srm-admin-5-1

Site Recovery Manager AdministrationvCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1

This document supports the version of each product listed andsupports all subsequent versions until the document is replacedby a new edition. To check for more recent editions of thisdocument, see http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

EN-000863-02

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs

Site Recovery Manager Administration

2 VMware, Inc.

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Contents

About VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Administration 7

Updated Information 9

1 SRM Privileges, Roles, and Permissions 11

How SRM Handles Permissions 12Assign Roles and Permissions 12SRM Roles Reference 13

vSphere Replication Roles Reference 16

2 Creating SRM Placeholders and Mappings 19

About Placeholder Virtual Machines 19About Inventory Mappings 20

Select Inventory Mappings 21About Placeholder Datastores 21

Configure a Placeholder Datastore 22Configure Datastore Mappings for vSphere Replication 22

3 Replicating Virtual Machines 23

Configure Replication for a Single Virtual Machine 23Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines 24Replicate Virtual Machines Using Replication Seeds 25Move a Virtual Machine to a New vSphere Replication Server 26

4 Creating Protection Groups 27

About Array-Based Protection Groups and Datastore Groups 27How SRM Computes Datastore Groups 28Create Array-Based Protection Groups 29Edit Array-Based Protection Groups 30

Create vSphere Replication Protection Groups 30Edit vSphere Replication Protection Groups 31

Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of a Protection Group 31

5 Creating, Testing, and Running Recovery Plans 33

Testing a Recovery Plan 34Test Networks and Datacenter Networks 34

Performing a Planned Migration or Disaster Recovery By Running a Recovery Plan 35Running a Recovery with Forced Recovery 35

Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery Plan 36How SRM Interacts with DPM and DRS During Recovery 36How SRM Interacts with vSphere High Availability 37

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Protecting MSCS and Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines 37Create, Test, and Run a Recovery Plan 37

Create a Recovery Plan 38Edit a Recovery Plan 38Suspend Virtual Machines When a Recovery Plan Runs 39Test a Recovery Plan 39Clean Up After Testing a Recovery Plan 40Run a Recovery Plan 40

Cancel a Test or Recovery 41Delete a Recovery Plan 41

6 Reprotecting Virtual Machines After a Recovery 43

How SRM Performs Reprotect 44Preconditions for Performing Reprotect 45Reprotect Virtual Machines 45Reprotect States 45

7 Restoring the Pre-Recovery Site Configuration By Performing Failback 47

Perform a Failback 48

8 Customizing a Recovery Plan 51

Recovery Plan Steps 51Specify the Recovery Priority of a Virtual Machine 52Creating Custom Recovery Steps 52

Types of Custom Recovery Steps 53How SRM Handles Custom Recovery Steps 54Create Top-Level Command Steps 54Create Top-Level Message Prompt Steps 55Create Command Steps for Individual Virtual Machines 55Create Message Prompt Steps for Individual Virtual Machines 56Guidelines for Writing Command Steps 56Environment Variables for Command Steps 56

Customize the Recovery of an Individual Virtual Machine 57

9 Customizing IP Properties for Virtual Machines 59

Customize IP Properties For an Individual Virtual Machine 60Report IP Address Mappings for a Protection Group 61Customizing IP Properties for Multiple Virtual Machines 61

Syntax of the DR IP Customizer Tool 62Structure of the DR IP Customizer CSV File 63Modifying the DR IP Customizer CSV File 66Run DR IP Customizer to Customize IP Properties for Multiple Virtual Machines 71

10 Advanced SRM Configuration 73

Configure Protection for a Virtual Machine or Template 73Configure Resource Mappings for a Virtual Machine 74Specify a Nonreplicated Datastore for Swap Files 74Recovering Virtual Machines Across Multiple Hosts on the Recovery Site 75


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Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Using Replication Seeds 75Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Without Using Replication Seeds 76Reconfigure SRM Settings 76

Change Local Site Settings 76Change Recovery Site Settings 77Change Remote Site Settings 78Change the Timeout for the Creation of Placeholder Virtual Machines 78Change Storage Settings 78Change Storage Provider Settings 79Reconfigure Default Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in Replications 80Modify Settings to Run Large SRM Environments 80

11 Troubleshooting SRM Administration 83

Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines 83SRM Events and Alarms 85

How SRM Monitors Connections Between Sites 85Configure SRM Alarms 86SRM Events Reference 86

Collecting SRM Log Files 94Collect SRM Log Files Using the vSphere Client 95Collect SRM Log Files Manually 95

Access the vSphere Replication Logs 97Manually Access the vSphere Replication Logs 98

Resolve SRM Operational Issues 98SRM Doubles the Number of Backslashes in the Command Line When Running Callouts 98Powering on Many Virtual Machines Simultaneously on the Recovery Site Can Lead to Errors 99LVM.enableResignature=1 Remains Set After a SRM Test Failover 100Adding Virtual Machines to a Protection Group Fails with an Unresolved Devices Error 101Recovery Fails with a Timeout Error During Network Customization for Some Virtual

Machines 101Scalability Problems when Replicating Many Virtual Machines with a Short RPO to a Shared

VMFS Datastore on ESXi Server 5.0 102Application Quiescing Changes to File System Quiescing During vMotion to an Older Host 103Reconfigure Replication on Virtual Machines with No Datastore Mapping 103Configuring Replication Fails for Virtual Machines with Two Disks on Different Datastores 104vSphere Replication RPO Violations 104vSphere Replication Does Not Start After Moving the Host 105Unexpected vSphere Replication Failure Results in a Generic Error 105

Index 107

Contents

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About VMware vCenter Site Recovery ManagerAdministration

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is an extension to VMware vCenter Server that delivers abusiness continuity and disaster recovery solution that helps you plan, test, and run the recovery ofvCenter Server virtual machines. SRM can discover and manage replicated datastores, and automate migrationof inventory from one vCenter Server instance to another.

Intended AudienceThis book is intended for SRM administrators who are familiar with vSphere and its replication technologies,such as host-based replication and replicated datastores. This solution serves the needs of administrators whowant to configure protection for their vSphere inventory. It might also be appropriate for users who need toadd virtual machines to a protected inventory or to verify that an existing inventory is properly configured foruse with SRM.

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Updated Information

Site Recovery Manager Administration is updated with each release of the product or when necessary.

This table provides the update history of Site Recovery Manager Administration.

Revision Description

000863-02 n Added information about VMFS datastores that span multiple LUNs to “How SRM Computes DatastoreGroups,” on page 28.

n Expanded “How SRM Performs Reprotect,” on page 44.n Clarified MSCS support in “Protecting MSCS and Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines,” on page 37.n Added “How SRM Interacts with vSphere High Availability,” on page 37.n Revised and expanded “Customizing IP Properties for Multiple Virtual Machines,” on page 61.n Added VMware Tools information in “Change Recovery Site Settings,” on page 77.n Added information about protecting Active Directory domain controllers and clarified SIOC support in

“Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines,” on page 83.n Added “vSphere Replication RPO Violations,” on page 104.n Added “vSphere Replication Does Not Start After Moving the Host,” on page 105.

000863-01 Corrected support statement for array-based protection and recovery of virtual machines attached to RDMdevices in “Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines,” on page 83.

000863-00 Initial release.

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SRM Privileges, Roles, andPermissions 1

SRM provides disaster recovery by performing operations for users. These operations involve managingobjects, such as recovery plans or protection groups, and performing operations, such as replicating orpowering off virtual machines. SRM uses roles and permissions so that only users with the correct roles andpermissions can perform operations.

SRM adds several roles to vCenter Server, each of which includes privileges and permissions to completeSRM and vCenter Server tasks. You assign users to a role to permit them to complete tasks in SRM.

Privilege The right to perform an action, for example to create a recovery plan or tomodify a protection group.

Role A collection of privileges. Default roles provide the privileges that certain usersrequire to perform a set of SRM tasks, for example users who manageprotection groups or perform recoveries. A user can have at most one role onan object, but roles can be combined if the user belongs to multiple groups thatall have roles on the object.

Permission A role granted to a particular user or user group on a specific object. A user oruser group is also known as a principal. A permission is a combination of arole, an object, and a principal. For example, a permission is the privilege tomodify a specific protection group.

For information about the roles that SRM adds to vCenter Server and the privileges that users require tocomplete tasks, see “SRM Roles Reference,” on page 13.

n How SRM Handles Permissions on page 12SRM determines whether a user has permission to perform an operation when you configure protectionon a virtual machine, rather than at the time that SRM performs the operation.

n Assign Roles and Permissions on page 12After installation, only vCenter Server administrators can log in to SRM. To allow other users to accessSRM, vCenter Server administrators must grant them permissions in the SRM interface.

n SRM Roles Reference on page 13SRM includes a set of roles. Each role includes a set of privileges, which enable users with those roles tocomplete different actions.

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How SRM Handles PermissionsSRM determines whether a user has permission to perform an operation when you configure protection on avirtual machine, rather than at the time that SRM performs the operation.

After SRM verifies that a user has the appropriate permissions on the target vSphere resources, SRM performsoperations on behalf of users by using the vSphere administrator role.

For configuration operations, SRM validates user permissions when the user requests the operation.Operations other than configuration operations require two phases of validation.

1 During configuration, SRM verifies that the user configuring the system has the correct permissions tocomplete the configuration on the vCenter Server object. For example, a user must have permission toprotect a virtual machine and use resources on a secondary vCenter Server that the recovered virtualmachine uses.

2 The user performing the configuration must have the correct permissions to complete the task that theyare configuring. For example, a user must have permissions to run a recovery plan. SRM then completesthe task on behalf of the user as a vCenter Server administrator.

As a result, a user who completes a particular task, such as a recovery, does not necessarily require permissionsto act on vSphere resources. The role authorizes the action, but the action is performed by SRM acting as anadministrator. SRM performs the operations by using the administrator credentials that you provide whenyou connect the protected and recovery sites.

SRM maintains a database of permissions for internal SRM objects that uses a model similar to the one thevCenter Server uses. SRM verifies its own SRM privileges even on vCenter Server objects. For example, SRMchecks for the Resource.Recovery Use permission on the target datastore rather than checking multiple low-level permissions, such as Allocate space.

Assign Roles and PermissionsAfter installation, only vCenter Server administrators can log in to SRM. To allow other users to access SRM,vCenter Server administrators must grant them permissions in the SRM interface.

Permission assignments apply on a per-site basis. You must add corresponding permissions on both sites.

SRM requires permissions on vCenter Server objects as well as on SRM objects. To configure permissions onthe remote vCenter Server installation, start another instance of vSphere Client. You can change SRMpermissions from the same interface on both sites after pairing. SRM augments vCenter Server roles andpermissions with additional permissions that allow detailed control over SRM specific tasks and operations.You can use the SRM Assign Permissions window the same way that you use the Assign Permissions windowin the vSphere Client.

Prerequisites

Procedure

1 Click Sites, and select the site for which you want to assign permissions.

2 Click the Permissions tab.

3 Right-click anywhere in the panel for either the local or remote sites and select Add Permission.

4 Click Add.


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5 Identify a user or group for the role.

a From the Domain drop-down menu, select the domain that contains the user or group.

b Enter a name in the Search text box or select a name from the Name list.

c Click Add and click OK.

6 Select a role from the Assigned Role drop-down menu.

This menu displays all the roles that SRM and vCenter Server make available. When you select a role,hierarchical list displays the privileges for that role.

7 Select Propagate to Child Objects to apply the selected role to all the child objects of the selected inventoryobject.

8 Click OK to add the new permission.

The list of permissions contains all users and groups that have roles assigned to the selected object and statesin the hierarchy where those roles are assigned.

What to do next

Repeat the procedure to assign roles and permissions to users at the recovery site.

SRM Roles ReferenceSRM includes a set of roles. Each role includes a set of privileges, which enable users with those roles tocomplete different actions.

Roles can have overlapping sets of privileges and actions. For example, the SRM Administrator role and theSRM Protection Groups Administrator have the Create privilege for protection groups. With this privilege,the user can complete one aspect of the set of tasks that make up the management of protection groups.

Assign roles to users on SRM objects consistently on both sites, so that protected and recovery objects haveidentical permissions.

All users must have at least the System.Read privilege on the root folders of vCenter Server and the SRM rootnodes on both sites.

Chapter 1 SRM Privileges, Roles, and Permissions

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Table 1-1. SRM Roles

Role Privilege ActionTarget Object in vCenter ServerInventory

SRM Administrator Site RecoveryManager.AdvancedSettings.ModifySite RecoveryManager.ArrayManager.ConfigureSite RecoveryManager.Diagnostics.ExportSite RecoveryManager.InventoryPreferences.ModifySite RecoveryManager.PlaceholderDatastores.ConfigureSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.Assign to PlanSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.CreateSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.ModifySite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.RemoveSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.Remove from PlanSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryHistory .View DeletedSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryHistory .PlansSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ConfigureSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ConfigurecommandsSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.CreateSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ModifySite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.RemoveSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ReprotectSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.Test

Configure advanced settings.Configure connections.Configure inventorypreferences.Configure placeholderdatastores.Configure array managers.Manage protection groups.Manage recovery plans.Protect virtual machines.Edit protection groups.Remove protection groups.

Virtual machineDatastorevCenter Server folderResource poolNetworkSRM service instanceSRM folderProtection groupRecovery planArray manager


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Table 1-1. SRM Roles (Continued)


Site RecoveryManager.RemoteSite.ModifyDatastore.Replication.ProtectDatastore.Replication.UnprotectResource.Recovery UseVirtual Machine.Replication.ProtectVirtual Machine.Replication.Stop

SRM ProtectionGroups Administrator

Site RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.CreateSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.ModifySite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.RemoveDatastore.Replication.ProtectDatastore.Replication.UnprotectResource.Recovery UseVirtual Machine.Replication.Stop

Manage protection groups.Protect virtual machines.

SRM folderProtection group

SRM RecoveryAdministrator

Site RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.Remove from planSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ModifySite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.TestSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.RecoverySite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ReprotectSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ConfigurecommandsSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryHistory.View deletedplans

Manage recovery.Test recovery.

Protection groupRecovery planSRM service instance


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Table 1-1. SRM Roles (Continued)


SRM Recovery PlansAdministrator

Site RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.Assign to planSite RecoveryManager.ProtectionGroup.Remove from planSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ConfigureSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.CommandsSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.CreateSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ModifySite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.RemoveSite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.TestResource.Recovery Use

Manage recovery plans.Add protection groups torecovery plans.Test recovery plans.Cancel recovery plan test.Edit virtual machine recoveryproperties.

Protection groupRecovery planvCenter Server folderDatastoreResource poolNetwork

SRM TestAdministrator

Site RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.ModifySite RecoveryManager.RecoveryPlan.Test

Test recovery plans.Cancel recovery plans test.Edit virtual machine recoveryproperties.

Recovery plan

vSphere Replication Roles ReferencevSphere Replication includes a set of roles. Each role includes a set of privileges, which enable users with thoseroles to complete different actions.

NOTE When assigning permissions with no propagation, make sure that you have at least Read-onlypermission on all parent objects.


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Table 1-2. vSphere Replication Roles

Role Privilege ActionTarget Object invCenter Server Inventory

VRM replicationviewer

VRM remote.View VRVRM remote.View VRMVRM datastore mapper.ViewHost.Replication.Manage replicationVirtual machine .Replication.Monitorreplication

View replications.Cannot changereplicationparameters.

vCenter Server root folder withpropagation, at primary site(outgoing replications) andsecondary site (incomingreplications).Alternatively, vCenter Serverroot folder without propagationon both sites and virtual machinewithout propagation on theprimary site.

VRM virtualmachinereplication user

VRM remote.View VRVRM remote.View VRMVRM datastore mapper.ManageVRM datastore mapper.ViewHost.Replication.Manage replicationVirtualmachine.Replication.ConfigurereplicationVirtual machine.Replication.ManagereplicationVirtual machine.Replication.Monitorreplication

View replications.Manage datastores.Configure andunconfigurereplications.Manage and monitorreplications.Requires acorresponding userwith the same role onthe secondary siteand additionallyvSphere Replicationtarget datastore userrole on both sourceand targetdatacenters, or sourceand target datastorefolders or on eachsource or targetdatastore.

vCenter Server root folder withpropagation on both sites.Alternatively, vCenter Serverroot folder without propagationon both sites and virtual machinewithout propagation on theprimary site.


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Table 1-2. vSphere Replication Roles (Continued)

Role Privilege ActionTarget Object invCenter Server Inventory

VRM administrator VRM remote.Manage VRVRM remote.View VRVRM remote.Manage VRMVRM remote.View VRMVRM datastore mapper.ManageVRM datastore mapper.ViewVRM diagnostics .ManageVRM session .TerminateDatastore.Browse datastoreDatastore.Low level file operationsHost.Replication.Manage replicationResource.Assign virtual machine toresource poolVirtual machine.Configuration.Addexisting diskVirtual machine.Configuration.Add orremove deviceVirtual machine.Interaction.Power OnVirtual machine.Interaction.DeviceconnectionVirtual machine.Inventory.RegisterVirtualmachine.Replication.ConfigurereplicationVirtual machine.Replication.ManagereplicationVirtual machine.Replication.Monitorreplication

Incorporates allvSphere Replicationprivileges.

vCenter Server root folder withpropagation on both sites.Alternatively, vCenter Serverroot folder without propagationon both sites, virtual machinewithout propagation on theprimary site, target datastore,target virtual machine folderwith propagation on thesecondary site, target host orcluster with propagation on thesecondary site.

VRM diagnostics VRM remote.View VRVRM remote.View VRMVRM diagnostics .Manage

Generate, retrieve,and delete logbundles.

vCenter Server root folder onboth sites.

VRM targetdatastore user

Datastore.Browse datastoreDatastore.Low level file operations

Configure andreconfigurereplications.Used on both sites incombination with theVRM virtual machinereplication user roleon both sites.

Source and target datastoreobjects, or datastore folder withpropagation, or source and targetdatacenters with propagation.

VRM virtualmachine recoveryuser

Datastore.Browse datastoreDatastore.Low level file operationsHost.Replication.Manage replicationVirtual machine.Configuration.Addexisting diskVirtual machine.Configuration.Add orremove deviceVirtual machine.Interaction.Power OnVirtual machine.Interaction.DeviceconnectionVirtual machine.Inventory.RegisterResource.Assign virtual machine toresource pool

Recover virtualmachines.

Secondary vCenter Server rootfolder with propagation.Alternatively, secondaryvCenter Server root folderwithout propagation, targetdatastore, target virtual machinewithout propagation, targetvirtual machine folder withpropagation, target host orcluster with propagation.


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Creating SRM Placeholders andMappings 2

When you use SRM to configure the protection for virtual machines, you reserve resources on the recoverysite by creating placeholders. You map the resources of the protected virtual machines to resources on therecovery site.

n About Placeholder Virtual Machines on page 19When you add a virtual machine or template to a protection group, SRM creates a placeholder virtualmachine at the recovery site.

n About Inventory Mappings on page 20You must create inventory mappings so that SRM can create placeholder virtual machines.

n About Placeholder Datastores on page 21For every virtual machine in a protection group, SRM creates a placeholder virtual machine at therecovery site. You must identify a datastore on the recovery site in which SRM can store the placeholdervirtual machines.

n Configure Datastore Mappings for vSphere Replication on page 22You configure datastore mappings to determine which datastores vSphere Replication uses to storereplicated virtual machine disks and configuration files at the recovery site.

About Placeholder Virtual MachinesWhen you add a virtual machine or template to a protection group, SRM creates a placeholder virtual machineat the recovery site.

SRM reserves a place for protected virtual machines in the inventory of the recovery site by creating a subsetof virtual machine files. SRM uses that subset of files as a placeholder to register a virtual machine withvCenter Server on the recovery site. The presence of placeholder in the recovery site inventory provides avisual indication to SRM administrators that the virtual machines are protected. The placeholders also indicateto vCenter Server administrators that the virtual machines can power on and start consuming local resourceswhen SRM tests or runs a recovery plan.

When you recover a protected virtual machine by testing or running a recovery plan, SRM replaces itsplaceholder with the recovered virtual machine and powers it on according to the settings of the recovery plan.After a recovery plan test finishes, SRM restores the placeholders and powers off the virtual machines as partof the cleanup process.

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About Placeholder Virtual Machine TemplatesWhen you protect a template on the protected site, SRM creates the placeholder template by creating a virtualmachine in the default resource pool of a compute resource and then by marking that virtual machine as atemplate. SRM selects the compute resource from the set of available compute resources in the datacenter onthe recovery site to which the folder of the virtual machine on the protected site is mapped. All the hosts inthe selected compute resource must have access to at least one placeholder datastore. At least one host in thecompute resource must support the hardware version of the protected virtual machine template.

About Inventory MappingsYou must create inventory mappings so that SRM can create placeholder virtual machines.

Inventory mappings provide a convenient way to specify how SRM maps virtual machine resources at theprotected site to resources at the recovery site. SRM applies these mappings to all members of a protectiongroup when you create the group. You can reapply mappings whenever necessary, for example when you addnew members to a group.

SRM does not enforce an inventory mapping requirement. If you create a protection group without defininginventory mappings, you must configure each protected virtual machine individually or use the Configure Alloption. SRM cannot protect a virtual machine unless it has valid inventory mappings for key virtual machineresources.

n Networks

n Folders

n Compute resources

n Placeholder datastores

After you configure mappings at the protected site when you configure protection, configure inventorymappings at the recovery site to enable reprotect.

When SRM creates a placeholder virtual machine, SRM derives its folder and compute resource assignmentsfrom inventory mappings that you establish at the protected site. A vCenter Server administrator at therecovery site can modify folder and compute resource assignments as necessary.

Configuring Inventory Mappings for Individual Virtual MachinesYou can configure mappings for individual virtual machines in a protection group. If you create inventorymappings for a site, you can override them by configuring the protection of individual virtual machines. Ifyou must override inventory mappings for some members of a protection group, use the vSphere Client toconnect to the recovery site, and edit the settings of the placeholder virtual machines or move them to a differentfolder or resource pool.

Changing Inventory MappingsIf you change existing inventory mappings for a site, the changes do not affect virtual machines that SRMalready protects. SRM only applies the new mappings to newly added virtual machines or if you repair a lostplaceholder for a particular virtual machine.

Because placeholder virtual machines do not support NICs, you cannot change the network configurations ofplaceholder virtual machines. You can only change the network for a placeholder virtual machine in theinventory mappings. If no mapping for a network exists, you can specify a network when you configureprotection for an individual virtual machine. Changes that you make to the placeholder virtual machineoverride the settings that you establish when you configure the protection of the virtual machine. SRMpreserves these changes at the recovery site during the test and recovery.


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How SRM Applies Mappings During ReprotectDuring reprotect, SRM converts the virtual machines from the original protected site into placeholders, toprotect the recovered virtual machines that were formerly the placeholder virtual machines on the recoverysite. In most cases, the previously protected virtual machines and their devices are used during reprotect. Ifyou add devices to a virtual machine after the virtual machine is recovered, or if original protected virtualmachines are deleted, SRM uses mappings during reprotect.

Select Inventory MappingsInventory mappings provide default locations and networks for virtual machines to use when SRM createsplaceholder virtual machines on the recovery site.

Unless you intend to configure mappings individually for each member of a protection group, you shouldconfigure inventory mappings for a site before you create protection groups.

Procedure

1 Click Sites in the left pane and select the site for which to configure inventory mappings.

2 Select a tab for a type of inventory object to configure.

You can choose between the Resource Mappings tab, Folder Mappings tab, and Network Mappings tab.

3 Select an inventory object and click Configure Mapping.

4 Expand the inventory items and navigate to the network, folder, or resource pool on the recovery site towhich to map the protected site resource.

5 (Optional) Select how to create the mapping:

n Select an existing resource from the list.

n Click New Folder or New Resource Pool to create a folder or resource pool on the recovery site towhich to map.

The selected resource appears in the Recovery Site Resources column, and its path relative to the root ofthe vCenter Server on the recovery site appears in the Recovery Site Path column.

6 Repeat Step 2 through Step 4 for any resource types for which to establish mappings.

About Placeholder DatastoresFor every virtual machine in a protection group, SRM creates a placeholder virtual machine at the recoverysite. You must identify a datastore on the recovery site in which SRM can store the placeholder virtual machines.

After you select the datastore to contain the placeholder virtual machines, SRM reserves a place for protectedvirtual machines in the inventory on the recovery site. SRM creates a set of virtual machine files on the specifieddatastore at the recovery site and uses that subset to register the placeholder virtual machine withvCenter Server on the recovery site.

When using array-based replication, to enable planned migration and reprotect, you must select placeholderdatastores at both sites.

Placeholder datastores must meet certain criteria.

n For clusters, the placeholder datastores must be visible to all of the hosts in the cluster.

n You cannot replicate placeholder datastores.

Chapter 2 Creating SRM Placeholders and Mappings

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Configure a Placeholder DatastoreYou can specify a placeholder datastore for SRM to use for the storage of placeholder virtual machines.

Prerequisites

Verify that you connected and paired the protected and recovery sites.

Procedure

1 Select Sites in the left pane, and select a site

2 Click the Placeholder Datastores tab.

3 Click Configure Placeholder Datastore.

4 Expand the folders to find a datastore to designate as the location for placeholder virtual machines, clickthe datastore, and click OK.

NOTE If an array manager is replicating datastores, but the array manager is not configured with SRM,the option to select the replicated datastore might be available. Do not select replicated datastores.Previously configured and replicated datastores appear but you cannot select them.

The selected placeholder datastore appears in the Datastore column. If the datastore is on a standalonehost, the host name appears. If the datastore is on a host that is in a cluster, the cluster name appears.

Configure Datastore Mappings for vSphere ReplicationYou configure datastore mappings to determine which datastores vSphere Replication uses to store replicatedvirtual machine disks and configuration files at the recovery site.

You can use datastore mappings when you configure vSphere Replication for virtual machines as a way toselect the default destination datastores.

You configure datastore mappings from the source datastores of the virtual machines being configured forreplication to destination datastores for the replicated files. A source datastore can be a single datastore thatcontains a single virtual machine, or it can be many datastores with many virtual machines with files spreadacross the datastores.

When you configure replication for a single virtual machine, you can override the datastore mappings for asite, but when you configure replication for multiple virtual machines, you can use only the site-wide datastoremappings, and you cannot override them.

Procedure

1 Click vSphere Replication in the left pane, and select a site.

2 Click the Datastore Mappings tab, and select a source datastore.

3 Click Configure Mapping.

4 Browse through the hierarchy of datastores at the recovery site and select a datastore to which to map.


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Replicating Virtual Machines 3Before you create protection groups, you must configure replication on the virtual machines to protect.

You can replicate virtual machines by using either array-based replication, vSphere Replication, or acombination of both.

This information concerns replication using vSphere Replication. To configure array-based replication onvirtual machines, consult the documentation from your storage array manager (SRA) vendor.

This chapter includes the following topics:

n “Configure Replication for a Single Virtual Machine,” on page 23

n “Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines,” on page 24

n “Replicate Virtual Machines Using Replication Seeds,” on page 25

n “Move a Virtual Machine to a New vSphere Replication Server,” on page 26

Configure Replication for a Single Virtual MachinevSphere Replication can protect individual virtual machines and their virtual disks by replicating them toanother location.

When you configure replication, you set a recovery point objective (RPO) to determine the period of timebetween replications. For example, an RPO of 1 hour seeks to ensure that a virtual machine loses no more than1 hour of data during the recovery. For smaller RPOs, less data is lost in a recovery, but more networkbandwidth is consumed keeping the replica up to date.

Every time that a virtual machine reaches its RPO target, vSphere Replication records approximately 3800bytes of data in the vCenter Server events database. If you set a low RPO period, this can quickly create a largevolume of data in the database. To avoid creating large volumes of data in the vCenter Server events database,limit the number of days that vCenter Server retains event data. See Configure Database Retention Policy inthe vCenter Server and Host Management Guide. Alternatively, set a higher RPO value.

The available quiescing types are determined by the virtual machine's operating system. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2041909 for Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) quiescing support forWindows virtual machines.

You configure replication by selecting all or a subset of the virtual machine's disks. You specify the targetlocation for your virtual machine. You can either replicate the whole virtual disk initially, or use the existingdisk as a replication seed to limit the replication to just the parts of the disk that have changed since the lastreplication.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have deployed and connected vSphere Replication appliances and SRM Server instances ateach site.

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http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc_50/GUID-DD999601-2F41-498D-A577-DDC7C06648EE.html

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2041909

Procedure

1 On the vSphere Client Home page, click VMs and Templates.

2 Browse the inventory to find the single virtual machine to replicate using vSphere Replication.

3 Right-click the virtual machine and click vSphere Replication.

4 Use the RPO slider or enter a value to configure the maximum amount of data that can be lost in the caseof a site failure.

The available range is from 15 minutes to 24 hours.

5 Select a Guest OS Quiescing configuration, if applicable to the source virtual machine operating system.

6 If no target file location is specified or to override the default determined by the datastore mappings, clickBrowse to select a target location for the virtual machine.

Option Description

Place virtual machine in a datastoredirectly

Select a datastore and click OK.

Place virtual machine in a specificfolder in a datastore

Select Specify datastore folder, click Browse to locate the folder, thendouble-click the desired folder.

7 Select a replication destination for each media device for the virtual machine.

The next pages are created dynamically depending on the media devices installed on the virtual machine.They might include multiple virtual drives, all of which you can configure individually. Configurablesettings include whether the virtual drive is replicated, the virtual drive's replication destination, andinformation about how the replicated virtual drive is configured. If the disk is to be replicated, select areplication destination for the disk before proceeding.

8 Accept the automatic assignment of a vSphere Replication server or select a particular server on the targetsite.

9 Review the settings and click Finish to establish replication.

Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual MachinesvSphere Replication can replicate multiple virtual machines.

When you configure replication, you set a recovery point objective (RPO) to determine the period of timebetween replications. For example, an RPO of 1 hour seeks to ensure that a virtual machine loses no more than1 hour of data during the recovery. For smaller RPOs, less data is lost in a recovery, but more networkbandwidth is consumed keeping the replica up to date.

Every time that a virtual machine reaches its RPO target, vSphere Replication records approximately 3800bytes of data in the vCenter Server events database. If you set a low RPO period, this can quickly create a largevolume of data in the database. To avoid creating large volumes of data in the vCenter Server events database,limit the number of days that vCenter Server retains event data. See Configure Database Retention Policy inthe vCenter Server and Host Management Guide. Alternatively, set a higher RPO value.

The available quiescing types are determined by the virtual machine's operating system. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2041909 for Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) quiescing support forWindows virtual machines.

Prerequisites

To replicate virtual machines using vSphere Replication, you must deploy the vSphere Replication applianceat the primary and secondary sites. You must power on the virtual machines to begin replication.

Before you replicate multiple machines, configure datastore mappings in the SRM user interface. You configurethe mappings so that information is available to SRM regarding the target datastore destinations for replication.


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http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc_50/GUID-DD999601-2F41-498D-A577-DDC7C06648EE.html


Procedure

1 On the vSphere Web Client Home page, click VMs and Templates.

2 Select a folder or datacenter in the left pane and click the Virtual Machines tab.

3 Select the virtual machines to replicate using the Ctrl or Shift keys.

4 Right-click the virtual machines and click vSphere Replication.

5 Use the RPO slider or enter a value to configure the maximum amount of data that can be lost in the caseof a site failure.

The available range is from 15 minutes to 24 hours.

6 Select a Guest OS Quiescing configuration, if applicable to the source virtual machine operating system.

7 (Optional) Choose whether to enable Initial copies of .vmdk files have been placed on the targetdatastore.

Select this option if you have physically copied VMDK files to the target site for use as replication seeds.SRM uses datastore mappings and source virtual machine information to find and use initial copies.SRM shows progress and status as it searches for initial copies. You can stop the search process or start itagain.

8 Accept the automatic assignment of a vSphere Replication server or select a particular server on the targetsite.

9 Review the settings and click Finish to establish replication.

10 Select the vSphere Replication view in the SRM interface.

11 Select the remote vSphere Replication site and click the Virtual Machines tab.

If you have configured the datastore mappings for vSphere Replication, the virtual machines synchronizewith the target site.

What to do next

If you did not configure the datastore mappings for vSphere Replication before configuring replication, thevirtual machines appear in red with the status Datastore mappings were not configured. ReconfigurevSphere Replication on the virtual machines manually.

Replicate Virtual Machines Using Replication SeedsYou can make the initial replication of VDMK files more efficient by physically moving files onto a storagedevice. vSphere Replication uses the physically moved files as replication seeds.

You might need to use replication seeds if it is not practical to copy the files over the network because theamount of data is too large, the bandwidth available is too small, or some combination of the two.

When replicating virtual machines, ensure that virtual machines are replicated to subdirectories in datastores.Copied disks work if the transfer method preserves the identity information stored in the VMDK file.

Prerequisites

To replicate a virtual machine using vSphere Replication, you must establish the vSphere Replicationinfrastructure at both sites. The SRM Server instances at each site must be paired, and thevSphere Replication appliances must be paired. If a virtual machine is powered off, replication begins whenthe virtual machine is powered on.

Procedure

1 Use the vSphere Client to connect to a vCenter Server that can manage the virtual machines to be physicallymoved.

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2 Click Datastores.

3 In the left pane, browse to the datastore that contains the files for the virtual machine, select the datastore,and in the right pane, click Browse this datastore.

4 Select the folders for all virtual machines to be physically moved, right-click the selection, and clickDownload.

5 Select a destination to which to copy the files and click OK.

6 Click Yes.

7 After the download finishes, transfer the files to a location on the paired site to upload them.

8 On the vSphere Client Home page at the paired site, click Datastores.

9 In the left pane, browse to the datastore to contain the files for the virtual machine, select the datastore,and in the right pane, click Browse this datastore.

10 Select the folder to contain the copies of the virtual machines, right-click the selection, and click UploadFolder.

11 Select the folder containing the virtual machines, and click OK.

Move a Virtual Machine to a New vSphere Replication ServerAfter establishing vSphere Replication, you can move the virtual machines that you replicate to othervSphere Replication servers. You might do this to complete maintenance tasks on existing servers or to balancethe load on the servers if one server becomes overloaded with virtual machines.

Procedure

1 Select the vSphere Replication view of the SRM client.

2 Select a vSphere Replication server and click the Virtual Machines tab.

3 Right-click a virtual machine on which you have configured replication and select Move to.

4 Select a vSphere Replication server and click Next.

5 Review the information about the planned move, and click Finish.


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Creating Protection Groups 4After you configure a replication solution, you can create protection groups. A protection group is a collectionof virtual machines and templates that you protect together by using SRM.

You include one or more protection groups in each recovery plan. A recovery plan specifies how SRM recoversthe virtual machines in the protection groups that it contains.

You must configure the virtual machines in a protection group so that SRM can add them to thevCenter Server inventory at the recovery site.

You configure virtual machines and create protection groups differently depending on whether you use array-based replication or vSphere Replication. You cannot create protection groups that combine virtual machinesfor which you configured array-based replication with virtual machines for which you configuredvSphere Replication. However, you can include array-based protection groups and vSphere Replicationprotection groups in the same recovery plan.

n About Array-Based Protection Groups and Datastore Groups on page 27When you create a protection group for array-based replication, you specify array information and thenSRM computes the set of virtual machines into a datastore group. Datastore groups contain all the filesof the protected virtual machines.

n Create vSphere Replication Protection Groups on page 30You can create protection groups that contain virtual machines that vSphere Replication protects.

n Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of a Protection Group on page 31When you create a protection group for either vSphere Replication or array-based replication, SRMapplies your inventory mappings to all the virtual machines in the protection group. If you change theinventory mappings, add virtual machines to a protected datastore, or if the virtual machines lose theirprotection, you can reapply the mappings to all unconfigured virtual machines in one step.

About Array-Based Protection Groups and Datastore GroupsWhen you create a protection group for array-based replication, you specify array information and thenSRM computes the set of virtual machines into a datastore group. Datastore groups contain all the files of theprotected virtual machines.

Protection groups consist of virtual machines that use the same datastore group. A datastore group consistsof consistency groups. All of the virtual machines and templates in a consistency group replicate their filestogether, and all the virtual machines in the consistency group recover together. You can have a virtual machinewith files on different datastores. In this case, SRM combines the datastores that contain files for a single virtualmachine to create a datastore group.

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A datastore group is the smallest unit of storage that SRM can recover or test independently. When you createan array-based protection group, it initially contains only those virtual machines that store all of their files onone of the datastore groups that SRM associates with the protection group. A protection group can contain oneor more datastore groups, but a datastore group can belong to only one protection group.

You can add virtual machines to a protection group by creating them on one of the datastores that belong tothe datastore groups that SRM associates with the protection group. You can also add virtual machines to theprotection group by using Storage vMotion to move their storage to one of the datastores in the datastoregroup. You can remove a member from a protection group by moving the virtual machine's files to anotherdatastore.

To configure array-based replication, you must assign each virtual machine to a resource pool, folder, andnetwork that exist at the recovery site. You can specify defaults for these assignments by selecting inventorymappings. SRM applies inventory mappings when you create the protection group. If you do not specifyinventory mappings, you must configure them individually for each member of the protection group. SRMdoes not protect virtual machines that you did not configure or that you incorrectly configured for replication,even if they reside on a protected datastore.

n How SRM Computes Datastore Groups on page 28SRM determines the composition of a datastore group by the set of virtual machines that have files onthe datastores in the group, and by the devices on which those datastores are stored.

n Create Array-Based Protection Groups on page 29You create array-based protection groups to enable the protection of virtual machines in datastore groupsthat you configure to use array-based replication.

n Edit Array-Based Protection Groups on page 30You can change the name and description of an array-based protection group and add or removedatastore groups that are part of the protection group.

How SRM Computes Datastore GroupsSRM determines the composition of a datastore group by the set of virtual machines that have files on thedatastores in the group, and by the devices on which those datastores are stored.

When you use array-based replication, each storage array supports a set of replicated devices. On storage areanetwork (SAN) arrays that use connection protocols such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI, these devices are calledlogical storage units (LUN) and are composed of one or more physical devices. On network file system (NFS)arrays, the replicated devices are typically referred to as volumes. In every pair of replicated storage devices,one device is the replication source and the other is the replication target. Data written to the source device isreplicated to the target device on a schedule controlled by the replication software of the array. When youconfigure SRM to work with an SRA, the replication source is at the protected site and the replication target isat the recovery site.

A datastore provides storage for virtual machine files. By hiding the details of physical storage devices,datastores simplify the allocation of storage capacity and provide a uniform model for meeting the storageneeds of virtual machines. Because any datastore can span multiple devices, SRM must ensure that all devicesbacking the datastore are replicated before it can protect the virtual machines that use that datastore. SRMmust ensure that all devices containing protected virtual machine files are replicated. During a recovery ortest, SRM must handle all such devices together.

To achieve this goal, SRM aggregates datastores into datastore groups to accommodate virtual machines thatspan multiple datastores. SRM regularly checks that datastore groups contain all necessary datastores toprovide protection for the appropriate virtual machines. When necessary, SRM recalculates datastore groups.For example, this can occur when you add new devices to a virtual machine, and you store those devices on adatastore that was not previously a part of the datastore group.


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A datastore group consists of the smallest set of devices required to ensure that if any of a virtual machine'sfiles is stored on a device in the group, all of the virtual machine's files are stored on devices that are part ofthe same group. For example, if a virtual machine has disks on two different datastores, then SRM combinesboth datastores into a datastore group. SRM also combines devices into datastore groups according to setcriteria.

n A virtual machine has files on two different datastores.

n Two virtual machines share a raw disk mapping (RDM) device on a SAN array, as in the case of a Microsoftcluster server (MSCS) cluster.

n Two datastores span extents corresponding to different partitions of the same device.

n A single datastore spans two extents corresponding to partitions of two different devices. The two extentsmust be in a single consistency group and the SRA must report consistency group information from thearray in the device discovery stage. Otherwise, the creation of protection groups based on this datastoreis not possible even though the SRA reports that the extents that make up this datastore are replicated.

n Multiple devices belong to a consistency group. A consistency group is a collection of replicated deviceswhere every state of the target set of devices existed at a specific time as the state of the source set ofdevices. Informally, the devices are replicated together such that when recovery happens using thosedevices, software accessing the targets does not see the data in a state that the software is not prepared todeal with.

Protecting Virtual Machines on VMFS Datastores that Span Multiple LUNs or ExtentsNot all SRAs report consistency group information from the storage array, because not all storage arrayssupport consistency groups. If an SRA reports consistency group information from the array following a devicediscovery command, the LUNs that constitute a multi-extent VMFS datastore must be in the same storagearray consistency group. If the array does not support consistency groups and the SRA does not report anyconsistency group information, SRM cannot protect virtual machines located on on the multi-extent datastore.

Create Array-Based Protection GroupsYou create array-based protection groups to enable the protection of virtual machines in datastore groups thatyou configure to use array-based replication.

SRM discovered the datastore groups when you configured the array managers. SRM replicates to the recoverysite each datastore group that you select.

After you create a protection group, SRM creates placeholder virtual machines and applies inventory mappingsfor each virtual machine in the group. If SRM cannot map a virtual machine to a folder, network, and resourcepool on the recovery site, SRM sets the virtual machine in the Mapping Missing status, and does not create aplaceholder for it.

You can organize protections groups in folders. Different views in the Recovery interface display the namesof the recovery groups, but they do not display the folder names. If you have two protection groups with thesame name in different folders, it might be difficult to tell them apart in some views in the Recovery interface.Consequently, ensure that protection names are unique across all folders. In environments in which not allusers have view privileges for all folders, to be sure of the uniqueness of protection group names, do not placeprotection groups in folders.

When you create protection groups, wait to ensure that the operations finish as expected. Make sure thatSRM creates the protection group and that the protection of the virtual machines in the group is successful.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups, and click Create Protection Group.

2 On the Select a Site and Protection Group Type page, select which site to protect and select Array BasedReplication.

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3 Select an array pair, and click Next.

4 Select a datastore group from the list, and click Next.

When you select a datastore group, the virtual machines in that datastore group appear in the VirtualMachines on the Selected Datastore Group pane, and are marked for inclusion in the protection groupafter you create the protection group.

5 Type a name and optional description for the protection group, and click Next.

6 Click Finish to create the protection group and begin the protection of the specified virtual machines.

You can monitor the progress of the tasks to create the protection group and protect the virtual machinesin the Recent Tasks panel of the vSphere Client.

What to do next

Create a recovery plan with which to associate your protection groups. See “Create a Recovery Plan,” onpage 38.

Edit Array-Based Protection GroupsYou can change the name and description of an array-based protection group and add or remove datastoregroups that are part of the protection group.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups, right-click an array-based protection group and select Edit Protection Group.

2 Click Next.

3 Add or remove datastore groups in the protection group and click Next.

4 Edit the name or description of the protection group and click Next.

5 Click Finish.

Create vSphere Replication Protection GroupsYou can create protection groups that contain virtual machines that vSphere Replication protects.

You can organize protections groups in folders. Different views in the Recovery interface display the namesof the recovery groups, but they do not display the folder names. If you have two protection groups with thesame name in different folders, it might be difficult to tell them apart in some views in the Recovery interface.Consequently, ensure that protection names are unique across all folders. In environments in which not allusers have view privileges for all folders, to be sure of the uniqueness of protection group names, do not placeprotection groups in folders.

When you create a vSphere Replication protection group, you can add to the protection group any virtualmachines that you configured for vSphere Replication.

Prerequisites

Use the vSphere Client to configure vSphere Replication for virtual machines. See “Configure Replication fora Single Virtual Machine,” on page 23 or “Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines,” on page 24.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups and click Create Protection Group.

2 Select the site to be the protected site, select vSphere Replication, and click Next.


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3 Select virtual machines from the list and click Next.

Only virtual machines that you configured for vSphere Replication and that are not already in a protectiongroup appear in the list.

4 Type a name and optional description for the protection group, and click Next.

5 Click Finish to create the protection group.

What to do next

Create a recovery plan with which to associate your protection groups. See “Create a Recovery Plan,” onpage 38.

Edit vSphere Replication Protection GroupsYou can edit a vSphere Replication protection group to change its name and to add virtual machines to thegroup.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups in the left pane and right-click a protection group.

2 Select Edit Protection Group and click Next.

You cannot change the Protected Site or Protection Group Type settings.

3 Add virtual machines to the protection group and click Next.

4 Edit the name or description of the protection group and click Next.

5 Click Finish.

Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of a Protection GroupWhen you create a protection group for either vSphere Replication or array-based replication, SRM appliesyour inventory mappings to all the virtual machines in the protection group. If you change the inventorymappings, add virtual machines to a protected datastore, or if the virtual machines lose their protection, youcan reapply the mappings to all unconfigured virtual machines in one step.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups in the left pane, select a protection group, and click the Virtual Machines tab.

2 Click Configure All.

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Creating, Testing, and RunningRecovery Plans 5

After you configure SRM at the protected and recovery sites, you can create, test, and run a recovery plan.

A recovery plan is like an automated run book. It controls every step of the recovery process, including theorder in which SRM powers on and powers off virtual machines, the network addresses that recovered virtualmachines use, and so on. Recovery plans are flexible and customizable.

A recovery plan includes one or more protection groups. You can include a protection group in more than onerecovery plan. For example, you can create one recovery plan to handle a planned migration of services fromthe protected site to the recovery site, and another plan to handle an unplanned event such as a power failureor natural disaster. Having these different recovery plans allows you to decide how to perform recovery.

Testing a recovery plan runs the plan without affecting services at the protected or recovery sites, apart frompowering off any virtual machines on the recovery site if you configure the recovery plan to do so. You canperform planned migrations from the protected site to the recovery site or disaster recoveries by running arecovery plan.

You can run only one recovery plan at a time to recover a particular protection group. If you simultaneouslytest or run multiple recovery plans that specify the same protection group, only one recovery plan can fail overthe protection group. Other running recovery plans that specify the same protection group report warningsfor that protection group and the virtual machines it contains. The warnings explain that the virtual machineswere recovered, but do not report other protection groups that the other recovery plans cover.

n Testing a Recovery Plan on page 34When you create or modify a recovery plan, test it before you try to use it for planned migration or fordisaster recovery.

n Performing a Planned Migration or Disaster Recovery By Running a Recovery Plan on page 35You can run a recovery plan under planned circumstances to migrate virtual machines from the protectedsite to the recovery site. You can also run a recovery plan under unplanned circumstances if the protectedsite suffers an unforeseen event that might result in data loss.

n Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery Plan on page 36Testing a recovery plan has no lasting effects on either the protected site or the recovery site, but runninga recovery plan has significant effects on both sites.

n How SRM Interacts with DPM and DRS During Recovery on page 36Distributed Power Management (DPM) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) are not mandatory,but SRM supports both services and enabling them provides certain benefits when you use SRM.

n How SRM Interacts with vSphere High Availability on page 37You can use SRM to protect virtual machines on which vSphere High Availability (HA) is enabled.

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n Protecting MSCS and Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines on page 37You can use SRM to protect Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) and fault tolerant virtual machines, withcertain limitations.

n Create, Test, and Run a Recovery Plan on page 37You perform several sets of tasks to create, test, and run a recovery plan.

n Cancel a Test or Recovery on page 41You can cancel a recovery plan test at any time during its run. You can cancel a planned migration ordisaster recovery at certain times during its run.

n Delete a Recovery Plan on page 41You can delete a recovery plan if you do not need it.

Testing a Recovery PlanWhen you create or modify a recovery plan, test it before you try to use it for planned migration or for disasterrecovery.

By testing a recovery plan, you ensure that the virtual machines that the plan protects recover correctly to therecovery site. If you do not test recovery plans, an actual disaster recovery situation might not recover all virtualmachines, resulting in data loss.

Testing a recovery plan exercises nearly every aspect of a recovery plan, although SRM makes severalconcessions to avoid disrupting ongoing operations on the protected and recovery sites. Recovery plans thatsuspend local virtual machines do so for tests as well as for actual recoveries. With this exception, running atest recovery does not disrupt replication or ongoing activities at either site.

You can run test recoveries as often as necessary. You can cancel a recovery plan test at any time.

Permission to test a recovery plan does not include permission to run a recovery plan. Permission to run arecovery plan does not include permission to test a recovery plan. You must assign each permission separately.See “Assign Roles and Permissions,” on page 12.

Test Networks and Datacenter NetworksWhen you test a recovery plan, SRM can create a test network that it uses to connect recovered virtual machines.Creating a test network allows the test to run without potentially disrupting virtual machines in the productionenvironment.

The test network is managed by its own virtual switch, and in most cases recovered virtual machines can usethe network without having to change network properties such as IP address, gateway, and so on. You usethe test network by selecting Auto when you configure the network settings when you run a test.

A datacenter network is a network that typically supports existing virtual machines at the recovery site. Touse it, recovered virtual machines must conform to its network address availability rules. These virtualmachines must use a network address that the network's switch can serve and route, must use the correctgateway and DNS host, and so on. Recovered virtual machines that use DHCP can connect to this networkwithout additional customization. Other virtual machines require IP customization and additional recoveryplan steps to apply the customization.

You must recover any virtual machines that must interact with each other to the same test network. Forexample, if a Web server accesses information on a database, those Web server and database virtual machinesshould recover together to the same network.


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Performing a Planned Migration or Disaster Recovery By Running aRecovery Plan

You can run a recovery plan under planned circumstances to migrate virtual machines from the protected siteto the recovery site. You can also run a recovery plan under unplanned circumstances if the protected sitesuffers an unforeseen event that might result in data loss.

During a planned migration, SRM synchronizes the virtual machines on the recovery site with the virtualmachines on the protected site, then stops replication. SRM attempts to replicate all virtual machines andgracefully shut down the protected machines. If errors occur during a planned migration, the plan stops sothat you can resolve the errors and rerun the plan. You can reprotect the virtual machines after the recovery.

During disaster recoveries, SRM restores virtual machines on the recovery site to their most recent availablestate, according to the recovery point objective (RPO). When you run a recovery plan to perform a disasterrecovery, SRM attempts to shut down the virtual machines on the protected site. If SRM cannot shut down thevirtual machines, SRM still starts the copies at the recovery site, and automatic reprotect might not be possible.

If SRM detects that a datastore on the protected site is in the all paths down (APD) state and is preventing avirtual machine from shutting down, SRM waits for a period before attempting to shut down the virtualmachine again. The APD state is usually transient, so by waiting for a datastore in the APD state to come backonline, SRM can gracefully shut down the protected virtual machines on that datastore.

After SRM completes the final replication, SRM makes changes at both sites that require significant time andeffort to reverse. Because of this time and effort, you must assign the privilege to test a recovery plan and theprivilege to run a recovery plan separately.

Running a Recovery with Forced RecoveryIf the protected site is offline and SRM cannot perform its usual tasks, you can run the recovery with the forcedrecovery option.

Forced recovery is for use in cases where storage arrays fail at the protected site and, as a result, protectedvirtual machines are unmanageable and cannot be shut down, powered off, or unregistered. In such a case,the system state cannot be changed for extended periods. To resolve this situation, you can force failover.Forcing failover does not complete the process of shutting down the virtual machines at the protected site. Asa result, a split-brain scenario occurs, but the recovery might complete more quickly.

Running forced recovery with array-based replication can affect the mirroring between the protected and therecovery storage arrays. After you run forced recovery, you must check that mirroring is set up correctlybetween the protected array and the recovery array before you can perform further replication operations. Ifmirroring is not set up correctly, you must repair the mirroring by using the storage array software.

When you enable forced recovery, any outstanding changes on the protection site are not replicated to therecovery site before the failover sequence begins. Replication of the changes occurs according to the recoverypoint objective (RPO) period of the storage array. If a new virtual machine or template is added on theprotection site and failover is initiated before the storage RPO period has elapsed, the new virtual machine ortemplate does not appear on the replicated datastore and is lost. To avoid losing the new virtual machine ortemplate, wait until the end of the RPO period before running the recovery plan with forced recovery.

After the forced recovery completes and you have verified the mirroring of the storage arrays, you can resolvethe issue that necessitated the forced recovery. After you resolve the underlying issue, run planned migrationon the recovery plan again, resolve any problems that occur, and rerun the plan until it finishes successfully.Running the recovery plan again does not affect the recovered virtual machines at the recovery site.

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Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery PlanTesting a recovery plan has no lasting effects on either the protected site or the recovery site, but running arecovery plan has significant effects on both sites.

You need different privileges when testing and running a recovery plan.

Table 5-1. How Testing a Recovery Plan Differs from Running a Recovery Plan

Area of Difference Test a Recovery Plan Run a Recovery Plan

Required privileges Requires Site RecoveryManager.Recovery Plans.Testpermission.

Requires Site RecoveryManager.Recovery Plans.Recovery.

Effect on virtual machines atprotected site

None SRM shuts down virtual machines inreverse priority order.

Effect on virtual machines atrecovery site

SRM suspends local virtual machinesif the recovery plan requires this.SRM restarts suspended virtualmachines after cleaning up the test.

SRM suspends local virtual machines if therecovery plan requires this.

Effect on replication SRM creates temporary snapshots ofreplicated storage at the recovery site.For array-based replication, SRMrescans the arrays to discover them.

During a planned migration, SRMsynchronizes replicated datastores, thenstops replication, then makes the targetdevices at the recovery site writable.During a disaster recovery, SRM attemptsthe same steps , but if they do not succeed,SRM ignores the errors.

Network If you explicitly assign test networks,SRM connects recovered virtualmachines to a test network. If virtualmachine network assignment is Auto,SRM assigns virtual machines totemporary networks that are notconnected to any physical network.

SRM connects recovered virtual machinesto a datacenter network.

Interruption of recovery plan You can cancel a test at any time. You can cancel the recovery in some cases.

How SRM Interacts with DPM and DRS During RecoveryDistributed Power Management (DPM) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) are not mandatory, butSRM supports both services and enabling them provides certain benefits when you use SRM.

DPM is a VMware feature that manages power consumption by ESX hosts. DRS is a VMware facility thatmanages the assignment of virtual machines to ESX hosts.

SRM temporarily disables DPM for the cluster and ensures that all hosts in it are powered on before recoverybegins. After the recovery or test is complete, SRM reenables DPM for the cluster. The hosts in it are left in therunning state so that DPM can power them down as needed. SRM registers virtual machines across theavailable ESX hosts in a round-robin order, to distribute the potential load as evenly as possible. SRM alwaysuses DRS placement to balance the load intelligently across hosts before it powers on recovered virtualmachines on the recovery site, even if DRS is disabled on the cluster. If DRS is enabled and in fully automaticmode, DRS might move other virtual machines to further balance the load across the cluster while SRM ispowering on the recovered virtual machines. DRS continues to balance all virtual machines across the clusterafter SRM has powered on the recovered virtual machines.


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How SRM Interacts with vSphere High AvailabilityYou can use SRM to protect virtual machines on which vSphere High Availability (HA) is enabled.

HA protects virtual machines from ESXi host failures by restarting virtual machines from hosts that fail onnew hosts within the same site. SRM protects virtual machines against full site failures by restarting the virtualmachines at the recovery site. The key difference between HA and SRM is that HA operates on individualvirtual machines and restarts the virtual machines automatically. SRM operates at the recovery plan level andrequires a user to initiate a recovery manually.

To transfer the HA settings for a virtual machine onto the recovery site, you must set the HA settings on theplaceholder virtual machine before performing recovery, at any time after you have configured the protectionof the virtual machine.

You can replicate HA virtual machines by using array-based replication or vSphere Replication. If HA restartsa protected virtual on another host on the protected site, vSphere Replication will perform a full sync after thevirtual machine restarts.

SRM does not require HA as a prerequisite for protecting virtual machines. Similarly, HA does not requireSRM.

Protecting MSCS and Fault Tolerant Virtual MachinesYou can use SRM to protect Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) and fault tolerant virtual machines, with certainlimitations.

To protect MSCS or fault tolerant virtual machines, the host machines on which the virtual machines run mustmeet certain criteria.

n You must run a fault tolerant virtual machine and its shadow on two separate ESXi Servers.

n You can run a cluster of MSCS virtual machines in the following possible configurations.

Cluster-in-a-box The MSCS virtual machines in the cluster run on a single ESXi Server. Youcan have a maximum of two MSCS virtual machines in the cluster.

Cluster-across-boxes You can spread the MSCS cluster across a maximum of two ESXi Serverinstances. You can protect only one virtual machine node of any MSCScluster on a single ESXi Server instance. You can have multiple MSCS nodevirtual machines running on an ESXi host, as long as they do not participatein the same MSCS cluster. When running MSCS in a cluster-across-boxesconfiguration, SRM only supports two-node MSCS clusters.

Reprotect of MSCS or fault tolerant virtual machines is impossible if you do not enable VMware HighAvailability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). When moving MSCS or fault tolerant virtualmachines across their primary and secondary sites during reprotect, you must enable HA and DRS, setting theaffinity and antiaffinity rules as appropriate.

Create, Test, and Run a Recovery PlanYou perform several sets of tasks to create, test, and run a recovery plan.

Procedure

1 Create a Recovery Plan on page 38You create a recovery plan to establish how SRM recovers virtual machines.


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2 Edit a Recovery Plan on page 38You can edit a recovery plan to change the properties that you specified when you created it. You canedit recovery plans from the protected site or from the recovery site.

3 Suspend Virtual Machines When a Recovery Plan Runs on page 39SRM can suspend virtual machines on the recovery site during a recovery.

4 Test a Recovery Plan on page 39When you test a recovery plan, SRM runs the recovery plan on a test network and a temporary snapshotof replicated data at the recovery site. SRM does not disrupt operations at the protected site.

5 Clean Up After Testing a Recovery Plan on page 40After you test a recovery plan, you can return the protected virtual machines to their initial state andreset the recovery plan to the Ready state by running a cleanup operation.

6 Run a Recovery Plan on page 40When you run a recovery plan, SRM migrates all virtual machines in the recovery plan to the recoverysite. SRM attempts to shut down the corresponding virtual machines on the protected site.

Create a Recovery PlanYou create a recovery plan to establish how SRM recovers virtual machines.

During tests, isolate the virtual machines that SRM recovers. If SRM brings duplicate machines on line andthey begin to interact with unprotected virtual machines in your production network, errors can occur.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans, click the Summary tab, and click Create Recovery Plan.

2 Select the recovery site.

3 Select one or more protection groups for the plan to recover, and click Next.

4 Select a recovery site network to which recovered virtual machines connect during recovery plan tests,and click Next.

You can isolate virtual machine SRM restorations during test recoveries by selecting Auto, which is anisolated network, or by selecting a manually created network that is not connected to other networks.

5 Type a name for the plan in the Recovery Plan Name text box, add an optional description, and clickNext.

6 Review the summary information and click Finish to create the recovery plan.

You can monitor the creation of the plan in the Recent Tasks view.

Edit a Recovery PlanYou can edit a recovery plan to change the properties that you specified when you created it. You can editrecovery plans from the protected site or from the recovery site.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans, right-click a recovery plan, and select Edit Recovery Plan.

2 Click Next.

You cannot change the recovery site.

3 Select one or more protection groups for the plan to recover, and click Next.

4 Select a recovery site network to which recovered virtual machines connect during recovery plan tests,and click Next.


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5 Change the name of the plan in the Recovery Plan Name text box and add an optional description.

6 Click Next.

7 Review the summary information and click Finish to make the specified changes to the recovery plan.

You can monitor the update of the plan in the Recent Tasks view.

Suspend Virtual Machines When a Recovery Plan RunsSRM can suspend virtual machines on the recovery site during a recovery.

Suspending virtual machines on the recovery site is useful in active-active datacenter environments and wherenon-critical workloads run on recovery sites. By suspending any virtual machines that host non-criticalworkloads on the recovery site, SRM frees capacity for the recovered virtual machines.

You can only add virtual machines to suspend at the recovery site. To suspend virtual machines at both theprotected and recovery sites, you must perform a recovery and then reverse protection by performing areprotect operation before you can add virtual machines to suspend at the original protected site. If youconfigure virtual machines to suspend at both sites, the plan starts virtual machines at one site and suspendsthem at the other with each recovery that you run.

Procedure

1 On the recovery site, click Recovery Plans in the left pane and select the recovery plan to edit.

2 Click the Recovery Steps tab and click Add Non-Critical VM.

3 Expand the hierarchical list to select virtual machines on the recovery site to suspend during a recovery.

4 Click OK.

SRM suspends the virtual machines on the recovery site when the recovery plan runs.

Test a Recovery PlanWhen you test a recovery plan, SRM runs the recovery plan on a test network and a temporary snapshot ofreplicated data at the recovery site. SRM does not disrupt operations at the protected site.

Testing a recovery plan runs all the steps in the plan with the exception of powering down virtual machinesat the protected site and forcing devices at the recovery site to assume mastership of replicated data. If the planrequires the suspension of local virtual machines at the recovery site, SRM suspends those virtual machinesduring the test. Running a test of a recovery plan makes no other changes to the production environment ateither site.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane.

2 Select the recovery plan to test, and click Test.

3 (Optional) Select Replicate recent changes to recovery site.

Selecting this option ensures that the recovery site has the latest copy of protected virtual machines, butthe synchronization might take more time.

4 Click Next.

5 Review the test information and click Start.


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6 Click the Recovery Steps tab to monitor the progress of the test and respond to messages.

The Recovery Steps tab displays the progress of individual steps. The Summary tab reports the progressof the overall plan.

NOTE SRM initiates recovery steps in the prescribed order, with one exception. It does not wait for thePrepare Storage step to finish for all protection groups before continuing to the next steps.

What to do next

Run a cleanup operation after the recovery plan test finishes to restore the recovery plan to its original statefrom before the test.

Clean Up After Testing a Recovery PlanAfter you test a recovery plan, you can return the protected virtual machines to their initial state and reset therecovery plan to the Ready state by running a cleanup operation.

SRM performs several cleanup operations after a test.

n Powers off the recovered virtual machines.

n Replaces recovered virtual machines with placeholders, preserving their identity and configurationinformation.

n Cleans up replicated storage snapshots that the recovered virtual machines used during the test.

Prerequisites

Verify that you tested a recovery plan.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select the recovery plan that you tested, and click Cleanup.

2 Review the cleanup information and click Next.

3 Click Start.

4 After the cleanup finishes, if it reports errors, run the cleanup again, selecting the Force Cleanup option.

The Force Cleanup option forces the removal of virtual machines, ignoring any errors, and returns theplan to the Ready state. If necessary, run cleanup several times with the Force Cleanup option, until thecleanup succeeds.

Run a Recovery PlanWhen you run a recovery plan, SRM migrates all virtual machines in the recovery plan to the recovery site.SRM attempts to shut down the corresponding virtual machines on the protected site.

CAUTION A recovery plan makes significant alterations in the configurations of the protected and recoverysites and it stops replication. Do not run any recovery plan that you have not tested. In the case of array-basedreplication, recovered virtual machines and services might need to be supported at the recovery site for a periodof time. Reversing these changes might cost significant time and effort and can result in prolonged servicedowntime.

Prerequisites

To use forced recovery, you must first enable this function. You enable forced recovery by enabling therecovery.forceRecovery setting as described in “Change Recovery Site Settings,” on page 77.


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Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select the recovery plan to run, and click Recovery.

2 Review the information in the confirmation prompt, and select I understand that this process willpermanently alter the virtual machines and infrastructure of both the protected and recoverydatacenters.

3 Select the type of recovery to run.

Option Description

Planned Migration Recovers virtual machines to the recovery site when both sites are running.

Disaster Recovery Recovers virtual machines to the recovery site if the protected siteexperiences a problem.

4 (Optional) Select the Forced Recovery - recovery site operations only check box.

This option is available if you selected Disaster Recovery and you enabled the forced recovery function.

5 Click Next.

6 Review the recovery information and click Start.

7 Click the Recovery Steps tab.

The Recovery Steps tab displays the progress of individual steps. The Recent Tasks area reports theprogress of the overall plan.

Cancel a Test or RecoveryYou can cancel a recovery plan test at any time during its run. You can cancel a planned migration or disasterrecovery at certain times during its run.

When you cancel a test or recovery, SRM does not start steps, and uses certain rules to stop steps that are inprogress.

n Steps that cannot be stopped, such as powering on or waiting for a heartbeat, run to completion beforethe cancellation finishes.

n Steps that add or remove storage devices are undone by cleanup operations if you cancel.

The time it takes to cancel a test or recovery depends on the type and number of steps that are currently inprogress.

Procedure

u To cancel a test or recovery, click Cancel on the recovery plan toolbar.

Delete a Recovery PlanYou can delete a recovery plan if you do not need it.

Deleting a recovery plan does not delete the history of the plan, which you can still view in the All RecoveryPlans > All History tab.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans and select the recovery plan to delete.

2 (Optional) Click the History tab and click Export List to download the history of the plan.

3 Right-click the recovery plan to delete, and select Delete Recovery Plan.


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Reprotecting Virtual Machines After aRecovery 6

After a recovery, the recovery site becomes the new protected site but it is not protected. If the original protectedsite is operational, you can reverse the direction of protection to use the original protected site as a new recoverysite to protect the new protected site.

Manually reestablishing protection in the opposite direction by recreating all protection groups and recoveryplans is time consuming and prone to errors. SRM provides the reprotect function, which is an automated wayto reverse protection.

After SRM performs a recovery, the protected virtual machines start up on the recovery site. Because the formerprotected site might be offline, these virtual machines are not protected. By running reprotect when theprotected site comes back online, you reverse the direction of replication to protect the recovered virtualmachines on the recovery site back to the original protected site.

Reprotect uses the protection information that you established before a recovery to reverse the direction ofprotection. You can complete the reprotect process only after a recovery finishes. If the recovery finishes witherrors, you must fix all errors and rerun the recovery, repeating this process until no errors occur.

You can conduct tests after a reprotect operation completes, to confirm that the new configuration of theprotected and recovery sites is valid.

You can perform reprotect on protection groups that contain virtual machines that are configured for botharray-based replication and for vSphere Replication.

Example: Performing a Reprotect OperationSite A is the protected site and site B is the recovery site. If site A goes offline, SRM recovers the protectedvirtual machines to site B. After the recovery, the protected virtual machines from site A start up on site Bwithout protection.

When site A comes back online, you can run a reprotect operation to protect the recovered virtual machineson site B. Site B becomes the protected site, and site A becomes the recovery site. SRM reverses the directionof replication from site B to site A.

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Figure 6-1. SRM Reprotect Process

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n How SRM Performs Reprotect on page 44The reprotect process involves two stages. SRM reverses the direction of protection, then forces asynchronization of the storage from the new protected site to the new recovery site.

n Preconditions for Performing Reprotect on page 45You can perform reprotect only if you meet certain preconditions.

n Reprotect Virtual Machines on page 45Reprotect results in the reconfiguration of SRM protection groups and recovery plans to work in theopposite direction. With reprotect, you can recover virtual machines back to the original site after arecovery.

n Reprotect States on page 45The reprotect process passes through several states that you can observe in the recovery plan in theSRM plug-in in the vSphere Client.

How SRM Performs ReprotectThe reprotect process involves two stages. SRM reverses the direction of protection, then forces asynchronization of the storage from the new protected site to the new recovery site.

When you initiate the reprotect process, SRM instructs the underlying storage arrays or vSphere Replicationto reverse the direction of replication. After reversing the replication, SRM creates placeholder virtual machinesat the new recovery site, which was the original protected site before the reprotect.

When creating placeholder virtual machines on the new protected site, SRM uses the location of the originalprotected virtual machine to determine where to create the placeholder virtual machine. SRM uses the identityof the original protected virtual machine to create the placeholder and any subsequent recovered virtualmachines. If the original protected virtual machines are no longer available, SRM uses the inventory mappingsfrom the original recovery site to the original protected site to determine the resource pools and folders for theplaceholder virtual machines. You must configure inventory mappings on both sites before running reprotect,or reprotect might fail.

When performing reprotect with array-based replication, SRM places the files for the placeholder virtualmachines in the placeholder datastore for the original protected site, not in the datastore that held the originalprotected virtual machines.

Forcing synchronization of data from the new protection site to the new recovery site ensures that the recoverysite has a current copy of the protected virtual machines running at the protection site. Forcing thissynchronization ensures that recovery is possible immediately after the reprotect finishes.

When performing reprotect with vSphere Replication, SRM uses the original VMDK files as initial copiesduring synchronization. The full synchronization that appears in the recovery steps mostly performschecksums, and only a small amount of data is transferred through the network.


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Preconditions for Performing ReprotectYou can perform reprotect only if you meet certain preconditions.

You can perform reprotect on protection groups that contain virtual machines that are configured for botharray-based replication and for vSphere Replication.

Before you can run reprotect, you must satisfy the preconditions.

1 Run a planned migration and make sure that all steps of the recovery plan finish successfully. If errorsoccur during the recovery, resolve the problems that caused the errors and rerun the recovery. When yourerun a recovery, operations that succeeded previously are skipped. For example, successfully recoveredvirtual machines are not recovered again and continue running without interruption.

2 The original protected site must be available. The vCenter Server instances, ESXi Servers, SRM Serverinstances, and corresponding databases must all be recoverable.

3 If you performed a disaster recovery operation, you must perform a planned migration when both sitesare running again. If errors occur during the attempted planned migration, you must resolve the errorsand rerun the planned migration until it succeeds.

Reprotect is not available under certain circumstances.

n Recovery plans cannot finish without errors. For reprotect to be available, all steps of the recovery planmust finish successfully.

n You cannot restore the original site, for example if a physical catastrophe destroys the original site. Tounpair and recreate the pairing of protected and recovery sites, both sites must be available. If you cannotrestore the original protected site, you must reinstall SRM on the protected and recovery sites.

Reprotect Virtual MachinesReprotect results in the reconfiguration of SRM protection groups and recovery plans to work in the oppositedirection. With reprotect, you can recover virtual machines back to the original site after a recovery.

Prerequisites

See “Preconditions for Performing Reprotect,” on page 45.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select a recovery plan, and click Reprotect.

2 Select the check box to confirm that you understand that the reprotect operation is irreversible.

3 Review the reprotect information and click Start.

4 Click the Recovery Steps tab to monitor the progress of the reprotect operation.

Certain steps do not apply to all virtual machines. For example, virtual machines that you configured forarray-based replication appear under Configure VR Replication, even though this step does not performany actions on them. These virtual machines are marked Not Applicable when the step runs.

SRM reverses the recovery site and protected sites. SRM creates placeholder copies of virtual machines fromthe new protected site at the new recovery site.

Reprotect StatesThe reprotect process passes through several states that you can observe in the recovery plan in the SRM plug-in in the vSphere Client.

If reprotect fails, or succeeds partially, you can perform remedial actions to complete the reprotect.

Chapter 6 Reprotecting Virtual Machines After a Recovery

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Table 6-1. Reprotect States

State Description Remedial Action

Reprotect In Progress SRM is running reprotect. None

Partial Reprotect Occurs if multiple recoveryplans share the same protectiongroups and reprotect succeedsfor some groups in some plans,but not for others.

Run reprotect again on the partially reprotectedplans.

Incomplete Reprotect Occurs because of failuresduring reprotect. For example,this state might occur because ofa failure to synchronize storageor a failure to create placeholdervirtual machines.

n If a reprotect operation fails to synchronizestorage, make sure that sites are connected,review the reprotect progress in the vSphereClient , and start the reprotect task again. Ifreprotect still won't complete, run the reprotecttask with the Force Cleanup option.

n If SRM fails to create placeholder virtualmachines, recoveries are still possible. Reviewthe reprotect steps in the vSphere Client, resolveany open issues, and start the reprotect taskagain.

Reprotect Interrupted Occurs if one of the SRM Serversstops unexpectedly during thereprotect process.

Ensure that both SRM Servers are running and startthe reprotect task again.


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Restoring the Pre-Recovery SiteConfiguration By Performing Failback 7

To restore the original configuration of the protected and recovery sites after a recovery, you can perform asequence of optional procedures known as failback.

After a planned migration or a disaster recovery, the former recovery site becomes the protected site.Immediately after the recovery, the new protected site has no recovery site to which to recover. If you runreprotect, the new protected site is protected by the original protection site, reversing the original direction ofprotection. To restore the configuration of the protected and recovery sites to their inital configuration beforethe recovery, you perform failback.

To perform failback, you run a sequence of reprotect and planned migration operations.

1 Perform a reprotect. The recovery site becomes the protected site. The former protected site becomes therecovery site.

2 Perform a planned migration to shut down the virtual machines on the protected site and start up thevirtual machines on the recovery site. To avoid interruptions in virtual machine availability, you mightwant to run a test before you complete the planned migration. If the test identifies errors, you can resolvethem before you perform the planned migration.

3 Perform a second reprotect, to revert the protected and recovery sites to their original configuration beforethe recovery.

You can configure and run a failback when you are ready to restore services to the original protected site, afteryou have brought it back online after an incident.

Example: Performing a Failback OperationSite A is the protected site and B is the recovery site. A recovery occurs, migrating the virtual machines fromsite A to site B. To restore site A as the protected site, you perform a failback.

n Perform a reprotect. Site B, the former recovery site, becomes the protected site. SRM uses the protectioninformation to establish the protection of site B. Site A becomes the recovery site.

n Perform a planned migration to recover the protected virtual machines on site B to site A.

n Perform a second reprotect. Site A becomes the protected site and site B becomes the recovery site.

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Figure 7-1. SRM Failback Process

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4. Reprotect again– original protected andrecovery site configuration restored

Perform a FailbackAfter SRM performs a recovery, you can perform a failback to restore the original configuration of the protectedand recovery sites.

To aid comprehension, the original protected site from before a recovery is site A. The original recovery siteis site B. After a recovery from site A to site B, the recovered virtual machines are running on site B withoutprotection.

Prerequisites

Verify that the following conditions are in place.

n You have performed a recovery, either as part of a planned migration or as part of a disaster recovery.

n The original protected site, site A, is running.

n If you performed a disaster recovery, you must perform a planned migration recovery when the hosts anddatastores on the protected site, site A, are running again.

n You did not run reprotect since the recovery.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select a recovery plan, and click Reprotect.

2 Select the check box to confirm that you understand that the reprotect operation is irreversible.

3 Review the reprotect information and click Start.

4 Monitor the reprotect operation on the Recovery Steps tab until it finishes.


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5 (Optional) If necessary, rerun reprotect until it finishes without errors.

At the end of the reprotect operation, SRM has reversed replication, so that the original recovery site, siteB, is now the protected site.

6 (Optional) Click Test and follow the prompts to test the recovery plan.

Testing the recovery plan verifies that the recovery plan works after the reprotect operation.

7 Click Recovery to run the recovery plan as a planned migration.

8 Review the information in the confirmation prompt, and select I understand that this process willpermanently alter the virtual machines and infrastructure of both the protected and recoverydatacenters.

9 Select Planned Migration, click Next, and click Start.

10 Monitor the planned migration operation on the Recovery Steps tab until it finishes.

The planned migration shuts down the virtual machines on the new protected site, site B, and starts upthe virtual machines on the new recovery site, site A. If necessary, rerun the planned migration until itfinishes without errors.

When the planned migration completes, the virtual machines are running on the original protected site,site A, but the virtual machines are not protected. The virtual machines on the original recovery site, siteB, are powered off.

11 Click Reprotect and follow the instructions of the wizard to perform a second reprotect operation.

Running reprotect again reestablishes protection in the original direction from before the recovery.

You restored the protected and recovery sites to their original configuration before the recovery. The protectedsite is site A, and the recovery site is site B.

Chapter 7 Restoring the Pre-Recovery Site Configuration By Performing Failback

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Customizing a Recovery Plan 8You can customize a recovery plan to run commands, display messages that require a response when the planruns, and change the recovery priority of protected virtual machines.

A simple recovery plan, that specifies only a test network to which the recovered virtual machines connect andresponse times that the test should expect, can provide an effective way to test an SRM configuration. Mostrecovery plans require configuration for use in production. For example, a recovery plan for an emergency atthe protected site might be different from a recovery plan for the planned migration of services from one siteto another.

NOTE A recovery plan always reflects the current state of the protection groups that it recovers. If any membersof a protection group show a status other than OK, you must correct the problems before you can make anychanges to the recovery plan.

n Recovery Plan Steps on page 51A recovery plan runs a series of steps that must be performed in a specific order. You cannot change theorder or purpose of the steps, but you can insert your own steps that display messages and runcommands.

n Specify the Recovery Priority of a Virtual Machine on page 52By default, SRM sets all virtual machines in a new recovery plan to recovery priority level 3. You canincrease or decrease the recovery priority of a virtual machine.

n Creating Custom Recovery Steps on page 52You can create custom recovery steps that run commands or present messages to the user during arecovery.

n Customize the Recovery of an Individual Virtual Machine on page 57You can configure a virtual machine in a recovery plan to use a prescribed customization specification,or to run message or command steps when it is recovered.

Recovery Plan StepsA recovery plan runs a series of steps that must be performed in a specific order. You cannot change the orderor purpose of the steps, but you can insert your own steps that display messages and run commands.

SRM runs different recovery plan steps in different ways.

n Some steps run during all recoveries.

n Some steps run only during test recoveries.

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n Some steps are always skipped during test recoveries.

Understanding recovery steps, their order, and the context in which they run is important when you customizea recovery plan.

Recovery OrderWhen you run a recovery plan, it starts by powering off the virtual machines at the protected site. SRM powersoff virtual machines according to the priority that you set, with high-priority machines powering off last.SRM omits this step when you test a recovery plan.

SRM powers on groups of virtual machines on the recovery site according to the priority that you set. Beforea priority group starts, all of the virtual machines in the next-higher priority group must recover or fail torecover. If dependencies exist between virtual machines in the same priority group, SRM first powers on thevirtual machines on which other virtual machines depend. If SRM can meet the virtual machine dependencies,SRM attempts to power on as many virtual machines in parallel as vCenter Server supports.

Recovery Plan Timeouts and PausesSeveral types of timeouts can occur during the running of recovery plan steps. Timeouts cause the plan topause for a specified interval to allow the step time to finish.

Message steps force the plan to pause until the user acknowledges the message. Before you add a message stepto a recovery plan, make sure that it is necessary. Before you test or run a recovery plan that contains messagesteps, make sure that a user can monitor the progress of the plan and respond to the messages as needed.

Specify the Recovery Priority of a Virtual MachineBy default, SRM sets all virtual machines in a new recovery plan to recovery priority level 3. You can increaseor decrease the recovery priority of a virtual machine.

If you change the priority of a virtual machine, SRM applies the new priority to all recovery plans that containthis virtual machine.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select a recovery plan, and click the Virtual Machines tab or theRecovery Steps tab.

2 Right-click a virtual machine and select Priority.

3 Select a new priority for the virtual machine.

The highest priority is 1. The lowest priority is 5.

4 Click Yes to confirm the change of priority.

Creating Custom Recovery StepsYou can create custom recovery steps that run commands or present messages to the user during a recovery.

SRM can run custom steps either on the SRM Server or in a virtual machine that is part of the recovery plan.

During reprotect, SRM preserves all custom recovery steps in the recovery plan. If you perform a recovery ortest after a reprotect, custom recovery steps are run on the new recovery site, which was the original protectedsite.

After reprotect, you can usually use custom recovery steps that show messages directly without modifications.You might need to modify some custom recovery steps after a reprotect, if these steps run commands thatcontain site-specific information, such as network configurations.


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n Types of Custom Recovery Steps on page 53You can create different types of custom recovery steps to include in recovery plans.

n How SRM Handles Custom Recovery Steps on page 54SRM handles custom recovery steps differently based on the type of recovery step.

n Create Top-Level Command Steps on page 54You can add top-level commands anywhere in the recovery plan.

n Create Top-Level Message Prompt Steps on page 55You can add top-level message prompts anywhere in the recovery plan.

n Create Command Steps for Individual Virtual Machines on page 55You can configure custom recovery steps to perform tasks for a virtual machine before and after SRMpowers them on.

n Create Message Prompt Steps for Individual Virtual Machines on page 56You can configure custom recovery steps to prompt users to perform tasks for a virtual machine beforeand after the virtual machine powers on.

n Guidelines for Writing Command Steps on page 56All batch files or commands for custom recovery steps that you add to a recovery plan must meet certainrequirements.

n Environment Variables for Command Steps on page 56SRM makes environment variables available that you can use in commands for custom recovery steps.

Types of Custom Recovery StepsYou can create different types of custom recovery steps to include in recovery plans.

Custom recovery steps are either command recovery steps or message prompt steps.

Command Recovery StepsCommand recovery steps run commands that you write. Command recovery steps run in their own processes.Command recovery steps contain either top-level commands or per-virtual machine commands.

Top-Level Commands Run on the SRM Server. For example, you might use these commands to poweron physical devices or to redirect network traffic.

Per-Virtual MachineCommands

SRM associates per-virtual machine commands with newly recovered virtualmachines during the recovery process. You can use these commands tocomplete configuration tasks after powering on a virtual machine. You can runthe commands either before or after powering on a virtual machine.Commands that you configure to run after the virtual machine is powered oncan run either on the SRM Server or in the newly recovered virtual machine.

Message Prompt Recovery StepsPresent a message in the SRM user interface during the recovery. You can use this message to pause the recoveryand provide information to the user running the recovery plan. For example, the message can instruct usersto perform a manual recovery task or to verify steps. The only action users can take in direct response to aprompt is to click OK, which dismisses the message and allows the recovery to continue.

Chapter 8 Customizing a Recovery Plan

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How SRM Handles Custom Recovery StepsSRM handles custom recovery steps differently based on the type of recovery step.

SRM attempts to complete all custom recovery steps, but some command recovery steps might fail to finish.

Command Recovery StepsBy default, SRM waits for 5 minutes for command recovery steps to finish. You can configure the timeout foreach command. If a command finishes within this timeout period, the next recovery step in the recovery planruns. How SRM handles failures of custom commands depends on the type of command.

Type of Command Description

Top-levelcommands

If a recovery step fails, SRM logs the failure and shows a warning on the Recovery Steps tab.Subsequent custom recovery steps continue to run.

Per-virtual machinecommands

Run in batches either before or after a virtual machine powers on. If a command fails, the remainingper-virtual machine commands in the batch do not run. For example, if you run five commands forbefore power on and five commands for after power on, and the third command in the batch beforepower on fails, the remaining two commands for before power on do not run. SRM does not poweron the virtual machine and does run commands for after power on.

Message Prompt Recovery StepsCustom recovery steps that issue a message prompt cannot fail. The recovery plan pauses until the userdismisses the prompt by clicking OK.

Create Top-Level Command StepsYou can add top-level commands anywhere in the recovery plan.

Prerequisites

You have a recovery plan to which to add custom steps.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, and select a recovery plan.


3 Right-click a step before or after which to add a custom step, and select Add Step.

4 Select Command on SRM Server.

5 In the Name text box, type a name for the step.

6 In the Content text box, type the commands for the step to run.

7 (Optional) Modify the Timeout setting.

8 Select where in the sequence of steps to insert the new step.

n Before selected step

n After selected step

9 Click OK to add the step to the recovery plan.


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Create Top-Level Message Prompt StepsYou can add top-level message prompts anywhere in the recovery plan.

Prerequisites


Procedure



3 Right-click a step before or after which to add a custom step, and select Add Step.

4 Select Prompt.


6 In the Content text box, type the prompt message.

7 Select where in the sequence of steps to insert the new step.

n Before selected step

n After selected step


Create Command Steps for Individual Virtual MachinesYou can configure custom recovery steps to perform tasks for a virtual machine before and after SRM powersthem on.

SRM associates command steps with a protected or recovered virtual machine in the same way ascustomization information. If different recovery plans contain the same virtual machine, the commands andprompts are the same.

Prerequisites


Procedure


2 Click the Virtual Machines tab.

3 Right-click a virtual machine and click Configure.

4 Select Pre-Power On Steps or Post Power On Steps in the left pane, and click Add.

5 Select Command on SRM Server or Command on Recovered VM.


7 In the Content text box, type the commands for the step to run.

8 (Optional) Modify the Timeout setting.


10 Click OK to reconfigure the virtual machine to run the command before or after it powers on.


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Create Message Prompt Steps for Individual Virtual MachinesYou can configure custom recovery steps to prompt users to perform tasks for a virtual machine before andafter the virtual machine powers on.

SRM associates message prompt steps with a protected virtual machine in the same way as customizationinformation. If different recovery plans contain the same virtual machine, the commands and prompts are thesame.

Prerequisites


Procedure


2 Click the Virtual Machines tab.

3 Right-click a virtual machine and click Configure.

4 Select Pre-Power On Steps or Post Power On Steps in the left pane, and click Add.

5 Select Prompt.


7 In the Content text box, type the prompt message.


9 Click OK to reconfigure the virtual machine to prompt the user with a message before or after it powerson.

Guidelines for Writing Command StepsAll batch files or commands for custom recovery steps that you add to a recovery plan must meet certainrequirements.

When you create a command step to add to a recovery plan, make sure that it takes into account theenvironment in which it must run. Errors in a command step affect the integrity of a recovery plan. Test thecommand on the recovery site SRM Server before you add it to the plan.

n You must start the Windows command shell using its full path on the local host. For example, to run ascript located in c:\alarmscript.bat, use the following command line:

c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c c:\alarmscript.bat

n You must install batch files and commands on the SRM Server at the recovery site.

n Batch files and commands must finish within 300 seconds. Otherwise, the recovery plan terminates withan error. To change this limit, see “Change Recovery Site Settings,” on page 77.

n Batch files or commands that produce output that contains characters with ASCII values greater than 127must use UTF-8 encoding. SRM records only the final 4KB of script output in log files and in the recoveryhistory. Scripts that produce more output should redirect the output to a file rather than sending it to thestandard output to be logged.

Environment Variables for Command StepsSRM makes environment variables available that you can use in commands for custom recovery steps.

Command steps run with the identity of the LocalSystem account on the SRM Server host at the recovery site.When a command step runs, SRM makes environment variables available for it to use.


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Table 8-1. Environment Variables Available to All Command Steps

Name Value Example

VMware_RecoveryName Name of the recovery plan that isrunning.

Plan A

VMware_RecoveryMode Recovery mode. Test or recovery

VMware_VC_Host Host name of the vCenter Server at therecovery site.

vc_hostname.example.com

VMware_VC_Port Network port used to contactvCenter Server.

443

SRM makes other environment variables for command steps to use if the command step is running on arecovered virtual machine.

Table 8-2. Environment Variables Available to Command Steps Running on Recovered Virtual Machines

Name Value Example

VMware_VM_Uuid UUID used by vCenter to uniquely identifythis virtual machine.

4212145a-eeae-a02c-e525-ebba70b0d4f3

VMware_VM_Name Name of this virtual machine, as set at theprotected site.

My New Virtual Machine

VMware_VM_Ref Managed object ID of the virtual machine. vm-1199

VMware_VM_GuestName Name of the guest OS as defined by the VIMAPI.

otherGuest

VMware_VM_GuestIp IP address of the virtual machine, if known. 192.168.0.103

VMware_VM_Path Path to this VMDK of this virtual machine. [datastore-123] jquser-vm2/jquser-vm2.vmdk

Customize the Recovery of an Individual Virtual MachineYou can configure a virtual machine in a recovery plan to use a prescribed customization specification, or torun message or command steps when it is recovered.

Message and command steps added to the recovery steps for a virtual machine operate like message andcommand steps added to a recovery plan. See “Guidelines for Writing Command Steps,” on page 56.

Procedure

1 Connect the vSphere Client to the vCenter Server instance on the recovery site.

2 In the SRM interface, click Recovery Plans in the left pane, and click the plan to customize.

3 Click the Recovery Steps tab or the Virtual Machines tab.

4 Right-click a virtual machine in the list, and click Configure.

5 Click IP Settings.

You can also type a description of the specification you apply. Only the IP properties from the selectedspecification are applied. If you used the dr-ip-customizer.exe command to customize virtual machinesin the recovery plan, you do not need to specify that customization here.

6 Select the appropriate entry to add a message or command step that runs before the machine is poweredon.

7 Select the appropriate entry to add a message or command step that runs after the machine is poweredon.


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The customizations that you specify become associated with the protected virtual machine. As a result, thesettings are shared between all recovery plans that apply to this virtual machine.

NOTE If you remove the protection of a virtual machine, all recovery customizations are lost.


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Customizing IP Properties for VirtualMachines 9

You can customize IP settings for virtual machines for the protected site and the recovery site. Customizingthe IP properties of a virtual machine overrides the default IP settings when the recovered virtual machinestarts at the destination site.

If you do not customize the IP properties of a virtual machine, SRM uses the IP settings for the recovery siteduring a recovery or a test from the protection site to the recovery site. SRM uses the IP settings for theprotection site after reprotect during the recovery or a test from the original recovery site to the originalprotection site.

SRM supports different types of IP customization.

n Use IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

n Configure different IP customizations for each site.

n Use DHCP, Static IPv4, or Static IPv6 addresses.

n Customize addresses of Windows and Linux virtual machines.

n Customize multiple NICs for each virtual machine.

See the Compatibility Matrixes for vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 for the list of guest operating systemsfor which SRM supports IP customization.

You associate customization settings with protected virtual machines. As a result, if the same protected virtualmachine is a part of multiple recovery plans, then all recovery plans use a single copy of the customizationsettings. You configure IP customization as part of the process of configuring the recovery properties of avirtual machine. If you do not customize a NIC on one site, the NIC uses the IP settings from the other site.

You can apply IP customizations to individual or to multiple virtual machines.

If you configure IP customization on virtual machines, SRM adds recovery steps to those virtual machines.

Guest OS Startup The Guest Startup process happens in parallel for all virtual machines for whichyou configure IP customization.

Customize IP SRM pushes the IP customizations to the virtual machine.

Guest OS Shutdown SRM shuts down the virtual machine and reboots it to ensure that the changestake effect and that the guest operating system services apply them when thevirtual machine restarts.

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After the IP customization process finishes, virtual machines power on according to the priority groups andany dependencies that you set. The power on process happens immediately before the Wait for VMToolsprocess for each virtual machine.

NOTE To customize the IP properties of a virtual machine, you must install VMware Tools or the VMwareOperating System Specific Packages (OSP) on the virtual machine. See http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html.

n Customize IP Properties For an Individual Virtual Machine on page 60You can customize IP settings for individual virtual machines for both the protected site and the recoverysite.

n Report IP Address Mappings for a Protection Group on page 61The IP address map reporter generates an XML document describing the IP properties of protectedvirtual machines and their placeholders, grouped by site and recovery plan. This information can helpyou understand the network requirements of a recovery plan.

n Customizing IP Properties for Multiple Virtual Machines on page 61Manually configuring IP settings for many virtual machines at a recovery site can be time consumingand can lead to errors in configuration. To facilitate the configuration process for multiple virtualmachines, SRM includes the DR IP Customizer tool.

Customize IP Properties For an Individual Virtual MachineYou can customize IP settings for individual virtual machines for both the protected site and the recovery site.

Procedure

1 Click Recovery Plans, and click the plan that you want to customize.

2 Click the Virtual Machines tab, right-click a virtual machine, and select Configure.

3 Select the NIC for which you will modify IP Settings.

4 To customize settings, enable the Customize IP settings during recovery option.

5 Click Configure Protection or Configure Recovery, depending on which set of IP settings you want toconfigure.

6 Click the General tab to configure settings.

a Choose the type of addressing to be used.

Available options include DHCP, static IPv4, or static IPv6.

b For static addresses, enter an IP address, subnet information, and gateway server addresses.

Alternately, if the virtual machine is powered on and has VMware Tools installed, you can clickUpdate to import current settings configured on the virtual machine.

7 Click the DNS tab to configure DNS settings.

a Choose how DNS servers are found.

You can use DHCP to find DNS servers or you can specify primary and alternate DNS servers.

b Enter a DNS suffix and click Add or select an existing DNS suffix and click Remove, Move Up, orMove Down.

8 Click the WINS tab to enter primary and secondary WINS addresses.

The WINS tab is available only when configuring DHCP or IPv4 addresses for Windows virtual machines.


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http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

9 Repeat Step 5 through Step 8 to configure recovery or protection settings, if required.

For example, if you configured IP settings for the protected site, you might want to configure settings forthe recovery site.

10 Repeat the configuration process for other NICs, as required, beginning by choosing another NIC asdescribed in Step 3.

Report IP Address Mappings for a Protection GroupThe IP address map reporter generates an XML document describing the IP properties of protected virtualmachines and their placeholders, grouped by site and recovery plan. This information can help you understandthe network requirements of a recovery plan.

Because the IP address mapping reporter must connect to both sites, you can run the command at either site.You are prompted to supply the vCenter login credentials for each site when the command runs.

Procedure

1 Open a command shell on the SRM Server host at either the protected or recovery site.

2 Change to the C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\bin directory.

3 Run the dr-ip-reporter.exe command, as shown in this example.

dr-ip-reporter.exe -cfg ..\config\vmware-dr.xml -out c:\tmp\report.xml

To restrict the list of networks to just the ones required by a specific recovery plan, include the -planoption on the command line, as shown in this example.

dr-ip-reporter.exe -cfg ..\config\vmware-dr.xml -out c:\tmp\report.xml -plan Plan-B

NOTE The command normally asks you to verify the thumbprints presented by the certificates at eachsite. You can suppress the verification request by including the -I option.

Customizing IP Properties for Multiple Virtual MachinesManually configuring IP settings for many virtual machines at a recovery site can be time consuming and canlead to errors in configuration. To facilitate the configuration process for multiple virtual machines, SRMincludes the DR IP Customizer tool.

You use the DR IP Customizer tool to apply customized networking settings to virtual machines when theystart on the recovery site. You provide the customized settings to the DR IP Customizer tool in a comma-separated value (CSV) file.

Rather than manually creating a CSV file, you can use the DR IP Customizer tool to export a CSV file thatcontains information about the networking configurations of the protected virtual machines. You can use thisfile as a template for the CSV file to apply on the recovery site by customizing the values in the file.

1 Run DR IP Customizer to generate a CSV file that contains the networking information for the protectedvirtual machines.

2 Modify the generated CSV file with networking information that is relevant to the recovery site.

3 Run DR IP Customizer again to apply the CSV with the modified networking configurations to applywhen the virtual machines start up on the recovery site.

You can run the DR IP Customizer tool on either the protected site or on the recovery site. Virtual machine IDsfor protected virtual machines are different at each site, so whichever site you use when you run the DR IPCustomizer tool to generate the CSV file, you must use the same site when you run DR IP Customizer againto apply the settings.

Chapter 9 Customizing IP Properties for Virtual Machines

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You can customize the IP settings for the protected and the recovery sites so that SRM uses the correctconfigurations during reprotect operations.

See the Compatibility Matrixes for vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 for the list of guest operating systemsfor which SRM supports IP customization.

n Syntax of the DR IP Customizer Tool on page 62The DR IP Customizer tool includes options that you can use to gather networking information aboutthe virtual machines that SRM protects. You can also use the options to apply customizations to virtualmachines when they start up on the recovery site.

n Structure of the DR IP Customizer CSV File on page 63The DR IP Customizer comma-separated value (CSV) file consists of a header row that defines themeaning of each column in the file, and one or more rows for each placeholder virtual machine in arecovery plan.

n Modifying the DR IP Customizer CSV File on page 66You modify the DR IP Customizer comma-separated value (CSV) file to apply customized networkingsettings to virtual machines when they start on the recovery site.

n Run DR IP Customizer to Customize IP Properties for Multiple Virtual Machines on page 71You can use the DR IP Customizer tool to customize the IP properties for multiple virtual machines thatSRM protects.

Syntax of the DR IP Customizer ToolThe DR IP Customizer tool includes options that you can use to gather networking information about thevirtual machines that SRM protects. You can also use the options to apply customizations to virtual machineswhen they start up on the recovery site.

You find the dr-ip-customizer.exe executable file in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter SiteRecovery Manager\bin on the SRM Server host machine. When you run dr-ip-customizer.exe, you specifydifferent options depending on whether you are generating or applying a comma-separated value (CSV) file.

dr-ip-customizer.exe

--cfg SRM Server configuration XML

--cmd apply/drop/generate

[--csv Name of existing CSV File]

[--out Name of new CSV file to generate]

[--vc vCenter Server address]

[--ignore-thumbprint]

[--extra-dns-columns]

[--verbose]

You can run the DR IP Customizer tool on either the protected site or on the recovery site. Virtual machine IDsfor protected virtual machines are different at each site, so whichever site you use when you run the DR IPCustomizer tool to generate the CSV file, you must use the same site when you run DR IP Customizer againto apply the settings.

Some of the options that the DR IP Customizer tool provides are mandatory, others are optional.

Table 9-1. DR IP Customizer Options

Option Description Mandatory

-h [ --help ] Displays usage information about dr-ip-customizer.exe.

No

--cfg arg Path to the XML configuration file ofthe SRM Server, vmware-dr.xml file.

Yes


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Table 9-1. DR IP Customizer Options (Continued)

Option Description Mandatory

--cmd arg You specify different commands torun DR IP Customizer in differentmodes.n The apply command applies the

network customization settingsfrom an existing CSV file to therecovery plans on theSRM Server instances.

n The generate commandgenerates a basic CSV file for allvirtual machines that SRMprotects for a vCenter Serverinstance.

n The drop command removes therecovery settings from virtualmachines specified by the inputCSV file.

Always provide the samevCenter Server instance for the applyand drop commands as the one thatyou used to generate the CSV file.

Yes

--csv arg Path to the CSV file to use as input. Yes, when running the apply anddrop commands.

-o [ --out ] arg Name of the new CSV output file thatthe generate command creates. If youprovide the name of an existing CSVfile, the generate commandoverwrites its current contents.

Yes, when you run the generatecommand.

--vc arg vCenter Server host name. Virtualmachine IDs for the protected virtualmachines are different at each site. Usethe same vCenter Server instancewhen you generate the CSV file andwhen you apply it.

Yes

-i [ --ignore-thumbprint ] Ignore the vCenter Server thumbprintconfirmation prompt.

No

-e [ --extra-dns-columns ] Obsolete. No

-v [ --verbose ] Enable verbose output. You caninclude a --verbose option on anydr-ip-customizer.exe commandline to log additional diagnosticmessages.

No

Structure of the DR IP Customizer CSV FileThe DR IP Customizer comma-separated value (CSV) file consists of a header row that defines the meaning ofeach column in the file, and one or more rows for each placeholder virtual machine in a recovery plan.

Configuring IP settings for both sites is optional. You can provide settings for only the protected site, or settingsfor only the recovery site, or settings for both sites. You can configure each site to use a different set of networkadapters in a completely different way.

Certain fields in the CSV file must be completed for every row. Other fields can be left blank if no customizedsetting is required.


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Table 9-2. Columns of the DR IP Customizer CSV File

Column Description Customization Rules

VM ID Unique identifier that DR IPCustomizer uses to collect informationfrom multiple rows for application toa single virtual machine. This ID isinternal to DR IP Customizer and isnot the same as the virtual machine IDthat vCenter Server uses.

Not customizable. Cannot be blank.

VM Name The human-readable name of thevirtual machine as it appears in thevCenter Server inventory.

Not customizable. Cannot be blank.

vCenter Server Address of a vCenter Server instanceon either the protected site or therecovery site. You set the IP settings fora virtual machine on each site in thevCenter Server column.

Not customizable. Cannot be blank.This column can contain bothvCenter Server instances. EachvCenter Server instance requires itsown row. You can configure one set ofIP settings to use on one site and anotherset of IP settings to use on the other site.You can also provide IP settings to beused on both sites, for reprotectoperations.

Adapter ID ID of the adapter to customize.Adapter ID 0 sets global settings on alladapters for a virtual machine. Settingvalues on Adapter ID 1, 2, 3, and so on,configures settings for specific NICson a virtual machine.

Customizable. Cannot be left blank.The only fields that you can modify fora row in which the Adapter ID is 0 areDNS Server(s) and DNS Suffix(es).These values, if specified, are inheritedby all other adapters in use by that VMID.You can include multiple DNS serverson multiple lines in the CSV file. Forexample, if you require two global DNShosts, you include two lines for AdapterID 0.n One line that contains all the virtual

machine information plus one DNShost.

n One line that contains only thesecond DNS host.

To add another DNS server to a specificadapter, add the DNS server to theappropriate Adapter line. For example,add the DNS server to Adapter ID 1.

DNS Domain DNS domain for this adapter. Customizable. Can be left blank.If you do enter a value, it must be in theformat example.company.com.

Net BIOS Select whether to activate NetBIOS onthis adapter.

Customizable. Can be left blank.If not left empty, this column mustcontain one of the following strings:disableNetBIOS, enableNetBIOS, orenableNetBIOSViaDhcp.

Primary WINS DR IP Customizer validates that WINSsettings are applied only to Windowsvirtual machines, but it does notvalidate NetBIOS settings.

Customizable. Can be left blank.


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Table 9-2. Columns of the DR IP Customizer CSV File (Continued)

Column Description Customization Rules

Secondary WINS DR IP Customizer validates that WINSsettings are applied only to Windowsvirtual machines, but it does notvalidate NetBIOS settings.


IP Address IPv4 address for this virtual machine. Customizable. Cannot be blank.Virtual machines can have multiplevirtual network adapters. You canconfigure each virtual network adapterwith one static IPv4 address or one staticIPv6 address. For example, if you set astatic address for IPv4, you must set theIPv6 address to DHCP.

Subnet Mask Subnet mask for this virtual machine. Customizable. Can be left blank.

Gateway(s) IPv4 gateway or gateways for thisvirtual machine.


IPv6 Address IPv6 address for this virtual machine. Customizable. Can be left blank if youdo not use IPv6.Virtual machines can have multiplevirtual network adapters. You canconfigure each virtual network adapterwith one static IPv4 address or one staticIPv6 address. For example, if you set astatic address for IPv6, you must set theIPv4 address to DHCP.If you run SRM Server on WindowsServer 2003 and you customize IPv6addresses for a virtual machine, youmust enable IPv6 on the SRM Serverinstances. SRM performs validation ofIP addresses during customization,which requires IPv6 to be enabled on theSRM Server if you are customizing IPv6addresses. Later versions of WindowsServer have IPv6 enabled by default.

IPv6 Subnet Prefix length Ipv6 subnet prefix length to use. Customizable. Can be left blank.

IPv6 Gateway(s) IPv4 gateway or gateways for thisadapter.


DNS Server(s) Address of the DNS server or servers. Customizable. Can be left blank.If you enter this setting in an Adapter ID0 row, it is treated as a global setting. OnWindows virtual machines, this settingapplies for each adapter if you set it inthe Adapter ID rows other than AdapterID 0.On Linux virtual machines, this isalways a global setting for all adapters.This column can contain one or moreIPv4 or IPv6 DNS servers for each NIC.

DNS Suffix(es) Suffix or suffixes for DNS servers. Customizable. Can be left blank.These are global settings for all adapterson both Windows and Linux virtualmachines.


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Modifying the DR IP Customizer CSV FileYou modify the DR IP Customizer comma-separated value (CSV) file to apply customized networking settingsto virtual machines when they start on the recovery site.

One challenge of representing virtual machine network configurations in a CSV file is that virtual machineconfigurations include hierarchical information. For example, a single virtual machine might contain multipleadapters, and each adapter might have multiple listings for elements such as gateways. The CSV format doesnot provide a system for hierarchical representations. As a result, each row in the CSV file that the DR IPCustomizer generates might provide some or all of the information for a specific virtual machine.

For a virtual machine with a simple network configuration, all the information can be included in a single row.In the case of a more complicated virtual machine, multiple rows might be required. Virtual machines withmultiple network cards or multiple gateways require multiple rows. Each row in the CSV file includesidentification information that describes to which virtual machine and adapter the information applies.Information is aggregated to be applied to the appropriate virtual machine.

Follow these guidelines when you modify the DR IP Customizer CSV file.

n Omit values if a setting is not required.

n Use the minimum number of rows possible for each adapter.

n Do not use commas in any field.

n Specify Adapter ID settings as needed. DR IP Customizer applies settings that you specify on Adapter ID0 to all NICs. To apply settings to individual NICs, specify the values in the Adapter ID 1, 2, ..., n fields.

n To specify more than one value for a column, create an additional row for that adapter and include thevalue in the column in that row. To ensure that the additional row is associated with the intended virtualmachine, copy the VM ID, VM Name, vCenter Server, and Adapter ID column values.

n To specify multiple IP addresses for a network adapter or to specify multiple DNS server addresses, adda new row for each address. Copy the VM ID, VM Name, and Adapter ID values to each row.

Examples of DR IP Customizer CSV FilesYou obtain a CSV file that contains the networking information for the protected virtual machines on thevCenter Server by running dr-ip-customizer.exe with the --cmd generate command. You edit the CSV fileto customize the IP settings of the protected virtual machines.

You can download a bundle of the example CSV files that this section describes.

Example: A Generated DR IP Customizer CSV File

For a simple setup with only two protected virtual machines, the generated CSV file might contain only thevirtual machine ID, the virtual machine name, the names of the vCenter Server instances on both sites, and asingle adapter.

VM ID,VM Name,vCenter Server,Adapter ID,DNS Domain,Net BIOS,

Primary WINS,Secondary WINS,IP Address,Subnet Mask,Gateway(s),

IPv6 Address,IPv6 Subnet Prefix length,IPv6 Gateway(s),

DNS Server(s),DNS Suffix(es)

protected-vm-10301,vm-3-win,vcenter-server-site-B,0,,,,,,,,,,,,

protected-vm-10301,vm-3-win,vcenter-server-site-A,0,,,,,,,,,,,,

protected-vm-20175,vm-1-linux,vcenter-server-site-B,0,,,,,,,,,,,,

protected-vm-20175,vm-1-linux,vcenter-server-site-A,0,,,,,,,,,,,,


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This generated CSV file shows two virtual machines, vm-3-win and vm-1-linux. The virtual machines arepresent on the protected site and on the recovery site, vcenter-server-site-B, and vcenter-server-site-A. DR IPCustomizer generates an entry for each virtual machine and each site with Adapter ID 0. You can add additionallines to customize each NIC, once you are aware of how many NICs are on each virtual machine.

Example: Setting Static IPv4 Addresses

You can modify the generated CSV file to assign two network adapters with static IPv4 addresses to one of thevirtual machines, vm-3-win, on the protected site and the recovery site.

For readability, the example CSV file in the following table omits empty columns. The DNS Domain, NetBIOS,IPv6 Address, IPv6 Subnet Prefix length, and IPv6 Gateway(s) columns are all omitted.

Table 9-3. Setting Static IPv4 Addresses in a Modified CSV File

VM IDVMName

vCenterServer

Adapter ID

PrimaryWINS

SecondaryWINS

IPAddress

SubnetMask

Gateway(s)

DNSServer(s)

DNSSuffix(es)

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win

vcenter-server-site-B

0 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 2.2.3.4 2.2.3.5 192.168.1.21

255.255.255.0

192.168.1.1

1.1.1.1

protected-vm-10301


2 2.2.3.4 2.2.3.5 192.168.1.22

255.255.255.0

192.168.1.1

1.1.1.2

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win

vcenter-server-site-A

0 1.1.0.1 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 1.1.0.2 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 192.168.0.21

255.255.255.0

192.168.0.1

protected-vm-10301


2 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.5 192.168.0.22

255.255.255.0

192.168.0.1

The information in this CSV file applies different static IPv4 settings to vm-3-win on the protected site and onthe recovery site.

n On the vcenter-server-site-B site:

n Sets the DNS suffixes example.com and eng.example.com for all NICs for this virtual machine.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, a static IPv4address 192.168.1.21, and DNS server 1.1.1.1.


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n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, a static IPv4address 192.168.1.22, and DNS server 1.1.1.2.

n On the vcenter-server-site-A site:


n Sets the DNS servers 1.1.0.1 and 1.1.0.2 for all NICs for this virtual machine.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, with a static IPv4 address 192.168.0.21.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 1.2.3.4 and 1.2.3.5 and a staticIPv4 address 192.168.0.22.

Example: Setting Static and DHCP IPv4 Addresses

You can modify the generated CSV file to assign multiple NICs to one of the virtual machines, vm-3-win, thatuse a combination of static and DHCP IPv4 addresses. The settings can be different on the protected site andthe recovery site.

For readability, the example CSV file in the following table omits empty columns. The DNS Domain, NetBIOS,IPv6 Address, IPv6 Subnet Prefix length, and IPv6 Gateway(s) columns are all omitted.

Table 9-4. Setting Static and DHCP IPv4 Addresses in a Modified CSV File

VM IDVMName

vCenterServer

Adapter ID

PrimaryWINS

SecondaryWINS

IPAddress

SubnetMask

Gateway(s)

DNSServer(s)

DNSSuffix(es)

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 2.2.3.4 2.2.3.5 dhcp 1.1.1.1

protected-vm-10301


2 2.2.3.4 2.2.3.5 192.168.1.22

255.255.255.0

192.168.1.1

1.1.1.2

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 1.1.0.1 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 1.1.0.2 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 dhcp

protected-vm-10301


2 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.5 192.168.0.22

255.255.255.0

192.168.0.1


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The information in this CSV file applies different static and dynamic IPv4 settings to vm-3-win on the protectedsite and on the recovery site.

n On site vcenter-server-site-B:


n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, that usesDHCP to obtain an IP address and sets the static DNS server 1.1.1.1.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, with a staticIPv4 address 192.168.1.22 and DNS server 1.1.1.2.

n On site vcenter-server-site-A:

n Sets the DNS suffixes to example.com and eng.example.com for all NICs for this virtual machine.

n Sets the DNS servers 1.1.0.1 and 1.1.0.2 for all NICs for this virtual machine.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, that uses DHCP to obtain an IPv4 address and the globally assigned DNSserver information.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 1.2.3.4 and 1.2.3.5, and a staticIPv4 address 192.168.0.22.

Example: Setting Static and DHCP IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses

You can modify the generated CSV file to assign multiple NICs to vm-3-win, one of the virtual machines. TheNICs can use a combination of static and DHCP IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. The settings can be different on boththe protected site and the recovery site.

For readability, the example CSV file in the following table omits empty columns. The DNS Domain andNetBIOS columns are omitted.

Table 9-5. Setting Static and DHCP IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses in a Modified CSV File

VM ID

VMName

vCenterServer

AdapterID

PrimaryWINS

SecondaryWINS

IPAddress

SubnetMask

Gateway(s)

IPv6Address

IPv6SubnetPrefixlength

IPv6Gateway(s)

DNSServer(s)

DNSSuffix(es)

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 2.2.3.4

2.2.3.5

192.168.1.21

255.255.255.0

192.168.1.1

dhcp 1.1.1.1


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Table 9-5. Setting Static and DHCP IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses in a Modified CSV File (Continued)

VM ID

VMName

vCenterServer

AdapterID

PrimaryWINS

SecondaryWINS

IPAddress

SubnetMask

Gateway(s)

IPv6Address

IPv6SubnetPrefixlength

IPv6Gateway(s)

DNSServer(s)

DNSSuffix(es)

protected-vm-10301


2 2.2.3.4

2.2.3.5

dhcp ::ffff:192.168.1.22

32 ::ffff:192.168.1.1

1.1.1.2

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 example.com

protected-vm-10301

vm-3-win


0 eng.example.com

protected-vm-10301


1 dhcp ::ffff:192.168.0.22

32 ::ffff:192.168.0.1

::ffff:192.168.0.250

protected-vm-10301


1 ::ffff:192.168.0.251

protected-vm-10301


2 1.2.3.4

1.2.3.5

192.168.0.22

255.255.255.0

192.168.0.1

1.1.1.1

The information in this CSV file applies different IP settings to vm-3-win on the protected site and on therecovery site.

n On site vcenter-server-site-B:


n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, that sets astatic IPv4 address 192.168.1.21, uses DHCP to obtain an IPv6 address, and uses DNS server 1.1.1.1.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 2.2.3.4 and 2.2.3.5, that usesDHCP to obtain an IPv4 address, sets a static IPv6 address ::ffff:192.168.1.22, and uses DNS server1.1.1.2.

n On site vcenter-server-site-A:

n Sets the DNS suffixes to example.com and eng.example.com for all NICs for this virtual machine.


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n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 1, that uses DHCP to obtain an IPv4 address and sets a static IPv6address ::ffff:192.168.1.22. Adapter ID 1 uses static IPv6 DNS servers ::ffff:192.168.0.250 and ::ffff:192.168.0.251.

n Adds a NIC, Adapter ID 2, with primary and secondary WINS servers 1.2.3.4 and 1.2.3.5, a static IPv4address 192.168.0.22, and DNS server 1.1.1.1. By leaving the IPv6 column blank, Adapter ID 2 usesDHCP for IPv6 addresses.

Run DR IP Customizer to Customize IP Properties for Multiple Virtual MachinesYou can use the DR IP Customizer tool to customize the IP properties for multiple virtual machines thatSRM protects.

Prerequisites

Use the DR IP Customizer tool on a computer with access to vCenter Server instances in your environment.

Procedure

1 Open a command shell on the SRM Server host.

2 Change directory to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\bin.

3 Run the dr-ip-customizer.exe command to generate a comma-separated value (CSV) file that containsinformation about the protected virtual machines.

dr-ip-customizer.exe --cfg ..\config\vmware-dr.xml --cmd generate --out

"C:\MassIPCustCSVs\MassIPCust-generate-output.csv" --vc vc04.eng.example.com

This example points dr-ip-customizer.exe to the vmware-dr.xml file of the SRM Server and generates thefile MassIPCust-generate-output.csv for the vCenter Server instance vc04.eng.example.com.

4 (Optional) Check the vCenter Server thumbprint and type y to confirm that you trust thisvCenter Server instance.

If you specified the --ignore-thumbprint option, you are not prompted to check the thumbprint.

5 Enter the login credentials for the vCenter Server instance.

You might be prompted again to confirm that you trust this vCenter Server instance.

6 Edit the generated CSV file to customize the IP properties for the virtual machines in the recovery plan.

You can use a spread sheet application to edit the CSV file. Save the modified CSV file under a new name.

7 Run dr-ip-customizer.exe to apply the customized IP properties from the modified CSV file.

You can run the DR IP Customizer tool on either the protected site or on the recovery site. Virtual machineIDs for protected virtual machines are different at each site, so whichever site you use when you run theDR IP Customizer tool to generate the CSV file, you must use the same site when you run DR IP Customizeragain to apply the settings.

dr-ip-customizer.exe --cfg ..\config\vmware-dr.xml --cmd apply --csv

"C:\MassIPCustCSVs\MassIPCust-ipv6.csv" --vc vc04.eng.example.com

This example points dr-ip-customizer.exe to the vmware-dr.xml file of the SRM Server and applies thecustomizations in the file MassIPCustCSVs\MassIPCust-ipv6.csv to the vCenter Server instancevc04.eng.example.com.

The specified customizations are applied to all of the virtual machines named in the CSV file during a recovery.You do not need to manually configure IP settings for these machines when you edit their recovery planproperties.


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Advanced SRM Configuration 10The SRM default configuration enables some simple recovery scenarios. Advanced users can customizeSRM to support a broader range of site recovery requirements.


n “Configure Protection for a Virtual Machine or Template,” on page 73

n “Configure Resource Mappings for a Virtual Machine,” on page 74

n “Specify a Nonreplicated Datastore for Swap Files,” on page 74

n “Recovering Virtual Machines Across Multiple Hosts on the Recovery Site,” on page 75

n “Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Using Replication Seeds,” on page 75

n “Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Without Using Replication Seeds,” onpage 76

n “Reconfigure SRM Settings,” on page 76

Configure Protection for a Virtual Machine or TemplateYou can edit the protection properties of any virtual machine or template in a protection group. You can changethe resource mappings, attached storage devices and their datastores, and other properties that control theconfiguration with which SRM recovers the virtual machine.

You must configure protection for virtual machines that have a status of Not Configured or Mapping Missing.

If you are using array-based replication, editing the properties of a virtual machine to add or change storagedevices, such as hard disks or DVD drives, can affect the protection of that machine if the device that you addis stored on a datastore that is not replicated, or that is protected by a different protection group.

n If the new device is created on a replicated datastore that is not part of any protection group, the datastoreis added to the virtual machine's protected datastore group and the protection of the virtual machine isunaffected.

n If the new device is created on a replicated datastore that is protected by a different protection group, thisinvalidates the protection of the virtual machine.

n If the new device is created on a nonreplicated datastore, this invalidates the protection of the virtualmachine.

n If you use Storage vMotion to move a virtual machine to a nonreplicated datastore, or to a replicateddatastore on an array that SRM has not been configured to manage (through an SRA), this invalidates theprotection of the virtual machine. You can use Storage vMotion to move a virtual machine to datastorethat is part of another protection group.

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Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups in the left pane and select the protection group that includes the virtual machineto configure.

2 On the Virtual Machines tab, right-click a virtual machine and select Configure Protection.

3 In the Virtual Machine Properties window, review and configure properties as needed.

a Click Folder to specify an alternate destination folder.

b Click Recovery Pool to specify an alternate resource pool in which to place the recovered virtualmachine.

c If configuring protection for a template, click Recovery Host to specify an alternate host to which torecover the virtual machine.

This step only applies to templates.

d Click Network to specify an alternate recovery network to which to restore the virtual machine.

4 Click OK to apply the new configuration to the selected virtual machine.

Configure Resource Mappings for a Virtual MachineIf you have not specified inventory mappings for your site, you must configure resource mappings forindividual virtual machines. You can configure resource mappings only if site-wide inventory mappings havenot been established.

If inventory mappings have been established for a site, you cannot override them by configuring the protectionof individual virtual machines. If you need to override inventory mappings for a few members of a protectiongroup, use the vSphere Client to connect to the recovery site and edit the settings of the placeholders or movethem to a different folder or resource pool.

Procedure

1 Click Protection Groups, and navigate to the protection group that includes the virtual machine that youwant to configure.

2 On the Virtual Machines page, right-click a virtual machine and click Configure Protection.

If you established inventory mappings, they are applied.

3 Configure mappings as needed.

For most virtual machines, you can change the Folder and Compute Resource mappings. For moreinformation, see “Configure Protection for a Virtual Machine or Template,” on page 73.

Specify a Nonreplicated Datastore for Swap FilesEvery virtual machine requires a swap file. By default, vCenter Server creates swap files in the same datastoreas the other virtual machine files. To prevent SRM from replicating swap files you can configure virtualmachines to create them in a nonreplicated datastore.

CAUTION Under normal circumstances, you should keep the swap files in the same datastore as the othervirtual machine files. However, you might need to prevent replication of swap files to avoid excessiveconsumption of network bandwidth. Also, some storage vendors recommend that you do not replicate swapfiles. Only prevent replication of swap files if it is absolutely necessary.

If you are using a nonreplicated datastore for swap files, you must create a nonreplicated datastore for allprotected clusters at both the protected and recovery sites. The nonreplicated datastore must be visible to allhosts in the cluster, otherwise vMotion will not work.


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Procedure

1 In the vSphere Client, right-click an ESXi cluster and click Edit Settings.

2 In the Settings page for the cluster, click Swapfile Location, select Store the swapfile in the datastorespecified by the host, and click OK.

3 For each host in the cluster, select a nonreplicated datastore.

a Select a host and click the Configuration tab.

b In the Software panel, click Virtual Machine Swapfile Location, and click Edit at the top right of themain panel.

c On the Virtual Machine Swapfile Location page, select a nonreplicated datastore and click OK.

4 For standalone hosts that are not part of a cluster, select the host and click the Configuration tab.

5 In the Software panel, click Virtual Machine Swapfile Location, and click Edit at the top right of the mainpanel.

6 Select Store the swapfile in a swapfile datastore selected below, select the datastore, and click OK.

Recovering Virtual Machines Across Multiple Hosts on the RecoverySite

You can create recovery plans that recover virtual machines across multiple recovery site hosts in a quarantinedtest network.

With SRM, the vSwitches can be DVS based and span hosts. If you accept the default test network configuredas Auto, then virtual machines that are recovered across hosts are placed in their own test network. Each testswitch is isolated between hosts. As a result, virtual machines in the same plan are isolated when the recoveryfinishes. To allow the virtual machines to communicate, establish and select DVS switches or VLANs. With anisolated VLAN that connects all hosts to each other but not to a production network, you can more realisticallytest a recovery. To achieve connectivity among recovery hosts, but maintain isolation from the productionnetwork, follow these recommendations:

n Create DVS switches that are connected to an isolated VLAN that is private. Such a VLAN allows hostsand virtual machines to be connected, but to be isolated from production virtual machines. Use a namingconvention that clearly designates that the DVS is for testing use, and select this DVS in the recovery plantest network column in the recovery plan editor.

n Create test VLANs on a physical network, providing no route back to the protected site. Trunk test VLANsto recovery site vSphere clusters and create virtual switches for test VLAN IDs. Use a clear namingconvention to identify that these switches are for testing. Select these switches from the test recoverynetwork column in the recovery plan editor.

Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Using ReplicationSeeds

vSphere Replication prevents you from resizing the virtual machine disk file during replication. If you usedreplication seeds for the target disk, you can resize the disk manually.

Procedure

1 Unconfigure replication on the virtual machine.

2 Resize the disk on the primary site.

3 Resize the target disk that is left over after you unconfigure replication.

4 Reconfigure replication on the virtual machine.

Chapter 10 Advanced SRM Configuration

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Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Without UsingReplication Seeds

vSphere Replication prevents you from resizing the virtual machine disk file during replication. If you did notuse replication seeds during configuration of the target disk, vSphere Replication deletes the target disk whenyou stop the replication.

To resize a virtual machine disk if you did not initially use replication seeds, you must perform a test recovery,clone the recovered virtual machine, and reconfigure the disk manually using replication seeds.

Procedure

1 Run a test recovery for the virtual machine.

2 Clone the recovered virtual machine on the same datastore where the replication occurs after youreconfigure the replication.

3 Revert the test recovery.

4 Unconfigure the replication.

5 Resize the disk on the primary site.

6 Resize the disk on the cloned virtual machine on the secondary site.

7 Unregister the cloned virtual machine on the secondary site, but do not delete the disks.

8 Enable replication by using the disks of the cloned virtual machine as seeds.

Reconfigure SRM SettingsUsing the Advanced Settings, you can view or change many custom settings for the SRM service. AdvancedSettings provide a way for a user with adequate privileges to change default values that affect the operationof various SRM features.

Change Local Site SettingsSRM monitors consumption of resources on the SRM Server host, and it raises an alarm if a resource thresholdis reached. You can change the thresholds and the way that SRM raises the alarms.

Procedure

1 Click Sites in the left pane, right-click the site on which to change settings, and select AdvancedSettings.

2 Click localSiteStatus.

3 Change the settings as needed.

Option Action

Change the interval at which SRMchecks the CPU usage, disk space,and free memory at the local site

Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.checkInterval text box.

Change the name of the local site Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.displayName text box.

Change the timeout during whichSRM waits between raising alarmsabout CPU usage, disk space, andfree memory at the local site

Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.eventFrequency text box.

Change the percentage of CPUusage that causes SRM to raise ahigh CPU usage event

Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.maxCpuUsage text box.


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Option Action

Change the percentage of free diskspace that causes SRM to raise a lowdisk space event

Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.minDiskSpace text box.

Change the amount of free memorythat causes SRM to raise a lowmemory event

Type a new value in the localSiteStatus.minMemory text box.

4 Click OK to save your changes.

Change Recovery Site SettingsYou can adjust default values for timeouts that occur when you test or run a recovery plan. You might adjustdefault values if tasks fail to finish because of timeouts.

Several types of timeouts can occur when recovery plan steps run. These timeouts cause the plan to pause fora specified interval to give the step time to finish.

Procedure


2 Click recovery.

3 Modify the recovery site settings.

Option Action

Change the IP customization timeout Type a new value in the recovery.calloutCommandLineTimeout text box.

Change the default priority forrecovering a virtual machine

Type a new value in the recovery.defaultPriority text box.

Enable or disable forced recovery Select or deselect the recovery.forceRecovery check box. You should onlyactivate forced recovery in cases where a lack of connectivity to the protectedsite severely affects RTO.

Change the timeout for hosts in acluster to power on

Type a new value in the recovery.hostPowerOnTimeout text box.

Change the timeout for guest OS topower off

Type a new value in the recovery.powerOffTimeout text box. The new time-out value applies to power-off tasks for virtual machines at the protected site.

Change the delay after powering ona virtual machine before startingdependent tasks

Type a new value in the recovery.powerOnDelay text box. The new valueapplies to power-on tasks for virtual machines at the recovery site.

Change the timeout to wait forVMware Tools when powering onvirtual machines

Type a new value in the recovery.powerOnTimeout text box. The newpower-on value applies to power-on tasks for virtual machines at therecovery site. If protected virtual machines do not have VMware Toolsinstalled, set this value to 0.

Enable or disable skipping theshutdown of the guest OS

Select or deselect the recovery.skipGuestShutdown check box. If protectedvirtual machines do not have VMware Tools installed and the guestshutdown timeout is not set to 0, you must select this option. If you do notselect this option and VMware Tools is not installed, a recovery cannotprogress past the step Shutdown VMs at the recovery site.



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Change Remote Site SettingsYou can modify the default values that the SRM Server at the protected site uses to determine whether theSRM Server at the remote site is available.

SRM monitors the connection between the protected site and the recovery site and raises alarms if theconnection breaks. You can change the criteria that cause SRM to raise a connection event and change the waythat SRM raises alarms.

Procedure


2 Click remoteSiteStatus.

3 Modify the settings.

Option Action

Change the number of remote sitestatus checks (pings) to try beforedeclaring the check a failure

Type a new value in the remoteSiteStatus.pingFailedDelay text box.

Change the number of failed pingsbefore raising a site down event

Type a new value in the remoteSiteStatus.panicDelay text box.

Change the interval at which SRMchecks whether the SRM Server atthe remote site is available

Type a new value in the remoteSiteStatus.pingInterval text box.


Change the Timeout for the Creation of Placeholder Virtual MachinesYou can adjust replication settings to modify how long SRM waits for the creation of virtual machineplaceholders to finish.

Procedure


2 Click replication.

3 Change the replication.placeholderVmCreationTimeout setting to modify the number of seconds to waitwhen creating a placeholder virtual machine.


Change Storage SettingsYou can adjust the settings of your storage array, to modify how SRM and vCenter Server communicate withthe storage replication adapter (SRA).

Procedure


2 Click storage.


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3 Modify the storage settings.

Option Action

Change SRA update timeout Type a new value in the storage.commandTimeout text box.

Change the maximum number ofconcurrent SRA operations

Type a new value in the storage.maxConcurrentCommandCnt text box.

Change the minimum amount of timein seconds between datastore groupcomputations

Type a new value in the storage.minDsGroupComputationInterval textbox.

Change the interval between statusupdates for ongoing datasynchronization operations

Type a new value in the storage.querySyncStatusPollingInterval text box.

Change the interval between storagearray discovery checks

Type a new value in the storage.storagePingInterval text box.

Change the maximum amount oftime permitted for datasynchronization operations tocomplete

Type a new value in the storage.syncTimeout text box.


Change Storage Provider SettingsFor array-based replication, the SAN provider is the interface between SRM and your storage replicationadapter (SRA). Some SRAs require you to make changes to default SAN provider values. You can change thedefault timeout values and other behaviors of the SRM SAN provider.

You can change settings for resignaturing, fixing datastore names, host rescan counts, and timeouts. For moreinformation about these values, see the SRA documentation from your array vendor.

Procedure


2 Click storageProvider.

3 Modify the SAN provider settings.

Option Action

Make SRM attempt to detach andreattach LUNs with duplicatevolumes

Select the storageProvider.autoDetachLUNsWithDuplicateVolume checkbox.

Set the LVM.EnableResignature flagon ESXi hosts during test andrecovery

In the storageProvider.autoResignatureMode text box, type 0 to disable, 1to enable, or 2 to ignore the flag. The default setting is 1, and SRMresignatures all known VMFS snapshot volumes, including any volumes thatSRM does not manage. If you set the flag to 0, SRM only resignatures theVMFS snapshot volumes that it manages, but this might result in slowerperformance, leading to timeouts.

Force removal, upon successfulcompletion of a recovery, of thesnap-xx prefix applied to recovereddatastore names

Select the storageProvider.fixRecoveredDatastoreNames check box.

Repeat host scans during testingand recovery

Type a new value in the storageProvider.hostRescanRepeatCnt text box.Some storage arrays require more than one rescan, for example to discoverthe snapshots of failed-over LUNs.


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Option Action

Change the interval that SRM waitsfor each HBA rescan to complete

Type a new value in the storageProvider.hostRescanTimeoutSec text box.

Set the number of times that SRMattempts to resignature a VMFSvolume

Type a new value in the storageProvider.resignatureFailureRetryCount textbox.


Reconfigure Default Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in ReplicationsYou can adjust the settings for vSphere Replication to specify a different default recovery point objective (RPO).

Procedure

1 Click Sites in the left pane, and right-click a site, and select Advanced Settings.

2 Click vrReplication.

3 Modify the vrReplication.timeDefault value.


Modify Settings to Run Large SRM EnvironmentsIf you use SRM to test or recover a large number of virtual machines, you might need to modify the defaultSRM settings to achieve the best possible recovery times in your environment or to avoid timeouts.

In large environments, SRM might simultaneously power on or power off large numbers of virtual machines.Simultaneously powering on or powering off large numbers of virtual machines can create a heavy load onthe virtual infrastructure, which might lead to timeouts. You can modify certain SRM settings to avoid timeouts,either by limiting the number of power on or power off operations that SRM performs concurrently, or byincreasing the timeout periods.

The limits that you set on power on or power off operations depend on how many concurrent power on orpower off operations your infrastructure can handle.

You modify certain options in the Advanced Settings menus in the vSphere Client or in the SRM client plug-in. To modify other settings, you edit the vmware-dr.xml configuration file on the SRM Server. Always modifysettings by using the client menus when an option exists. If you modify settings, you must make the samemodifications on the SRM Server and vCenter Server instances on both the protected and recovery sites.

For descriptions of the settings that you can change, see “Settings for Large SRM Environments,” onpage 81.

Procedure

1 Right-click a cluster in the vCenter Server Inventory and select Edit Settings > vSphere DRS > AdvancedOptions.

2 Set the srmMaxBootShutdownOps setting.

Option Description

Option text box Type srmMaxBootShutdownOps.

Value text box Type the maximum number of boot shutdown operations, for example 32.


4 Log into the SRM Server host.


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5 Open the vmware-dr.xml file in a text editor.

You find the vmware-dr.xml file in the C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site RecoveryManager\config folder.

6 Change the defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster and defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHostsettings in the vmware-dr.xml file:

<config>

...

<defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>24</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>

<defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>4</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>

...

</config>

7 Restart the SRM Server to apply the new settings.


9 Select vrReplication and increase the synchronizationTimeout setting.

For example, increase the synchronizationTimeout value to 7200 seconds.

10 Select storage and increase the commandTimeout setting.

For example, increase the commandTimeout value to 3600 seconds.


Settings for Large SRM EnvironmentsTo protect a large number of virtual machines, you can modify the default SRM settings to achieve the bestpossible recovery times in your environment or to avoid timeouts.

You modify certain options in the Advanced Settings menus in the vSphere Client or in the SRM client plug-in. To modify other settings, you edit the vmware-dr.xml configuration file on the SRM Server. Always modifysettings by using the client menus when an option exists. If you modify settings, you must make the samemodifications on the SRM Server and vCenter Server instances on both the protected and recovery sites.

To modify the settings, see “Modify Settings to Run Large SRM Environments,” on page 80.


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Table 10-1. Settings that Modify the Number of Simultaneous Power On or Power Off Operations

Option Description

srmMaxBootShutdownOps Specifies the maximum number of concurrent power-onoperations for any given cluster. Guest shutdowns, but notforced power offs, are throttled according to this value. Guestshutdowns occur during primary site shutdowns (plannedfailover) and IP customization workflows. Modify thisoption per cluster in the vSphere Client by right-clicking acluster and selecting Edit Settings > vSphere DRS >Advanced Options. This setting overrides thedefaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster value thatyou can set in the vmware-dr.xml file. You can set a globalvalue defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster in thevmware-dr.xml file, and then set differentsrmMaxBootShutdownOps values for individual clusters inthe vSphere Client. By default, throttling is turned off.

defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster Specifies the maximum number of concurrent power-onoperations for all clusters that SRM protects. Guestshutdowns, but not forced power offs, are throttledaccording to this value. Guest shutdowns occur duringprimary site shutdowns (planned failover) and IPcustomization workflows. You modify this setting in thevmware-dr.xml file. The srmMaxBootShutdownOps valuethat you can set in the vSphere Client overrides thedefaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster value. Youcan set a global valuedefaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster in thevmware-dr.xml file, and then set differentsrmMaxBootShutdownOps values for individual clusters inthe vSphere Client. By default, throttling is turned off.

defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost Specifies the maximum number of concurrent power-onoperations on any standalone host. You can only set theoption in the vmware-dr.xml file. By default, throttling isturned off.

Table 10-2. Settings that Modify Timeout Periods

Option Description

synchronizationTimeout SRM enforces a timeout to complete an online or offlinesynchronization for virtual machines replicated byvSphere Replication during a test or failover. If asynchronization does not finish within the given timeout, forexample, because of a slow network or a large virtualmachine, SRM reports a failure during a test or failover.Modify this option in Advanced Settings > vrReplication inthe SRM client plug-in. The default value is 60 minutes.

commandTimeout The timeout for running SRA commands in ABR-relatedworkflows. In some cases, such as surfacing LUNs andsnapshots, some arrays take longer than the default time torespond. Modify this option in Advanced Settings >storage in the SRM client plug-in. The default value is 5minutes.


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Troubleshooting SRM Administration 11To help identify the cause of any problems you encounter during the day-to-day running of SRM, you mightneed to collect SRM Server or client log files to review or send to VMware Support.

Errors that you encounter during SRM operations appear in error dialog boxes or appear in the RecentTasks window. Most errors also generate an entry in an SRM log file. Check the recent tasks and log files forthe recovery site and the protected site.

When searching for the cause of a problem, also check the VMware knowledge base at http://kb.vmware.com.


n “Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines,” on page 83

n “SRM Events and Alarms,” on page 85

n “Collecting SRM Log Files,” on page 94

n “Access the vSphere Replication Logs,” on page 97

n “Resolve SRM Operational Issues,” on page 98

Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual MachinesThe protection and recovery by SRM of virtual machines is subject to limitations.

Protection and Recovery of Suspended Virtual MachinesWhen you suspend a virtual machine, vSphere creates and saves its memory state. When the virtual machineresumes, vSphere restores the saved memory state to allow the virtual machine to continue without anydisruption to the applications and guest operating systems that it is running.

Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines with SnapshotsArray-based replication supports the protection and recovery of virtual machines with snapshots, but withlimitations.

You can specify a custom location for storing snapshot delta files by setting the workingDir parameter in VMXfiles. SRM does not support the use of the workingDir parameter.

Limitations also apply if you are running versions of ESX or ESXi Server older than version 4.1.

n If the virtual machine has multiple VMDK disk files, all the disk files must be contained in the same folderas the VMX file itself.

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http://kb.vmware.com

n If a virtual machine is attached to a Raw Disk Mapping (RDM) disk device, you must store the mappingfile in the same folder as the VMX file. RDM snapshots are only available if you create the RDM mappingusing Virtual Compatibility Mode.

If you are running a ESX or ESXi Server 4.1 or later, these limitations do not apply.

vSphere Replication supports the protection of virtual machines with snapshots, but you can only recover thelatest snapshot. vSphere Replication erases the snapshot information in the recovered virtual machine, sosnapshots are no longer available after recovery.

Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines with Memory State SnapshotsWhen protecting virtual machines with memory state snapshots, the ESXi hosts at the protection and recoverysites must have compatible CPUs, as defined in the VMware knowledge base articles VMotion CPUCompatibility Requirements for Intel Processors and VMotion CPU Compatibility Requirements for AMDProcessors. The hosts must also have the same BIOS features enabled. If the BIOS configurations of the serversdo not match, they show a compatibility error message even if they are otherwise identical. The two mostcommon features to check are Non-Execute Memory Protection (NX / XD) and Virtualization Technology (VT /AMD-V).

Protection and Recovery of Linked Clone Virtual MachinesvSphere Replication does not support the protection and recovery of virtual machines that are linked clones.

Array-based replication supports the protection and recovery of virtual machines that are linked clones if allthe nodes in the snapshot tree are replicated.

Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines with Reservations, Affinity Rules, orLimits

When SRM recovers a virtual machine to the recovery site, it does not preserve any reservations, affinity rules,or limits that you have placed on the virtual machine. SRM does not preserve reservations, affinity rules, andlimits on the recovery site because the recovery site might have different resource requirements to the protectedsite.

You can set reservations, affinity rules, and limits for recovered virtual machines by configuring reservationsand limits on the resource pools on the recovery site and setting up the resource pool mapping accordingly.Alternatively, you can set reservations, affinity rules, or limits manually on the placeholder virtual machineson the recovery site.

Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines Attached to RDM Disk DevicesThe protection and recovery of virtual machines that are attached to a raw disk mapping (RDM) disk deviceis subject to different support depending on whether you use array-based replication or vSphere Replication.

n Array-based replication supports RDM devices in physical mode and in virtual mode.

n vSphere Replication supports RDM devices in virtual mode only, for both the source and target device.

Planned Migration of Virtual Machines on Datastores that Use SIOCYou cannot use SRM to perform a planned migration of virtual machines on datastores that have storage I/Ocontrol (SIOC) enabled. Datastores with SIOC enabled cannot be unmounted, so cannot be part of a plannedmigration. You must disable SIOC on datastores included in a recovery plan before running a plannedmigration.


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Disaster Recovery and Reprotect of Virtual Machines on Datastores that Use SIOCIf you run a recovery with SIOC enabled, the recovery will succeed with errors. After the recovery, you mustmanually disable SIOC on the protected site and run a planned migration recovery again. You cannot runreprotect until you have successfully run a planned migration.

Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines with Components on Multiple ArraysArray-based replication in SRM depends on the concept of an array pair. SRM defines groups of datastoresthat it recovers as units. As a consequence, limitations apply to how you can store the components of virutalmachines that you protect using array-based replication.

n SRM does not support storing virtual machine components on multiple arrays on the protected site thatreplicate to a single array on the recovery site.

n SRM does not support storing virtual machine components on multiple arrays on the protected site thatreplicate to mulitple arrays on the recovery site, if the virtual machine components span both arrrays.

If you replicate virtual machine components from multiple arrays to a single array or to a span of arrays onthe recovery site, the VMX configurations of the UUID of the datastores on the protected site do not match theconfigurations on the recovery site.

The location of the VMX file of a virtual machine determines which array pair a virtual machine belongs to. Avirtual machine cannot belong to two array pairs, so if it has more than one disk and if one of those disks is inan array that is not part of the array pair to which the virtual machine belongs, SRM cannot protect the wholevirtual machine. SRM handles the disk that is not on the same array pair as the virtual machine as a non-replicated device.

As a consequence, store all the virtual disks, swap files, RDM devices, and the working directory for the virtualmachine on LUNs in the same array so that SRM can protect all the components of the virtual machine.

Protection and Recovery of Active Directory Domain ControllersDo not use SRM to protect Active Directory domain controllers. Active Directory provides its own replicationtechnology and restore mode. Use the Active Directory replication technology and restore mode technologiesto handle disaster recovery situations.

SRM Events and AlarmsSRM supports event logging. Each event includes a corresponding alarm that SRM can trigger if the eventoccurs. This provides a way to track the health of your system and to resolve potential issues before they affectthe protection that SRM provides.

How SRM Monitors Connections Between SitesSRM monitors the connection between the protected and recovery sites and logs events if the remote site stopsresponding.

When SRM establishes the connection between two paired SRM Server instances, the SRM Server that initiatedthe connection sends a RemoteSiteUpEvent.

If SRM detects that a monitored connection has broken, it starts periodic connection checks by sending aping request to the remote site. SRM monitors the connection checks and logs events.

n SRM sends pings at regular intervals. You can configure this interval by setting theremoteSiteStatus.pingInterval value. The default is five minutes.

n The connection monitor skips a number of failed pings. You can configure this number by setting theremoteSiteStatus.pingFailedDelay value.

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n When the number of skipped failed pings exceeds the value of the remoteSiteStatus.pingFailedDelaysetting, SRM sends a RemoteSitePingFailedEvent event.

n When the number of skipped failed pings exceeds a higher limit SRM sends a RemoteSiteDownEvent eventfor every failed ping and stops sending RemoteSitePingFailedEvent events. You can configure this higherlimit of failed pings by setting the remoteSiteStatus.panicDelay setting.

n SRM continues to send RemoteSiteDownEvent events until the connection is reestablished.

Configure SRM AlarmsSRM adds alarms to the alarms that vCenter Server supports. You can configure SRM alarms to send an emailnotification, send an SNMP trap, or to run a script on the vCenter Server host.

The Alarms tab in the SRM interface lists all of the SRM alarms. You can edit the settings for each alarm tospecify the action for SRM to take when an event triggers the alarm. By default, none of the SRM alarms actuntil you configure the alarm.

Prerequisites

For alarms to send email notifications, you must configure the Mail settings in the vCenter Server Settingsmenu.

Procedure

1 In the left pane, click Sites, and select a site.

2 Click the Alarms tab to display the list of SRM alarms.

3 Right-click an alarm and click Edit Settings.

4 Click the Actions tab.

5 Click Add to add an action to perform when this alarm is triggered.

6 Select an action from the drop-down list.

Option Description

Send Email The default action. Type an email address in the Value text box.

Send SNMP Trap Type the name of an SNMP trap in the Value text box.

Run Script Type the path to the script to run in the Value text box.

7 Click the General tab.

8 Select the Enable this alarm check box to enable the action for this alarm.

SRM Events ReferenceSRM monitors different types of events.

Site Status EventsSite status events provide information about the status of the protected and recovery sites and the connectionbetween them.

Table 11-1. Site Status Events

Event Key Event Description Cause

UnknownStatusEvent Unknown Status SRM Server status is not available

RemoteSiteDownEvent Remote Site Down SRM Server has lost its connection withthe remote SRM Server.


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Table 11-1. Site Status Events (Continued)


RemoteSitePingFailedEvent Remote Site Ping Failed Failures at the remote site or networkconnectivity problems.

RemoteSiteCreatedEvent Remote Site Created Remote site is created.

RemoteSiteUpEvent Remote Site Up SRM Server re-establishes itsconnection with the remoteSRM Server.

RemoteSiteDeletedEvent Remote Site Deleted Remote SRM site has been deleted.

Protection Group EventsProtection Group events provide information about actions and status related to protection groups.

These events have three categories:

n Protection Group Replication Informational Events

n Protection Group Replication Warning Events

n Protection Group Replication Error Events

Table 11-2. Protection Group Replication Informational Events


ProtectionGroup > CreatedEvent Created protection group. Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase ofcreating a protection group.

ProtectionGroup > RemovedEvent Removed protection group. Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase ofremoving a protection group.

ProtectionGroup > ReconfiguredEvent Reconfigured protection group. Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase ofreconfiguring a protection group.

ProtectedVmCreatedEvent Virtual machine in group isconfigured for protection.

Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase of theprotection of a virtual machine.

ProtectedVmRemovedEvent Virtual machine in group is no longerconfigured for protection.

Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase ofunprotecting a virtual machine.

ProtectedVmReconfiguredProtectionSettingsEvent

Reconfigured protection settings forvirtual machine.

Posted on both vCenter Servers in thecompletion of the Commit phase ofreconfiguring virtual machineprotection settings.

ProtectedVmReconfiguredRecoveryLocationSettingsEvent

Reconfigured recovery locationsettings for virtual machine.

Posted on the protected site vCenterServer only on the successfulcompletion of reconfiguring therecovery location settings for aprotected virtual machine.


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Table 11-2. Protection Group Replication Informational Events (Continued)


PlaceholderVmCreatedEvent The placeholder virtual machine wascreated in the VMware vCenter Serverinventory.

Posted on the Recovery site vCenterServer only when we create theplaceholder virtual machine as a resultof protection, repair.

PlaceholderVmCreatedFromOldProductionVmEvent

The placeholder virtual machine wascreated in the VMware vCenter Serverinventory using the identity of the oldprotected virtual machine.

Posted on the Recovery site vCenterServer only when we create theplaceholder virtual machine as a resultof swapping for the old protectedvirtual machine during or afterreprotect.

Table 11-3. Protection Group Replication Warning Events


VmNotFullyProtectedEvent Virtual machine in group: One or moredevices need to be configured forprotection.

Posted on the protected site vCenterServer only upon device handlingupdating the recovery location settingswith a non-empty unresolvedDevicesset. This can be triggered by changes tothe protected virtual machine or duringreprotect of a virtual machine.

PlaceholderVmUnexpectedlyDeletedEvent

Virtual machine in group: Theplaceholder virtual machine wasremoved from the VMware vCenterServer inventory.

Posted on the Recovery site vCenterServer only when we detect that theplaceholder virtual machine wasunexpectedly deleted or removed fromthe vCenter inventory.

Table 11-4. Protection Group Replication Error Events


ProductionVmDeletedEvent Virtual machine in group: Theprotected virtual machine has beenremoved from the virtualmachineware vCenter Serverinventory.

Posted when we detect that theprotected virtual machine’s protectedvirtual machine has been deleted orremoved from the vCenter inventory.

ProductionVmInvalidEvent Virtual machine in group: Cannotresolve the file locations of theprotected virtual machine forreplication.

Posted whenever we handle device orrecovery location changes but noticethat the provider cannot find theprotected virtual machine files in orderto replicate them.


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Recovery EventsRecovery events provide information about actions and status related to the SRM recovery processes.

Table 11-5. Recovery Events


RecoveryVmBegin Recovery Plan has begun recoveringthe specified virtual machine.

Signaled when the recovery virtualmachine was successfully created. Ifsome error occurred before the virtualmachine ID is known the event is notfired.

RecoveryVmEnd Recovery Plan has completedrecovering the virtual machine.

Signaled after the last post-power onscript has completed, or after arecovery-stopping error has occurredfor the virtual machine.

RecoveryPlanCreate Recovery Plan has been created. Signaled when a new plan is created orcloned. It will be sent to eachvCenter Server instance where the planis hosted.

RecoveryPlanDestroy Recovery Plan has been destroyed. Signaled when a plan has been deletedfrom the site. Note that on the site wherethe plan has been requested to deletedthere can be a significant delay, while itwaits for the plan to be deleted at theother site. It will be sent to eachvCenter Server instance where the planis hosted.

RecoveryPlanEdit Recovery Plan was changed. Signaled when an existing plan isedited.

RecoveryPlanExecuteTestBegin Recovery Plan has begun a test. Signaled on the recovery site when arecovery test is initiated.

RecoveryPlanExecuteTestEnd Recovery Plan has completed a test. Signaled on the recovery site when arecovery test has completed. If an erroroccurred it is available as described.

RecoveryPlanExecuteCleanupBegin Recovery Plan has begun a testcleanup.

Signaled on the recovery site when a testcleanup is initiated.

RecoveryPlanExecuteCleanupEnd Recovery Plan has completed a testcleanup.

Signaled on the recovery site when a testcleanup has completed. If an erroroccurred it is available as described.

RecoveryPlanExecuteBegin Recovery Plan has begun a recovery. Signaled on the recovery site when arecovery is initiated.

RecoveryPlanExecuteEnd Recovery Plan has completed arecovery.

Signaled on the recovery site when arecovery has completed. If an erroroccurred it is available as described.

RecoveryPlanExecuteReprotectBegin

Recovery Plan has begun a reprotectoperation.

Signaled on the recovery site when areprotect is initiated.

RecoveryPlanExecuteReprotectEnd Recovery Plan has completed areprotect operation.

Signaled on the recovery site when areprotect has completed. If an erroroccurred it is available as described.

RecoveryPlanPromptDisplay Recovery Plan is displaying a promptand is waiting for user input.

Signaled on the recovery site when aprompt step is encountered. The key isa unique identifier for the prompt.

RecoveryPlanPromptResponse Recovery Plan has received an answerto its prompt.

Signaled on the recovery site when aprompt step is closed.


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Table 11-5. Recovery Events (Continued)


RecoveryPlanServerCommandBegin Recovery Plan has started to run aCommand on the SRM Servermachine.

Signaled on the recovery site whenSRM has started to run a CalloutCommand on the SRM Server machine.

RecoveryPlanServerCommandEnd Recovery Plan has completed theexecution of a Command on theSRM Server machine.

Signaled on the recovery site whenSRM has finished running a CalloutCommand on the SRM Server machine.

RecoveryPlanVmCommandBegin Recovery Plan has started to run aCommand on a recovered virtualmachine.

Signaled on the recovery site whenSRM has started to run a CalloutCommand on a recovered virtualmachine.

RecoveryPlanVmCommandEnd Recovery Plan has completed theexecution of a Command on arecovered virtual machine.

Signaled on the recovery site whenSRM has finished running a CalloutCommand on a recovered virtualmachine.

Storage and Storage Provider EventsStorage and storage provider events provide information about actions and status related storage or storageproviders.

Table 11-6. SRA Events

Type Description Content

StorageAdapterLoaded Loaded the specified SRA. SRM detected new SRA either duringstartup or during user-initiated SRAsreload.

StorageAdapterReloadFailed Failed to load SRA from the specifiedpath.

SRM failed to reload previously knownSRA either during startup or duringuser-initiated SRAs reload.

StorageAdapterChanged Loaded new version of the specifiedSRA.

SRM detected that previously knownSRA was upgraded.

Table 11-7. Array Manager Events


StorageArrayManagerAdded Created the specified array managerusing the specified SRA.

User added an Array Manager.

StorageArrayManagerRemoved Deleted the specified array manager. User removed an Array Manager.

StorageArrayManagerReconfigured Reconfigured the specified arraymanager.

User edited Array Manager properties.

StorageArrayManagerPingOk Ping for the specified array managersucceeded.

SRM Server successfully pinged anArray Manager.

StorageArrayManagerPingFailed Failed to ping the specified arraymanager.

An error occurred during ArrayManager ping.

Table 11-8. Array Pair Events


StorageArrayPairDiscovered Discovered replicated array pair withArray Manager.

User created Array Manager whichdiscovered replicated array pairs.

StorageArrayPairEnabled Enabled replicated array pair withArray Manager.

User enabled an Array Pair.


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Table 11-8. Array Pair Events (Continued)


StorageArrayPairDisabled Disabled replicated array pair withArray Manager.

User disabled an Array Pair.

StorageArrayPairPingOk Ping for replicated array pairsucceeded.

SRM Server successfully pinged thearray pair.

StorageArrayPairPingFailed Failed to ping replicated array pair. An error occurred during Array Pairping.

Table 11-9. Datastore Events


StorageDatastoreDiscovered Discovered replicated datastore. SRM Server discovered replicateddatastore.

StorageDatastoreLost Specified datastore is no longerreplicated.

User turned off replication of storagedevices backing the datastore.

StorageRdmDiscovered Discovered replicated RDM attachedto specified virtual machine.

SRM Server discovered replicatedRDM. This is raised when you add anRDM disk to a protected virtualmachine.

StorageRdmLost RDM attached to specified virtualmachine is no longer replicated.

User turned off replication of the LUNbacking the RDM.

Table 11-10. Protection Events


StorageProviderDatastoreProtected

Protected datastore in specifiedprotection group.

User included datastore in new orexisting protection group.

StorageProviderDatastoreUnprotected

Unprotected specified datastore. User removed datastore fromprotection group or deleted protectiongroup which contained this datastore.This is raised if you unprotect adatastore either by removing it from aprotection group or by removing theprotection group.

StorageProviderVmDiscovered Discovered replicated virtualmachine.

User created virtual machine on areplicated datastore.

StorageProviderVmLost Specified virtual machine is no longerreplicated

User migrated virtual machine off of thereplicated datastore.

StorageProviderDatastoreProtectionMissing

Replicated datastore needs to beincluded in specified protection groupbut is included in an alternateprotection group.

This is raised if you have a datastoregroup protected in a protection groupand then a new datastore gets mergedinto this datastore group but thisdatastore is not protected in a protectiongroup.

StorageProviderDatastoreProtectionConflict

Replicated datastore needs to beincluded in specified protectiongroup.

This is raised if you have a datastoregroup protected in a protection groupand a new datastore is merged into thisdatastore group, but this datastore isprotected in another protection group.

StorageProviderDatastoreReplicationLost

Datastore included in specifiedprotection group is no longerreplicated.

User turned off replication for devicesbacking the datastore.

StorageProviderGroupProtectionRestored

Protection has been restored forspecified protection group.

The previous (non-empty) issues of aprotection group are cleared.


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Table 11-10. Protection Events (Continued)


StorageProviderVmDatastoreProtectionMissing

Datastore used by virtual machineneeds to be included in specifiedprotection group.

See description.

StorageProviderVmDatastoreProtectionConflict

Datastore used by specified virtualmachine needs to be added tospecified protection group, but iscurrently in use by an alternateprotection group.

See description.

StorageProviderVmDatastoreReplicationLost

Datastore used by specified virtualmachine and included in specifiedprotection group is no longerreplicated.

See description.

StorageProviderVmProtectionRestored

Protection for specified virtualmachine in specified protection grouphas been restored.

The previous (non-empty) issues for aprotected virtual machine are cleared.The event will not be posted whenissues related to non-protected virtualmachine are cleared

StorageProviderCgSpansProtectionGroups

Specified consistency group spansspecified protection groups.

This is raised if you have two datastoresprotected in different protection groupsbut then later you merge them into asingle consistency group on the array.

StorageProviderCgDatastoreMissingProtection

Datastore from specified consistencygroup needs to be included inspecified protection group.

See description.

StorageProviderDatastoreSpansConsistencyGroups

Datastore spans devices from differentconsistency groups.

This is raised if you have a datastore ontop of multiple LUNs but these LUNsdo not belong to the same consistencygroup.

StorageProviderNfsDatastoreUrlConflict

NFS datastores mounted fromspecified volume have different URLsmounted from the remote host. Theremote path has the specified URL,while the datastore mounted from theother host has the specified URL.

The same NFS volume is mounted usingthe different IP addresses of the sameNFS server in two different datastores.

Licensing EventsLicensing events provide information about changes in SRM licensing status.

Table 11-11. Licensing Events


LicenseExpiringEvent The SRM License at the specified siteexpires in the specified number ofdays.

Every 24 hours, non-evaluation,expiring licenses are checked for thenumber of days left. This event is postedwith the results.

EvaluationLicenseExpiringEvent The SRM Evaluation License at thespecified site expires in the specifiednumber of days.

Every 24 hours, evaluation licenses arechecked for the number of days left. Thisevent is posted with the results.

LicenseExpiredEvent The SRM license at the specified sitelicense has expired.

Every 30 minutes, expired (non-evaluation) licenses will post this event.

EvaluationLicenseExpiredEvent The SRM Evaluation License at thespecified site license has expired.

Every 30 minutes, evaluation licenseswill post this event.


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Table 11-11. Licensing Events (Continued)


UnlicensedFeatureEvent The SRM license at the specified site isoverallocated by the specified numberof licenses.

Every 24 hours and upon the protectionor unprotection of a virtual machine,this event will be posted if the totalnumber of licenses exceeds the capacityin the license.

LicenseUsageChangedEvent The SRM license at the specified site isusing the specified number out of thetotal number licenses.

Every 24 hours and upon the protectionor unprotection of a virtual machine,this event will be posted if the totalnumber of licenses does not exceed thecapacity in the license.

Permissions EventsPermission events provide information about changes to SRM permissions.

Table 11-12. Permissions Events


PermissionsAddedEvent Permission created for the entity onSRM.

A permission for the entity was createdusing the role specified. TheIsPropagate flag indicates whetherthe permission is propagated down theentity hierarchy.

PermissionsDeletedEvent Permission rule removed for the entityon SRM.

A permission for the entity was deleted.

PermissionsUpdatedEvent Permission changed for the entity onSRM.

A permission for the indicated entitywas modified.

SNMP TrapsSRM sends SNMP traps to community targets defined in vCenter. You can configure them using the vSphereClient. When you enter localhost or 127.0.0.1 as a target host for SNMP traps, SRM uses the IP address or hostname of the vSphere server as configured by the SRM installer.

SNMP traps for SRM 5.0 are backward compatible with SRM 4.0 and later releases.

Table 11-13. SNMP Traps


RecoveryPlanExecuteTestBeginTrap

This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts a test.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state.

RecoveryPlanExecuteTestEndTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planends a test.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state, resultstatus.

RecoveryPlanExecuteCleanupBeginTrap

This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts a test cleanup.


RecoveryPlanExecuteCleanupEndTrap

This trap is sent a Recovery Plan endsa test cleanup.


RecoveryPlanExecuteBeginTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts a recovery.


RecoveryPlanExecuteEndTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planends a recovery.



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Table 11-13. SNMP Traps (Continued)


RecoveryPlanExecuteReprotectBeginTrap

This trap is sent when SRM starts thereprotect workflow for a RecoveryPlan.


RecoveryPlanExecuteReprotectEndTrap

This trap is sent when SRM hasfinished the reprotect workflow for aRecovery Plan.


RecoveryVmBeginTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts recovering a virtual machine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state, virtualmachine name, virtual machine UUID.

RecoveryVmEndTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planhas finished recovering a virtualmachine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state, virtualmachine name, virtual machine UUID,result status.

RecoveryPlanServerCommandBeginTrap

This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts the execution of a commandcallout on SRM Server machine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state,command name.

RecoveryPlanServerCommandEndTrap

This trap is sent when a Recovery Planhas finished the execution of acommand callout on SRM Servermachine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state,command name, result status.

RecoveryPlanVmCommandBeginTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planstarts the execution of a commandcallout on a recovered virtualmachine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state,command name, virtual machine name,virtual machine UUID.

RecoveryPlanVmCommandEndTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planhas finished the execution of acommand callout on a recoveredvirtual machine.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state,command name, virtual machine name,virtual machine UUID, result status.

RecoveryPlanPromptDisplayTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planrequires user input before continuing.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, execution state, promptstring.

RecoveryPlanPromptResponseTrap This trap is sent when a Recovery Planno longer requires user input beforecontinuing.

SRM site name, recovery plan name,recovery type, and execution state.

Collecting SRM Log FilesSRM creates several log files that contain information that can help VMware Support diagnose problems. Youcan use the SRM log collector to simplify log file collection.

The SRM Server and client use different log files. The SRM Server log files contain information about the serverconfiguration and messages related to server operations. The SRM client log files contain information aboutthe client configuration and messages related to client plug-in operations. The SRM log file collects or retrievesthe files and compresses them in a zipped file that is placed in a location that you choose.

SRM also provides for the collection of vSphere Replication log files as part of the SRM log bundle. Log filesfrom vCenter Server instances and ESXi Server instances that are part of your SRM system might also includeinformation useful for diagnosing SRM problems.

n Collect SRM Log Files Using the vSphere Client on page 95You can download logs for SRM, the vSphere Replication appliance, vSphere Replication server,vCenter Server, and ESXi from a single site to a user-specified location.


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n Collect SRM Log Files Manually on page 95You can download SRM Server log files in a log bundle that you generate manually. This is useful if youare unable to access the vSphere Client.

Collect SRM Log Files Using the vSphere ClientYou can download logs for SRM, the vSphere Replication appliance, vSphere Replication server,vCenter Server, and ESXi from a single site to a user-specified location.

Use this information to understand and resolve issues. For best results, collect logs from each site.

Procedure

1 Click Sites, and select a site.

2 Click the Summary tab, and click Export System Logs.

3 In the Download Location text box, enter a path or click Browse to browse to a location.

VR system logs are downloaded by default. These logs include information about vSphere ReplicationManagement (VRM), VR, and replication events.

4 (Optional) Deselect the Include VR system logs check box to disable the download ofvSphere Replication log data and click Next.

The Downloading System Logs Bundles window provides information about the following:

n A list of each host system, the status of their log bundle download, and other details.

n Download Details provides information on the log bundle file name and destination for the log bundlefile.

This process does not collect client logs. You must collect client logs separately.

Collect SRM Log Files ManuallyYou can download SRM Server log files in a log bundle that you generate manually. This is useful if you areunable to access the vSphere Client.

The bundle of logs that these procedures generate is identical to the logs that you generate by using the vSphereClient.

Procedure

n Initiate the collection of SRM Server log files from the Start menu:

a Log in to the SRM Server host.

b Select Start > Programs > VMware > VMware Site Recovery Manager > Generate vCenter SiteRecovery Manager log bundle.

n Initiate the collection of SRM Server log files from the Windows command line:

a Start a Windows command shell on the SRM Server host.

b Change directory to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\bin.

c Run the following command.

cscript srm-support.wsf

The individual log files are collected in a file named srm-support-MM-DD-YYYY-HH-MM.zip, where MM-DD-YYYY-HH-MM indicates the month, day, year, hour, and minute when the log files were created.


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Change Size and Number of SRM Server Log FilesYou can change the size, number, and location of SRM Server log files.

You can modify the SRM log settings in the vmware-dr.xml configuration file on the SRM Server.

Procedure

1 Log into the SRM Server host.


You find the vmware-dr.xml file in the C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site RecoveryManager\config folder.

3 Find the <log> section in the vmware-dr.xml file.

4 Set the maximum size in megabytes of the logs to retain.

You set the maximum log size by adding a <maxFileSize> section to the <log> section. The default is 1 MB.

<log>

<maxFileSize>5000000</maxFileSize>

</log>

5 Set the maximum number of log files to retain.

You set the maximum number of logs by adding a <maxFileSize> section to the <log> section. The defaultis 10 log files.

<log>

<maxFileNum>50</maxFileNum>

</log>

6 Change the location on the SRM Server in which to store the logs.

You change the log location by modifying the <directory> section in the <log> section.

<log>

<directory>C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery

Manager\Logs</directory>

</log>

7 Change the default prefix for log files.

You change the default prefix by modifying the <name> section in the <log> section.

<log>

<name>vmware-dr</name>

</log>


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8 Change the logging level.

You change the logging level by modifying the <level> section in the <log> section. The possible logginglevels are error, warning, info, trivia, and verbose.

<log>

<level>verbose</level>

</log>

9 Change the location on the SRM Server in which to store core dumps.

You change the core dump location by modifying the <coreDump> section in the <log> section.

<log>

<coreDump>C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery

Manager\DumpFiles</coreDump>

</log>

10 (Optional) Set the level of logging for specific SRM Server components.

You can set specific logging levels for the SoapAdapter, SanConfigManager, Recovery, Folders, Libs, andHttpConnectionPool components by modifying the appropriate <level> sections. The possible logginglevels are error, warning, info, trivia, and verbose.

<level id="Recovery">

<logName>Recovery</logName>

<logLevel>trivia</logLevel>

</level>

11 (Optional) Set the level of logging for storage replication adapters.

Setting the SRM logging level does not set the logging level for SRAs. You change the SRA logging levelby adding a <level id="SraCommand"> section to vmware-dr.xml to set the SRA logging level. The possiblelogging levels are error, warning, info, trivia, and verbose.

<level id="SraCommand">

<logName>SraCommand</logName>

<logLevel>trivia</logLevel>

</level>

12 Restart the SRM Server service for changes to take effect.

Access the vSphere Replication LogsYou can use the vSphere Replication logs for system monitoring and troubleshooting. A VMware supportengineer might request these logs during a support call.

To access and download the vSphere Replication logs, you need access to the vSphere Replication virtualappliance management interface (VAMI). vSphere Replication rotates its logs when the log file reaches 50MBand keeps at most 12 compressed log files.

To manually copy log files, see “Manually Access the vSphere Replication Logs,” on page 98.

Prerequisites

n Verify that the vSphere Replication appliance is powered on.


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Procedure

1 Connect to the VAMI of the vSphere Replication appliance in a Web browser.

The URL for the VAMI is https://vr-appliance-address:5480.

You can also access the VAMI by clicking Reconfigure the VR Appliance in the vSphere Replication viewof the SRM interface.

2 Click the VRM tab and click Support.

3 Click Generate to generate a .zip package of the current vSphere Replication logs.

A link to the package containing the replication and system logs appears.

4 Click the link to download the package.

5 (Optional) Click Delete next to existing log packages to delete them individually.

Manually Access the vSphere Replication LogsYou can copy and use the vSphere Replication logs for system monitoring and troubleshooting. A VMwaresupport engineer might request these logs during a support call.

Use SCP or Win SCP to copy log folders and files from the vSphere Replication appliance.

n /opt/vmware/hms/logs/

n /opt/vmware/var/log/lighttpd/

n /var/log/vmware/

n /var/log/boot.msg

Procedure

1 In the vSphere Web Client console for the vSphere Replication appliance, open /etc/ssh/sshd_config ina text editor.

2 Set PermitRootLogin to yes.

3 Restart the sshd daemon.

Type the command /etc/init.d/sshd restart .

4 (Optional) You can also create a new user account with sudo privileges to access the log files.

Resolve SRM Operational IssuesIf you encounter problems with creating protection groups and recovery plans, failover, recovery, or guestcustomization, you can troubleshoot the problem.

SRM Doubles the Number of Backslashes in the Command Line When RunningCallouts

When a backslash is a part of the callout command line, SRM doubles all backslashes.

Problem

The command-line system interpreter treats double backslashes as a single backslash only in file paths. If thecallout command requires a backslash in a parameter other than a file path and the command does not convertdouble backslashes to a single backslash, the callout command might fail with an error.

For example, you can add a callout step to the workflow and enter the following text as a command:

c:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /C "C:\myscript.cmd" a/b/c \d\e\f \\g\\h c:\myscript.log


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As result of the callout step, SRM runs the following command:

c:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe /C "C:\\myscript.cmd" a/b/c \\d\\e\\f \\\\g\\\\h c:\\myscript.log

If myscript.cmd does not change the double backslash to a single backslash, and parameters \d\e\fand \\g\\h are sensitive to the number of back slashes, myscript.cmd can fail.

Solution

1 Create an additional command-line batch file to contain commands and all required parameters. Thecallout step runs this additional batch file without any argument. For the example, the solution is asfollows:

a In a text editor such as Notepad, create a file c:\SRM_callout.cmd with the following content:C:\myscript.cmd a/b/c \d\e\f \\g\\h c:\myscript.log

b In a recovery plan callout step, type the command to run:c:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe /C c:\SRM_callout.cmd

2 Add a code to the original script file that replaces double back slashes with a single back slash.

a Add code similar to the following sample in the beginning of the script file c:\myscript.cmd.

@echo off

set arg2=%2

set arg3=%3

set fixed_arg2=%arg2:\\=\%

set fixed_arg3=%arg3:\\=\%

If you use the shift command in a script, all backslash-sensitive parameters are handled this way.

b If you do not use the shift command in a script, make the following changes:

Replace %2 with %fixed_arg2%.

Replace %3 with %fixed_arg3%.

c Do not change the callout step command.

Powering on Many Virtual Machines Simultaneously on the Recovery Site CanLead to Errors

When many virtual machines perform boot operations at the same time, you might see errors during array-based and vSphere Replication recovery.

Problem

When powering on many virtual machines simultaneously on the recovery site, you might see these errors inthe recovery history reports:

n The command 'echo "Starting IP customization on Windows ..." > > % VMware_GuestOp_OutputFile%.

n Cannot complete customization, possibly due to a scripting runtime error or invalid script

parameters.

n An error occurred when uploading files to the guest VM.

n Timed out waiting for VMware Tools after 600 seconds.

Cause

By default, SRM does not limit the number of power-on operations that can be performed simultaneously. Ifyou encounter errors while virtual machines power on on the recovery site, you can modify the vmware-dr.xml file to set a limit on the number of virtual machines that power on simultaneously.


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If you encounter these errors, limit the number of power-on operations on the recovery site according to thecapacity of your environment for a standalone host or for a cluster.

Solution

1 On the recovery server, go to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site RecoveryManager\config.


3 Update the defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster and defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost valuesto limit the number of power-on operations at the recovery site.

The following example shows how to limit the number of power-on operations to a maximum of 32 percluster and 4 per standalone host.

<config>

<defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>32</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>

<defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>4</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>

</config>

4 Restart the SRM Server service.

LVM.enableResignature=1 Remains Set After a SRM Test FailoverSite Recovery Manager does not support ESXi environments in which the LVM.enableResignature flag is setto 0.

Problem

During a test failover or an actual failover, SRM sets LVM.enableResignature to 1 if the flag is not alreadyset. SRM sets this flag to resignature snapshot volumes and mounts them on ESXi hosts for recovery. After theoperation finishes, the flag remains set to 1.

Cause

SRM does not check how snapshot volumes are presented to ESXi hosts. SRM does not support setting theLVM.enableResignature flag to 0. If you set the flag from 1 to 0, a virtual machine outage might occur eachtime you perform a test failover or an actual failover occurs.

Setting the LVM.enableResignature flag on ESXi hosts is a host-wide operation. When this flag is set to 1,during the host rescan or the next host reboot, all snapshot LUNs that are visible to the ESXi host, and that canbe resignatured, are resignatured.

If snapshot volumes unrelated to SRM are forcefully mounted to ESXi hosts on the recovery site, these LUNsare resignatured as part of a host rescan during a test failover or an actual failover process. As a result, all thevirtual machines in these volumes become inaccessible.

Solution

To prevent outages, make sure that no snapshot LUNs that are unrelated to SRM, and that are forcefullymounted, are visible to ESXi hosts on the recovery site.


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Adding Virtual Machines to a Protection Group Fails with an Unresolved DevicesError

Adding virtual machines to a protection group fails with an error if you did not configure the appropriateinventory mappings.

Problem

When you add a virtual machine to a protection group, you see the error Unable to protect VM 'virtualmachine name' due to unresolved devices.

Cause

You did not configure the inventory mappings to map the devices of the virtual machine on the protected siteto the corresponding devices on the recovery site.

Solution

Configure the inventory mappings as described in Chapter 2, “Creating SRM Placeholders and Mappings,”on page 19.

Recovery Fails with a Timeout Error During Network Customization for SomeVirtual Machines

During a recovery some virtual machines do not recover and show a timeout error during networkcustomization.

Problem

During failover some virtual machines do not recover within the default timeout period of 120 seconds.

Cause

This problem can occur for one of the following reasons.

n The VMware Tools package is not installed on the virtual machine that you are recovering.

n The datastore on the recovery site is full.

Solution

1 Verify that VMware Tools is installed on the virtual machine that you are recovering.

2 Check the available capacity of the datastore on the recovery site.

If the datastore is full or almost full, increasing the timeout period for guest customization can resolve theissue.

a In the vSphere Client, select the host and select Configuration > Advanced Settings.

b Update the customization timeout parameter to 1200 seconds.

3 Run the recovery again.


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Scalability Problems when Replicating Many Virtual Machines with a Short RPOto a Shared VMFS Datastore on ESXi Server 5.0

Performance might be slow if you replicate a large number of virtual machines with a short Recovery PointObjective (RPO) to a single virtual machine file store (VMFS) datastore that is accessible by multiple hosts onthe recovery site.

Problem

This problem occurs when running ESXi Server 5.0 on the recovery site. It can result in missed RPO targets.

The number of virtual machines that can successfully replicate to a single, shared VMFS datastore increases ifthe RPO targets are longer.

Follow the guidelines when calculating the number of virtual machines that you should replicate to a singleVMFS volume on the recovery site.

n If all your virtual machines have an RPO of 15 minutes, performance is affected when replicating 50 to100 virtual machines to the same VMFS datastore.

n If all your virtual machines have an RPO of 30 minutes, performance is affected when replicating 100 to200 virtual machines to the same VMFS datastore.

If you have heterogeneous RPO targets in a protection group, calculate the harmonic mean of the RPO targetswhen calculating the number of virtual machines that you can replicate to a single VMFS volume. For example,if you have 100 virtual machines with an RPO of 20 minutes and 50 virtual machines with an RPO of 600minutes, you calculate the harmonic mean of the RPO as follows:

150/(100/20 + 50/600) = ~30

In this example, the configuration is similar to a setup with 150 virtual machines, each having an RPO ofapproximately 30 minutes. In this case, performance is affected if these 150 virtual machines replicate to asingle VMFS volume.

Cause

This problem affects only VMFS datastores that are shared by multiple hosts. It does not occur on datastoresthat are local to one host or on other datastore types, such as NFS. This problem affects only installations thatare running ESXi Server 5.0.

The number of vSphere Replication servers is not relevant. These limits apply to the number of virtual machinesthat you can replicate to a single VMFS datastore.

Solution

1 Upgrade ESXi Server to version 5.1 on the recovery site.

2 If you cannot upgrade ESXi Server to version 5.1, redistribute the replicated virtual machines or adjusttheir RPO.

n Reduce the number of virtual machines with a short RPO that replicate to a single VMFS volume, forexample by using a larger number of smaller datastores.

n Increase the RPO of the virtual machines replicating to a single VMFS volume to create a longerharmonic mean RPO.


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Application Quiescing Changes to File System Quiescing During vMotion to anOlder Host

vSphere Replication can create an application quiesced replica for virtual machines with Windows Server 2008and Windows 8 guest operating systems running on an ESXi 5.1 host.

Problem

The ESXi 5.1 host is in a cluster with hosts from older versions and you use vMotion to move the replicatedvirtual machine to an older host. vSphere Replication then creates a file system quiesced replica.

Cause

A mix of ESXi 5.1 and older hosts in the cluster creates a file system quiesced replica during vMotion to anolder host. The process should instead create an application quiesced replica.

Solution

Make sure that all hosts in the cluster are running ESXi 5.1 before you use vMotion to move a Windows Server2008 and Windows 8 virtual machine with application quiescing.

Reconfigure Replication on Virtual Machines with No Datastore MappingIf you did not configure the datastore mappings before configuring vSphere Replication on multiple virtualmachines, the replication configuration fails.

Problem

On the Virtual Machines tab for a vSphere Replication site, virtual machines appear in red with the statusDatastore mappings were not configured.

Cause

You did not configure datastore mappings before configuring replication on multiple virtual machines. Youmust reconfigure replication on the virtual machines individually.

Solution

1 Select the vSphere Replication view in the SRM interface.

2 Select the remote vSphere Replication site and click the Virtual Machines tab.

3 Right-click a virtual machine with the status Datastore mappings were not configured and selectConfigure Replication.

The RPO value and any quiescing methods that you set when you attempted to configure the multiplevirtual machines are already set.

4 Click Browse to select the target datastore for the VMX file and click Next.

5 Click Browse to select the target datastore for the VMDK file and click Next.

6 Select a vSphere Replication server on the target site and click Next.

7 Click Finish.

When the reconfiguration is finished, the virtual machine synchronizes with the target site.

8 Repeat Step 3 through Step 7 for all virtual machines that show the status Datastore mappings were notconfigured.


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Configuring Replication Fails for Virtual Machines with Two Disks on DifferentDatastores

If you try to configure vSphere Replication on a virtual machine that includes two disks that are contained indifferent datastores, the configuration fails.

Problem

Configuration of replication fails with the error Multiple source disks, with device keys device_keys,point to the same destination datastore and file path.

The replication group remains in the error state.

Cause

This problem occurs because vSphere Replication does not generate a unique datastore path or file name forthe destination virtual disk.

Solution

If you select different datastores for the VMDK files on the protected site, you must also select differentdatastores for the target VMDK files on the secondary site.

Alternatively, you can create a unique datastore path by placing the VMDK files in separate folders on a singletarget datastore on the secondary site.

vSphere Replication RPO ViolationsYou might encounter RPO violations even if vSphere Replication is running successfully at the recovery site.

Problem

When you replicate virtual machines, you might encounter RPO violations.

Cause

RPO violations might occur for one of the following reasons:

n Network connectivity problems between source hosts and vSphere Replication servers at the target site.

n As a result of changing the IP address, the vSphere Replication server has a different IP address.

n The vSphere Replication server cannot access the target datastore.

n Slow bandwidth between the source hosts and the vSphere Replication servers.

Solution

n Search the vmkernel.log at the source host for the vSphere Replication server IP address to see any networkconnectivity problems.

n Verify that the vSphere Replication server IP address is the same. If it is different, reconfigure all thereplications, so that the source hosts use the new IP address.

n Check /var/log/vmware/*hbrsrv* at the vSphere Replication appliance at the target site for problems withthe server accessing a target datastore.


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vSphere Replication Does Not Start After Moving the HostIf you move the ESXi Server on which the vSphere Replication appliance runs to the inventory of anothervCenter Server instance, vSphere Replication operations are not available. vSphere Replication operations arealso unavailable if you reinstall vCenter Server.

Problem

If the ESXi Server instance on which vSphere Replication runs is disconnected from vCenter Server and isconnected to another vCenter Server instance, you cannot access vSphere Replication functions. If you try torestart vSphere Replication, the service does not start.

Cause

The OVF environment for the vSphere Replication appliance is stored in the vCenter Server database. Whenthe ESXi host is removed from the vCenter Server inventory, the OVF environment for thevSphere Replication appliance is lost. This action disables the mechanisms that the vSphere Replicationappliance uses to authenticate with vCenter Server.

Solution

1 (Optional) If possible, redeploy the vSphere Replication appliance and reconfigure the replications.

2 (Optional) If you cannot redeploy the vSphere Replication appliance, run the va-util command to connectvSphere Replication to the new vCenter Server instance.

a Reconnect the ESXi host to vCenter Server.

b Use SSH to connect to the vSphere Replication appliance as root.

c Change directories to the /opt/vmware/hms/libs directory.

cd /opt/vmware/hms/libs

d Type the following command to restore vSphere Replication.

In the following command, vCenter_Server_username must be a vCenter Server administrator account.

java -jar va-util.jar -cmd certauth -host vCenter_Server_address -port 80

-user vCenter_Server_username -pass vCenter_Server_password \

-extkey com.vmware.vcHms -keystore /opt/vmware/hms/security/hms-keystore.jks -

keystorealias jetty \

-keystorepass vmware

e Type the following command to restart the vSphere Replication service.

service hms restart

If you run the va-util command, you must repeat Step 2a to Step 2e each time that you change thevSphere Replication certificate.

Unexpected vSphere Replication Failure Results in a Generic ErrorvSphere Replication includes a generic error message in the logs when certain unexpected failures occur.

Problem

Certain unexpected vSphere Replication failures result in the error message VRM Server generic error.Please check the documentation for any troubleshooting information..


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In addition to the generic error, the message provides more detailed information about the problem, similarto the following examples.

n VRM Server generic error. Please check the documentation for any troubleshooting information.

The detailed exception is: 'org.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException: Connection to

https://vCenter_Server_address refused'. This error relates to problems connecting to vCenter Server.

n VRM Server generic error. Please check the documentation for any troubleshooting information.

The detailed exception is: 'org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: DB2 SQL Error:

SQLCODE=-1585, SQLSTATE=54048, SQLERRMC=null, DRIVER=4.13.80'. This error relates to problemsconnecting to the database.

Cause

vSphere Replication sends this message when it encounters configuration or infrastructure errors. For example,network issues, database connection issues, or host overload.

Solution

Check the detailed exception message for information about the problem. Depending on the details of themessage, you can try to retry the failed operation, restart vSphere Replication, or correct the infrastructure.


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Index

AActive Directory domain controllers, limits on

protection 83Advanced Settings, vSphere Replication 80advanced settings

local site 76recovery site 77remote site 78replication 78storage 78

Advanced Settings dialog boxes 76affinity rules, limits on recovery 83alarms, SRM-specific 86all paths down, recovery plans 35all paths down (APD) 40Application quiescing during vMotion 103array based recovery plan, create 38array-based protection group, edit 30array-based replication

across multiple LUNs 28virtual machine components on multiple

arrays 83

Bbackslashes in callouts 98

Ccallouts, See also recover stepscauses of RPO violations 104changing SRM Server log settings 96cleanup, recovery plan 40consistency groups 27custom recovery steps

command 53configure 55, 56environment variables 56handling failure 54message prompts 53

customizing, IP properties 59, 60customizing SRM 73

Ddatastore group, how computed 28datastore groups 27datastore mappings, configure 22DPM, SRM interaction 36

DR IP Customizerexamples of CSV files 66guidelines for modifying CSV 66run 71structure of CSV file 63

dr-ip-customizer.exe, reference 62DRS, SRM interaction 36

Eenvironment variables 56error powering on many virtual machines 99events

licensing 92permissions 93protection groups 87recovery 89site status 86storage 90storage provider 90types 86

Ffailback

diagram 47perform 48

failover, effects of 40fault tolerant virtual machines

protection 37reprotect 37

forced recovery 35, 40

Ggenerate manually 95

HHigh Availability, and SRM 37

Iinventory mappings

create 21to apply 31to override 73, 74

IP address mappings, to report 61IP customization, multiple virtual machines 61IP customization,OSP Tools 59, 60IP properties, customizing 59, 60

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Llicensing, events 92limits, limits on recovery 83linked clones, limitations on recovery of 83log files, collecting 94logs, downloading 95LVM.enableResignature flag setting after

failover 100

Mmappings 19monitoring connection 85MSCS

protection 37reprotect 37

Nnetwork

datacenter 34test 34

Pper-virtual machine command steps, create 55per-virtual machine message prompts, create 56permissions

events 93to assign 12

permissions, how SRM handles permissions 12physical couriering 25placeholder datastore, add 22placeholder datastores 21placeholder virtual machine templates 19placeholder virtual machines 19placeholders 19privileges 11protection group

create 29unresolved devices error 101

protection groupsarray-based 27events 87relation to recovery plan 27vSphere Replication 30

RRDM, support 83recovery

customize for a virtual machine 57events 89multiple recovery site hosts 75of datastores in APD state 40steps 52

recovery planAPD state 35cleanup 39, 40

command steps 56create 37customizing 51deleting 41differences between testing and running 36disaster recovery 35force cleanup 39forced recovery 35, 40planned migration 35privileges 36run 33, 37running 35, 36, 40steps 51suspend virtual machines 39

test, create 33testing 34, 36, 39time-outs 51to change properties of 38to report IP address mappings used by 61virtual machine recovery priority 51

recovery priority, virtual machine 51, 52recovery step commands

per-virtual machine 53top-level 53

recovery test, to cancel 41replicate virtual machines using vSphere

Replication 23replicating multiple virtual machines, datastore

mapping not configured 103replicating virtual machines 23replication

configuration fails 104missed RPO target 102scalability issue with VMFS 102sneakernet 25troubleshooting 102, 104virtual machines with two disks 104

replication seeds 25reprotect

diagram 43overview 43preconditions 45process 44remediate 45run 45states 45

reservations, limits on recovery 83Resize VMDK file, with replication seeds 75Resize VMDK file, without replication seeds 76roles, to assign 12


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Ssettings for large environments 80, 81SIOC

disaster recovery 83planned migration 83reprotect 83

site status, events 86snapshots, limitations on recovery of 83sneakernet, replication 25SNMP traps 93SRA 79SRM administration 7SRM roles 13steps, recovery 52storage, events 90storage provider, events 90suspended virtual machines, limitations on

recovery oflimitations on recovery of 83swap files, prevent replication 74system logs, replication logs 97, 98

Ttest recovery plan, Auto option 34top-level command steps, create 54top-level message prompts, create 55troubleshooting

failover 98guest customization 98recovery 98, 101recovery times out 101

Uupdated information 9

Vvirtual machine

customize IP properties 71customize recovery of 57recovery priority 51, 52suspend during recovery 39

VMware Tools, and recovery 77vmware-dr.xml file 80, 81vr protection group, edit 31vSphere Replication

generic error 105host moved 105replicate virtual machines 24

vSphere Replication roles 16vSphere Replication server, move 26

Index

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Documents

srm-admin-5-1