advanced certifications such as VCAP4-DCA and VCAP5-DCA.

He is also the author of some other books published by Packt Publishing—VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook in July 2013, Disaster Recovery using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager in May 2014, VMware vSphere 5.5 Cookbook in February 2015, and a co-author of the book Learning VMware vSphere in October 2016.

I dedicate this book to my family. Without their patience and support this book would not have been possible.

Thanks to the technical reviewer Dan Frith for his valuable input.

Special thanks to the entire Packt Team for their support during the course of writing this book.

About the Reviewer

Dan Frith (@penguinpunk) has been working with various data center technologies for the last fifteen years and has focused on storage and virtualization for the last ten years. He currently works for a global systems integrator as a consultant and has significant experience with government and large enterprise. Dan is passionate about enabling business to succeed through technology. After working hours, Dan enjoys spending time with his family, blogging, playing basketball (badly), and listening to records.

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Preface

This book covers the use of vSphere Replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager to make your vSphere environment recoverable in the event of a disaster. All the concepts and tasks covered in this book are for vSphere Replication 6.1 and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 6.1.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 6.1, introduces you to the architecture of SRM and also guides you through the process of installing and configuring SRM to leverage array-based replication.

Chapter 2, Creating Protection Groups and Recovery Plans, teaches you how to configure protection for virtual machines by creating Protection Groups and creating an orchestrated runbook with the help of Recovery Plans.

Chapter 3, Testing and Performing a Failover and Failback, teaches you how to test the recovery plans that were created and also perform a Planned Migration, a Failover, and a Failback using them.

Chapter 4, Deploying vSphere Replication, guides you through the steps required to deploy vSphere Replication Appliances and vSphere Replication Servers.

Chapter 5, Configuring and Using vSphere Replication 6.1, teaches you how to add target sites and enable replication on virtual machines and recover them. It also teaches you how to configure vCenter SRM to leverage the vSphere Replication engine.

Chapter 6, Using vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) to Automate SRM and vSphere Replication, guides you through the process of deploying and configuring vRealize Orchestrator. It also teaches you how to install vRO plugins for SRM and vSphere Replication and has instructions which will help you to locate SRM and vSphere replication logs and use them for troubleshooting issues.

What you need for this book

If you were to follow along with each chapter by practicing the tasks in a lab, then you would need two ESXi hosts, two vCenter Servers, two SRM instances, and two storage array nodes with replication configured between them. This might