One of the labs we’re creating for the upcoming Omaha-Area
VMUG is SRM. It is posing some
interesting challenges. The biggest
challenge is figuring out how to best provide a lab to 15 pairs of people
without creating 30 sites. We will cut
some corners on that issue by having the instructor perform some of the core
tasks like pairing sites and configuring the arrays. This leaves users to work directly with the
Protection Groups and Recovery Plans, which is where people need to pay the
most attention anyways.
The other interesting challenge for us is one you find each
time you setup SRM for a different array than you’ve done in the past. In this case it was setting it up to use a
CX4 using MirrorView.
For those who aren’t familiar with why this is a big deal,
let me explain. SRM ties directly into
the storage array in order to affect the status of the replication and to
create LUN level snapshots during failover tests. In order to do this, SRM uses a Site Recovery
Adapter (SRA) to talk to the array. The
twist is that the storage vendor is responsible for creating the SRA for each
array that SRM supports. The difficulty
lies in the different implementations and prerequisites each vendor has for
their SRAs.
Here are a few things I discovered about using the EMC
MirrorView SRA:
- Not only do you need to install the SRA on the
SRM server, but you also need to install EMC’s Solutions Enabler. As I understand it, Solutions Enabler is the
foundation for software that needs to talk to the CX4 storage processors
(somewhat analogous to the .NET framework).
EMC folks correct me where I might be wrong.
- After creating the remote mirror of the LUN, you
need to create a snapshot of the destination LUN (at the recovery site). The name you give this snapshot must include
the substring “VMWARE_SRM_SNAP”. Make
sure reserve LUNs are created for this snapshot, which should be done when using
the “Configure SnapView Snapshots” wizard.
The SRA will NOT create the snapshot on the fly for you like some SRAs
will.
- A Consistency Group is not necessary unless your
protected VMs cross multiple LUNs or you want multiple LUNs in a single Protection
Group
Useful links:
EMC_MirrorView_Adapter_for_VMware_SRM_Release_Notes_v1.4