White Papers
Table Of Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 VMware SRM terminology
- 3 Overview and prerequisites
- 4 Configuring array based replication
- 5 Installation and configuration of VMware SRM
- 6 SRM protection groups
- 7 Recovery plans
- 8 Testing
- 9 Recovery
- 10 Failback
- 11 Considerations for guest iSCSI connected volumes
- 12 Summary
- A Technical support and resources
24 Disaster Recovery with Dell PS Series SANs and VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager | TR1073
6.1 Datastore cluster considerations in protection groups
vSphere includes a functionality for datastores called a datastore cluster. A datastore cluster is a grouping of
datastores that allows for ease of VM placement as well as load balancing and capacity balancing across
datastores in the cluster. It leverages storage DRS to move VMs to the appropriate datastore either manually
or automatically. Storage DRS can recognize if a datastore is replicated, and this information is then used by
Storage DRS in deciding which automatic moves it can make. Storage DRS will not perform any automatic
migrations that would impair the recoverability of a VM with SRM.
However, SAN replication is configured at the datastore volume level. When a VM is storage vMotioned to
another datastore this is seen at the SAN level new data, not the movement of data from one volume to
another. This new data must be replicated to the DR site before the vMotioned VM can be fully protected
again. Care should be taken to avoid excessive relocation of VM storage to avoid unnecessary data
replication.