Disaster Recovery Using

VMware vSphere Replication and

vCenter Site Recovery Manager







Abhilash GB







Chapter No. 1
" Installing and Configuring vCenter Site
Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.5"
In this package, you will find:
A Biography of the author of the book
A preview chapter from the book, Chapter NO.1 "Installing and Configuring vCenter Site
Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.5"
A synopsis of the books content
Information on where to buy this book







About the Author
Abhilash GB is an author, a designer, and a VMware vExpert 2014, who specializes in
the areas of Data Center Virtualization and cloud computing.
He is a VMware Certified Advanced Professional in Data Center Administration
(VCAP4-DCA and VCAP5-DCA). He has been in the IT industry for nearly a decade,
and he has been working on VMware products and technologies since the start of 2007.
He is also the author of VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook, Packt Publishing.
He is a passionate author who's willing to contribute more titles to the VMware
community, and also an aspiring engineer always ready to indulge in designing and
creating great solutions for customers.
I would like to dedicate this book to my wife and my parents. Without
their patience and support, this book would not have been possible.
Thanks to the technical reviewers Andy Grant, Kenneth van Ditmarsch,
and Daniel Langenhan for their invaluable inputs.
Special thanks to Nikhil Chinnari (Acquisition Editor), Harshal Ved
(Project Coordinator), Govindan K (Content Development Editor), and
Shashank Desai and Menza Mathew (Technical Editors) for their support
during the course of writing this book.



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Disaster Recovery Using
VMware vSphere Replication and
vCenter Site Recovery Manager
This book covers the use of vSphere Replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager
for making your vSphere environment recoverable in the event of a disaster. All the
concepts and tasks covered in this book are for vSphere Replication 5.5 and VMware
vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.5.
What This Book Covers
Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.5,
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 5.5, guides you through the steps required in
deploying vSphere Replication Appliances and vSphere Replication Servers.
Chapter 5, Configuring and Using vSphere Replication 5.5, teaches you how to add
target sites and enable replication on virtual machines and recover them. It will also teach
you to configure vCenter SRM to leverage vSphere Replication engine.




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Installing and Conguring
vCenter Site Recovery
Manager (SRM) 5.5
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
What is Site Recovery Manager (SRM)?
Preparing storage for array-based replication
Host presentation at protected and recovery sites
Installing SRM on protected and recovery sites
Installing SRM plugin for vSphere Client
Pairing sites
Installing Storage Replication Adapters (SRA)
Adding an array manager
Enabling an array pair
Conguring placeholder datastores
Creating resource, folder, and network mappings
Introduction
With today's IT infrastructures, be it virtual or physical, disaster recovery is of
prime importance. Any business should be able to continue operating with reduced
downtime for its sustainability amongst the competition. It also has a legal obligation
towards customers to whom it sold its services. Two of the major factors used to
market or sell a service are its High Availability and Recoverability.



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Recoverability is the guarantee that the service offered and its data are protected
against failures, and High Availability is the guarantee that the service offered would
remain operational and the failures are handled in a way that the user of the service
would not even know that there was a failure.
There are many ways in which businesses plan and implement disaster recovery.
Although important, much of these decisions depend on the budgetary constraints.
What turns out to be the most important is the existence of a disaster recovery plan.
Gone are those days when you had to wait for a long period of time before all your
critical applications were made available at a recovery site. With a lot of automation
and scripting, businesses now expect better Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and
Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
So what exactly are RPO and RTO?
RPO denes the amount of data an organization can afford to lose when measured
against time.
RTO denes the amount of downtime the organization can afford for its services
before it becomes operational again.
Both RPO and RTO are dened by time. For example, an organization can have
an RPO set to 4 hours and RTO set to 1 hour. This means, it can afford to lose up
to 4 hours of data, but it can only afford a service downtime up to 1 hour.
RTO only denes the amount of time a service can remain unavailable but doesn't
account for the data loss. This is where RPO pitches in. It denes how much data
loss can be afforded.
For example, if you were a company hosting an online document format conversion
service, then setting a lower RTO value is very important because the customers will
prefer access to the service, rather than to the historical data. The RPO value will
determine how much historical data you will have to keep.
Both RPO and RTO help an organization to determine the type of backup and DR
solution to meet the business requirements.



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What is Site Recovery Manager (SRM)?
vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is an orchestration software that is used to
automate disaster recovery testing and Failover. It can be congured to leverage
either vSphere Replication or a supported array-based replication. With SRM, you
can create Protection Groups and run Recovery Plans against them. The Recovery
Plans can then be used to test the DR setup and perform a planned Failover, or it
can be initiated during a disaster recovery. SRM is a not a product that performs an
automatic Failover, which means that there is no intelligence built into SRM that
would detect a disaster/outage and Failover the VMs. The disaster recovery process
should be manually initiated. Hence, it is not a high availability solution; it is purely
a tool that orchestrates a Recovery Plan.
Architecture
vCenter Site Recovery Manager is not a tool that works on its own. It needs to talk
to other components in the vSphere environment. I will walk you through all the
components involved in an environment protected using SRM.
The following are the components that will be involved in an SRM-protected
environment:
Protected site Recovery site
vCenter Server vCenter Server
SRM instance SRM instance
Array managers Array managers
Storage Replication Adapter Storage Replication Adapter
SRM requires both the protected and recovery sites to be managed by separate
instances of the vCenter Server. It also requires an SRM instance at both the sites.
SRM's functionalities are currently only available via the vSphere Client and not the
vSphere Web Client. Hence, an SRM plugin needs to be installed on the same machine
where the vSphere Client is installed. Refer to the following gure:



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vSphere
Client
vCenter
Server
SRM SRM
vCenter
Server
vSphere
Client
SRM
Plugin
SRM
Plugin
Protected site Recovery site
SRM as a solution cannot work on its own. This is because it is only an orchestration
tool, and it does not include a replication engine. However, it can leverage either
a supported array-based replication or VMware's proprietary replication engine,
vSphere Replication. We have separate chapters covering the vSphere Replication.
Array manager
Each SRM instance needs to be congured with an array manager for it to
communicate with the storage array. The array manager will detect the storage
array using the information you supply to connect to the array. Before you add
an array manager, you need to install an array-specic Storage Replication
Adapter (SRA). This is because the array manager uses the SRA installed to
collect replication information from the array. Refer to the following gure:
Storage eplication dapter R A
Connection information
Array manager
Replication
information
from the array
Fetch
Fetch



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Storage Replication Adapter (SRA)
SRA is a storage vendor component that makes SRM aware of the replication
conguration at the array. SRM leverages SRA's ability to gather information
regarding the replicated volumes and direction of the replication from the array.
SRM also uses SRA for the following functions:
Test Failover
Recovery
Reprotection
This is illustrated in the following gure:
Storage
Replication
Adapter
Site
Recovery
Manager
Test ailover F
Failover
Reprotect
Leverages
Function
Function
Function
We will learn more about these functions in the next chapter. For now, it is important
to understand that SRM requires SRA to be installed for all of its functions leveraging
array-based replication.



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When all these components are put together, a site protected by SRM will look as is
shown in the following gure:
Recovery LUN
vCenter
Server
SRM
SRA
LUN
LUN
S
A
N
Protected site
SRM
Plugin
vSphere
Client
vCenter
Server
SRM
SRA
LUN
S
A
N
Recovery site
Replication
SRM
Plugin
vSphere
Client
SRM conceptually assumes that both the protected and recovery sites are
geographically separated. However, such a separation is not mandatory. You could
use SRM to protect a chassis of servers and have another chassis in the same datacenter
as the recovery site. Now that we have a brief understanding of the SRM architecture,
it is time to learn how to set up these components.



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Laying the groundwork for an SRM
environment
You will need to perform a set of conguration activities to lay the groundwork for
an SRM environment so that it can be used to test or execute the Recovery Plans.
Here is an outline of the tasks that need to be done to form an SRM environment:
Preparing storage for an array-based replication
Host presentation (zoning) at the protected and recovery sites
Installing SRM on both the protected and recovery sites
Installing the SRM plugin for vSphere Client
Pairing the SRM instances
Installing SRA
Adding array managers
Enabling array pairs
Creating resource, folder, and network mappings
Creating placeholder datastores
Preparing storage for an array-based
replication
The rst thing that you will need to do is make sure that your array is supported by
VMware and licensed for an array-based replication by the array vendor. This is not
a VMware license but a licensed feature from the storage vendor.



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Now, to enable replication, you have a couple of approaches that you could employ,
which are as follows:
Approach-1 Approach-2
Identify the VMs that you want
to protect
Identify the VMFS datastores
the VMs have their les on
Identify the LUNs
corresponding to the already
identied datastores
Enable replication on the
identified LUNs
Identify the VMs that you want
to protect
Plan the sizing of a datastore large
enough to hold all the identied
VMs
Create a LUN large enough to
host the datastore
Present the new LUN to the
hosts running the identied VM
and create a new VMFS volume
(datastore) on it
Migrate the VMs that you want
to protect onto the new datastore
Enable replication on the new
LUN that corresponds to the
new datastore
Approach-1 is used in scenarios where the array does not have the spare
capacity to provide a separate LUN to host-protected VMs. This approach adds
an administrative overhead if the virtual machines are spread across multiple
datastores. It also contributes to wastage of replication bandwidth and storage space
since the LUNs that are replicated will contain unprotected virtual machine data.
Approach-2 is used in scenarios where you have ample spare capacity. This approach
is the best as it reduces complexity, avoids replication bandwidth wastage, and
reduces space wastage, as compared to Approach-1. However, this approach will have
an impact on the size of the LUNs required at both the protected and replication sites.



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Host presentation (zoning) at the protected
and recovery sites
If you are involved in a new implementation, then you will have to plan how the
ESXi hosts are zoned to the array at both the protected and recovery sites. This
means that LUNs should be correctly zoned at the fabric. The details for protected
site and recovery site arrays are as follows:
At the protected site array, zone the ESXi hosts to communicate with the
array and make sure that the LUNs housing the VMs to be protected are
assigned to the ESXi hosts
At the recovery site array, zone the ESXi hosts to the array, but do not map
the replica LUNs to the hosts yet
Installing SRM on the protected and recovery
sites
VCenter SRM has to be installed at both the protected and recovery sites for the
disaster recovery setup to work. The installation process is identical regardless of
the site it is being installed on; the only difference is that at each site, you will be
registering the SRM installation to the vCenter Server managing that site.
SRM can either be installed on the same machine that has vCenter Server installed
or on a different machine. The decision to choose either one of the installation
models depends on how you want to size or separate the service-providing machines
in your infrastructure. The most common deployment model is to have both vCenter
and SRM on the same machine. The rationale behind this is that SRM will not work
in a standalone mode; this means that if your vCenter Server goes down, there is no
way you could access SRM. Like vCenter Server, SRM can be installed on a physical
or virtual machine.
Another factor that you must take into account is the installation of SRA. SRAs have
to be installed on the same machine where you already have SRM installed. Some
SRAs need a reboot after installation. So, it is important to read through the storage
vendor's documentation prior to proceeding to make a deployment choice for SRM.
If the vCenter downtime is not feasible, then you will have to consider installing
SRM on a separate machine.



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Nevertheless, it is important to be aware of the software and hardware requirements
of a software installation before it is actually installed. This is to make sure that you
don't run into compatibility or supportability issues during the course of using the
product. To understand the requirement of SRM, refer to page number 23 in Chapter 2,
Site Recovery Manager System Requirements, in the Site Recovery Manager installation and
conguration guide for SRM 5.5 document available at http://pubs.vmware.com/
srm-55/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/srm-install-config-5-5.pdf.
The following owchart depicts the processes involved in installing vCenter SRM:
Install the
SRM plugin
for vSphere
lient C
Run the SRM
installer
Prepare the
SRM
database
Create an
ODBC DSN
for the
database
Generate
certificate if
necessary
Install vSphere
lient C
Performing the SRM installation
Let's assume that the SRM database and the 64-bit DSN have already been created.
We will delve directly into the installation procedure using the SRM installer.
Before you begin, you will need to download the SRM installation bundle from the
VMware website. It can be downloaded by navigating to www.vmware.com and then
to the vCenter Site Recovery Manager option in the Downloads menu. You need to
log in to your my.vmware.com account before you download the executable.
The following procedure will guide you through the SRM installation wizard:
1. Double-click on the downloaded executable to load the installer.
2. On the welcome screen of the installation wizard, click on Next to continue.



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3. Choose a destination folder for the installer to place the les. The default
location is C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager\. You can change this by clicking on the Change button. For now,
I have chosen to leave the default in place. Click on Next to continue.
4. On the next screen, you will be prompted to install the vSphere Replication
UI plugin for SRM. You can choose to install or not install the plugin at this
stage. Since we are not discussing vSphere Replication in this chapter, I have
selected Do not install vSphere Replication as the option. Click on Next
to continue.



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5. On the next screen, provide the FQDN/IP and the credentials of the vCenter
Server; the SRM instance should also be registered. Use of a separate service
account, instead of the built-in administrator account, is recommended. In
most cases where SRM is currently being installed, it is the local vCenter
Server managing the site. Click on Next to continue.
6. You will then be prompted to a certicate source. Here, you can either let
the installer generate a certicate, or you can supply a certicate le
generated by a certicate authority.
7. The options available are as follows:
Automatically generate a certificate
Use a PKCS#12 certificate file



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8. Make a selection of your choice and click on Next to continue.
Here, we have chosen to let the installer generate a new certicate.
Use the second option if you already have a certicate le from your
certicate authority. VMware recommends using CA-signed certicates
for all its products.
9. On the next screen, supply the details (organization and organization unit)
for the certicate generation, and then click on Next to continue. You will
be prompted for this information only if you have chosen to automatically
generate a certicate.
10. Supply a local site name, two e-mail addresses of the administrators who
need to be notied of any event, and the IP address of the machine where we
will install SRM. The local site name can be any name that you supply. In this
case, I have used the name of the vCenter Server that is managing the site.
The site name can be changed by going to the Advanced Settings tab of the
site post installation. Click on Next to continue.



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11. Now, you will be prompted to supply the details of the database that
you previously created for SRM.
12. The following details are needed to proceed further:
The name of the 64-bit DSN that is configured to connect to the
SRM database.
The database user credentials, which could be a user that you created
manually at the database server for the SRM database. Although, in
this example, I have used the sa credentials, it is not a recommended
practice to expose the sa credentials. In most environments, the sa
account is used by the database administrator. Consider using a
separate service account.



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13. Supply the details and click on Next to continue.
14. On the Ready to install the Program screen, click on Install to begin
the installation.
15. Once the installation is complete, click on Finish to exit the installer.
Installing the SRM plugin for vSphere Client
The SRM functions are exposed in the vSphere Client UI with the help of the SRM
plugin. The SRM installer does not install this plugin. This is because it is a plugin
for the vSphere Client and not the vCenter Server. The plugin needs to be installed
separately on the machine where you have vSphere Client installed.
This is how you do it:
1. Connect to vCenter Server using vSphere Client.



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2. Navigate to the Manage Plug-ins option in the Plug-ins tab, as shown in
the following screenshot:
3. In the Plug-in Manager window, the SRM plugin should be listed under the
Available Plug-ins category.
4. Click on the Download and Install link to fetch and install the SRM Plugin.
The plugin installation is pretty straightforward.
5. Once the installation is complete, the vCenter inventory home page should
list Site Recovery under Solutions and Applications.



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Pairing sites
Once SRM is installed on both the sites, the next step is to pair the sites together. The
pairing process establishes a connection between the vCenter Servers at the protected
and recovery sites, which in turn makes the SRM instances at both the sites aware of
its counterpart at the other site (protected/recovery). Without the sites being paired,
we can't proceed further with the conguration of the DR setup.
This is how the sites are paired:
1. Connect to the protected/recovery site vCenter Server using vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.
3. Click on Sites in the left pane.
4. Right-click on the local site listed, and click on Congure Connection to
bring up the congure connection wizard. Refer to the following screenshot:



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5. In the Congure Connection wizard, supply the FQDN of the remote
vCenter Server and click on Next to continue. Accept any subsequent
certicate warnings.
6. Furnish the administrator credentials, and click on Next. Accept any
subsequent certicate warnings.



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7. This will begin the pairing process, which will establish a connection with
the remote vCenter Server and SRM, and also establish reciprocity. Click on
Finish to exit the wizard.
8. Once you exit the wizard, you will be prompted again for the administrator
credentials of the remote vCenter Server. Enter the credentials and click on
OK. Ignore any subsequent certicate warnings. Refer to the
following screenshot:



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9. You should see both the sites listed under the Sites pane now:
Keep in mind that the pairing is done only from one of the sites. This is because the
pairing process establishes reciprocity by conguring the connection in the reverse
direction as well. However, when you open the site recovery solution at the remote
vCenter Server, you will be prompted to enter the administrator credentials of the
other site.
Installing Storage Replication Adapters
Once you have the SRM instances installed and paired, the next step is to install the
Storage Replication Adapters. SRAs are coded and provided by the storage vendors.
VMware certies the SRAs and posts them as compatible with the SRM.
Downloading SRA
The certied versions of SRA can be downloaded directly from VMware's
website. Keep in mind that most vendors publish the updated versions of SRA at
their website before it is certied by VMware. Since SRA is a vendor-supported
component, you can choose to install the latest version available from the vendor,
if that is known to x a problem you are dealing with.
This is how you can download an SRA:
1. Go to VMware's website at www.vmware.com.
2. Navigate to the vCenter Site Recovery Manager option in Downloads under
the Product Downloads category.
3. Once you are at the download page for vCenter SRM, click on the Go to
Downloads hyperlink listed against SRA.
4. At the Download Storage Replication Adapters for VMware vCenter Site
Recovery Manager page, you will see a list of all the certied SRAs. Click on
the Download Now button corresponding to the needed SRA.



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Installing SRA
Once downloaded, the SRA component has to be installed on both the sites. In most
cases, the SRA installation is pretty simple and straightforward, but this can be
different from vendor to vendor. You need to refer to the vendor documentation
for the installation procedure.
Once the installation is complete, follow this procedure to discover the installed
SRA component:
1. Connect to the protected/recovery site of vCenter Server using
vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.
3. Click on Array Managers in the left pane and navigate to the SRAs tab.
4. In the SRAs tab, click on Rescan SRAs to discover the installed SRA.
5. Repeat the procedure at the recovery site as well.
Adding an array manager
Once you have the SRA installed and discovered at both the sites, you will need to
add an array manager at both the sites. An array manager is required to discover the
replicated LUNs and perform other storage operations initiated by SRM.
This is how you add an array manager:
1. Connect to the protected/recovery site of vCenter Server using
vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on
Site Recovery.



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3. Click on Array Managers in the left pane, select the site, and click on
Add Array Manager to bring up the Add Array Manager wizard,
as shown in the following screenshot:
4. In the wizard, supply a Display Name for the array manager and an SRA
Type. The SRA type value eld will be prepopulated with the SRA that is
already installed. Click on Next to continue.



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5. On the next screen, you will be prompted to enter the IP address of the
storage node or a management server, which does the array management.
Keep in mind that the information this screen prompts for differs from array
to array and from vendor to vendor. It is purely dependent on what SRA
is being used. Here in this example, I use the HP StoreVirtual (LeftHand)
SRA and what I have entered as the Virtual IP (VIP) of the cluster the Node
Storage Module (NSM) is part of. If I don't use this, all the NSMs in the
cluster are involved in the replication of SRM, and then I can supply the
IP addresses of the involved NSMs separated by a comma.
6. Supply the details and click on Next to continue. Refer to the following
screenshot:
7. The next screen will read Success if the array managers are added successfully.
Click on Finish to exit the wizard.
8. Repeat the same procedure on the recovery site as well.
9. Once done, the Array Managers for both the sites should be listed, as shown
in the following screenshot:



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Enabling an array pair
An array pair shows the replication relationship between two arrays. Before you
enable an array pair, you need SRA installed and the array manager added at both
the sites. For the array manager to detect an array pair, there should be a replication
schedule already created between the arrays. Refer to the vendor documentation
to understand what a replication schedule means for the vendor's array and the
procedure to create it.
This is how you enable an array pair:
1. Make sure that there is a replication schedule enabled between the two arrays.
2. Navigate to the vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on
Site Recovery.
3. Click on Array Managers in the left pane.
4. Select an added Array Manager (local or remote), and click on Refresh to
discover an array pair, as shown in the following screenshot:
5. If the Refresh action discovers an array pair, the array pair will be listed.
The Refresh action has to be done at both of the sites.



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6. Array pairs discovered are not enabled by default. To enable an array pair,
select an array pair and click on Enable. This operation has to done at only
one of the sites.
7. When an array pair is enabled, it tries to discover the devices (LUNs) for
which a replication schedule is enabled at the array. Keep in mind that not
all devices with a replication schedule are displayed as a device for the
array pair; only the ones that are presented to a host at the protected site are
displayed. To view the detected and ltered replication-enabled devices with
the array manager selected, navigate to the Devices tab and click on Refresh,
as shown in the following screenshot:



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Conguring placeholder datastores
In the next chapter, you will learn how to create Protection Groups. For every virtual
machine that becomes part of a Protection Group, SRM creates a shadow virtual
machine. A placeholder datastore is used to store the les for the shadow virtual
machines. The datastore used for this purpose should be accessible to all the hosts
in the datacenter/cluster serving the role of a recovery-host. We will learn more
about Protection Groups and shadow virtual machines in the next chapter. For now,
understand that conguring placeholder datastores is an essential step in forming
an SRM environment.
Assuming that each of these paired sites is geographically separated, each site
will have its own placeholder datastore. The following gure shows the site and
placeholder datastore relationship:
Shadow VMs
Protected site Recovery site
Protection
group
VM VM
VM VM
Placeholder
datastore
This is how you congure placeholder datastores:
1. Navigate to vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.



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2. Click on Sites in the left pane and select a site. Navigate to the Placeholder
Datastores tab and click on Congure Placeholder Datastore, as shown in
the following screenshot:
3. In the Congure Placeholder Datastore window, select an appropriate
datastore and click on OK. To conrm the selection, exit the window.



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4. Now, the Placeholder Datastores tab should show the congured
placeholder. Refer to the following screenshot:
5. If you plan to congure a Failback, repeat the procedure in the recovery site.
Creating resource, folder, and network
mappings
Creating resource, folder, and network mappings facilitates further orchestration of
the Recovery Plan that will be executed for either a Planned Migration or a Failover.
Without these mappings, you won't be able to congure protection on the virtual
machines, and the protection status will indicate that these mapping are missing.
We will learn more about Protection Groups in the next chapter.
Apart from being a requirement for creating Protection Groups, there are other use
cases as well. The following table shows a few common ones:
Use cases Mapping to use
If the designated recovery site runs other workload,
then you may want to create a separate folder for the
VMs from the protected site.
Folder mappings
If there is a separate cluster/resource pool at the
recovery site to host, the VMs are recovered from the
protected site.
Resource mappings
If there are vSwitch/DSwitch port groups at the
recovery site for the recovered VMs, we use the
network mapping.
Network mappings



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Resource mappings
We need to provide a correlation between the compute resource containers on both
the sites. The compute resource containers are cluster, resource pool, and ESXi host.
This is achieved with the help of resource mappings.
Resource mappings respect the presence of these containers, which means that if
there is a cluster or resource pool at the site, the ESXi hosts are not made available
as a selectable compute container.
This is how you congure resource mappings:
1. Navigate to vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.
2. Click on Sites in the left pane, select a site, and navigate to the Resource
Mappings tab. Select the resource container (a cluster, resource pool, or host)
you want to map, and click on Congure Mapping to bring up the Mapping
window. Refer to the following screenshot:
3. In the Mapping window, browse the resource inventory of the recovery site,
select the destination resource container (a cluster, resource pool, or host),
and click on OK to conrm.



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4. The Resource Mapping tab should now show the mapped Recovery
Site Resource.



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Folder mappings
Folders are inventory containers that can only be created using vCenter Server.
They are used to group inventory objects of the same type for easier management.
There are different types of folders. The folder type is determined by the
inventory-hierarchy level they are created at. The folder names are as follows:
Datacenter folder
Hosts and clusters folder
Virtual machine and template folder
Network folder
Storage folder
The vSphere Web Client provides UI menu options to create a folder of the following
types, without needing to navigate to an appropriate inventory-hierarchy level to
create them:
Hosts and clusters folder
Network folders
Storage folder
Virtual machine and template folder
In the case of SRM folder mappings, we will deal with only virtual machine folders
and its parent datacenter. You will not be able to congure mapping for any of the
other folder types.
This is how you congure folder mapping:
1. Navigate to vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.
2. Click on Sites in the left pane, select a site, and navigate to the Folder
Mappings tab. Select the virtual machine folder that you want to map,
and click on Congure Mapping to bring up the Mapping window,
as shown in the following screenshot:



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3. In the Mapping for Protected VMs window, browse the virtual machine
folder inventory of the recovery site, select the destination folder, and click
on OK to conrm.



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It is important to make sure that the parent datacenter of which the
virtual machine folder is part of is mapped as well. The procedure to
configure mapping is the same.
4. The Folder Mapping tab should now show the mapped recovery site folder.
Refer to the following screenshot:
'
Network mappings
Network conguration at the protected and recovery sites need not be identical.
Network mappings provide a method to form a correlation between the port groups
(standard or distributed) of the protected and recovery steps.
Let's say we have a port group with the name VM Network at the protected site, and
it is mapped to a port group with the name Recovery Network at the recovery site.
In this case, a virtual machine that is connected to VM Network will be recongured
to use the Recovery Network when failed over.
This is how you congure network mappings:
1. Navigate to vCenter Server's inventory home page and click on Site Recovery.
2. Click on Sites in the left pane, select a site, and navigate to the Network
Mappings tab. Select the port group (standard/distributed) that you want to
map, and click on Congure Mapping to bring up the Mapping window, as
shown in the following screenshot:



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3. In the Mapping for VM Network window, browse the network inventory of
the recovery site, select the destination port group, and click on OK to conrm.



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4. The Network Mappings tab should now show the mapped recovery site port
group, as shown in the following screenshot:
Virtual machine swap le location
With SRM implementations, there is a common argument about the placement of the
virtual machine swap les. Some would suggest maintaining a separate datastore for
the virtual machine swap les, while some are against it. Before we try to understand
the rationale behind either of the design choices, it is important to know what a
virtual machine swap le is.
Every virtual machine will have a swap le (.vswp). This swap le is created every
time a virtual machine is powered on. The size of the swap le is equal to the size of
the memory assigned to the virtual machine, unless there is a reservation. If there is
a memory reservation, then the size of the swap le will be equal to the size of the
unreserved memory. Although rare, some environments use limits on memory
as well.
So, the ideal formula to calculate the size of the swap le is as follows:
Swap le size = memory limit memory reservation
The default memory reservation is 0 MB, and the default limit is equal to the
congured size of the memory. By default, the swap le is stored along with
the virtual machine in its working directory.



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Design choice 1 separate datastore for the swap
les
The rationale is that the swap le is created every time a virtual machine is powered
on. Since the VM will be powered on at the recovery site, the swap le will be created
at that time. Hence, there is no need to replicate the swap les. The following table
illustrates the pros and cons of this:
Pros Cons
Swap file replication, if avoided, can reduce
the bandwidth utilization for storage
replication.
Single point of failure.
Reduces the need for the storage space at
the recovery site, which otherwise would be
needed for the swap files.
The swap location should be chosen at a
per-host level; this would mean a lot of
manual work in a large environment.
Need to accommodate a separate large
LUN; this could affect the available spare
capacity of the array.
Design choice 2 store the swap les in the virtual
machines' working directory
The rationale is that apart from reduced replication bandwidth usage, there is no
real advantage of maintaining a separate datastore for the swap les. Most SRM
implementations will already have made sure that there will be more than enough
bandwidth to make storage replication feasible. Also, not all virtual machines
frequently use the swap les, unless the vSphere environment is oversubscribed and
the virtual machines are frequently contending for memory resources. In most cases,
the swap les will be replicated during the initial sync. Subsequent synchronizations
will include swap les created consequent to power off and power on operations.
Keep in mind that a guest OS reboot will not trigger the recreation of the swap les.
The following table illustrates the pros and cons of this:



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Pros Cons
No administrative overhead, which would
otherwise be needed to configuring a swap
datastore per host.
Bandwidth wastage, due to the replication
of the swap files.
No single point of failure. Space wastage at the recovery site, which
can otherwise be avoided if the swap files
are not duplicated onto the replica LUNs.
The design choices and the rationale behind them can vary
depending on the environment you are dealing with. The rationales
are only guidelines.
Summary
In this chapter, we learned what VMware vCenter SRM is and how it can be
installed and congured to lay the groundwork for any SRM environment.
In the next chapter, we will learn how to enable protection of the virtual
machine workload by creating Protection Groups and Recovery Plans.



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