Users Guide

The recovery site is an alternative facility to which these services can be migrated. The recovery site can be located thousands

of miles away. The recovery site is usually located in a facility that is unlikely to be affected by environmental, infrastructure, or

other disturbances that affect the protected site.

NOTE: The ME4 Series SRA connects VMware SRM with the storage system’s replication functionality, so you might

encounter different terminology that has similar meanings. For example, the VMware user interface and documentation

typically refer to protected and recovery sites. The ME Storage Manager (MESM) user interface and replication

documentation refer to primary and secondary volumes and sites.

SRM requirements

A typical SRM configuration involves two geographically separated sites with TCP/IP connectivity, the protected site and the

recovery site. The protected site is the site that is being replicated to the recovery site for disaster recovery. Each site contains

a Dell EMC ME4 Series storage system, VMware ESX servers, a Virtual Center (vCenter) server, and an SRM server running the

SRM.

After you have set up the protected site and the recovery site, and installed the necessary infrastructure for networking

between the two sites, you can install and configure the software. For more information, see Configuring the ME4 Series

storage systems on page 5.

Configuring the ME4 Series storage systems

If your ME4 Series storage systems are not already configured:

1. Follow the installation instructions in your Dell EMC ME4 Series Storage System Deployment Guide.

2. Ensure that both storage systems have the same host interface configuration (iSCSI or FC or hybrid FC/iSCSI).

Configure replication

NOTE:

Ensure the storage system name, user credentials, and IP addresses for both storage systems are set before

configuring the SRA. The SRA uses the same user credentials for both the local and remote storage system, so if the

manage user does have the same password on both sites, create a new user ID for the SRA with manage on both

systems. See Best practices on page 13 for additional setup information.

1. Use the ME Storage Manager (MESM) to configure replication software, following the instructions in the replication section

of the Administrator’s Guide, including the following settings for SRA:

● snapshot-count: 3 (or higher)

● snapshot-history: both

● snapshot-retention: high

● queue-policy: queue-latest

● (optional) snapshot-basename: same-as-volume-name

NOTE:

Setting the basename as indicated makes troubleshooting easier because replication snapshots will have the

same name as the base volume with _nnnn appended (indicating the replication generation number).

2. Use the MESM on each system to define the other system in the replication set as a remote system.

3. Use the MESM to perform at least one replication.

4. Use the MESM to schedule replications from the protected site to the recovery site. Doing so ensures that, in the event of a

disaster that disables the protected site, damages hardware, or damages files, SRM can use the most recently replicated

copy at the recovery site for disaster recovery. It is important, when using scheduled replication replications, to verify that

the source of the most recent replication was in a valid state.

Installing and configuring the SRA