5.5
Table Of Contents
- Site Recovery Manager Administration
- Contents
- About VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Administration
- SRM Privileges, Roles, and Permissions
- Replicating Virtual Machines
- How the Recovery Point Objective Affects Replication Scheduling
- Replicating a Virtual Machine and Enabling Multiple Point in Time Instances
- Configure Replication for a Single Virtual Machine
- Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines
- Replicate Virtual Machines By Using Replication Seeds
- Reconfigure Replications
- Stop Replicating a Virtual Machine
- Creating Protection Groups
- Creating, Testing, and Running Recovery Plans
- Testing a Recovery Plan
- Performing a Planned Migration or Disaster Recovery By Running a Recovery Plan
- Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery Plan
- How SRM Interacts with DPM and DRS During Recovery
- How SRM Interacts with Storage DRS or Storage vMotion
- How SRM Interacts with vSphere High Availability
- Protecting Microsoft Cluster Server and Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
- Create, Test, and Run a Recovery Plan
- Export Recovery Plan Steps
- View and Export Recovery Plan History
- Cancel a Test or Recovery
- Delete a Recovery Plan
- Reprotecting Virtual Machines After a Recovery
- Restoring the Pre-Recovery Site Configuration By Performing Failback
- Customizing a Recovery Plan
- Recovery Plan Steps
- Specify the Recovery Priority of a Virtual Machine
- Creating Custom Recovery Steps
- Types of Custom Recovery Steps
- How SRM Handles Custom Recovery Steps
- Create Top-Level Command Steps
- Create Top-Level Message Prompt Steps
- Create Command Steps for Individual Virtual Machines
- Create Message Prompt Steps for Individual Virtual Machines
- Guidelines for Writing Command Steps
- Environment Variables for Command Steps
- Customize the Recovery of an Individual Virtual Machine
- Customizing IP Properties for Virtual Machines
- Advanced SRM Configuration
- Configure Protection for a Virtual Machine or Template
- Configure Resource Mappings for a Virtual Machine
- Specify a Nonreplicated Datastore for Swap Files
- Recovering Virtual Machines Across Multiple Hosts on the Recovery Site
- Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Using Replication Seeds
- Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Without Using Replication Seeds
- Reconfigure SRM Settings
- Change Local Site Settings
- Change Logging Settings
- Change Recovery Settings
- Change Remote Site Settings
- Change the Timeout for the Creation of Placeholder Virtual Machines
- Change Storage Settings
- Change Storage Provider Settings
- Change vSphere Replication Settings
- Modify Settings to Run Large SRM Environments
- Troubleshooting SRM Administration
- Limitations to Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines
- SRM Events and Alarms
- vSphere Replication Events and Alarms
- Collecting SRM Log Files
- Access the vSphere Replication Logs
- Resolve SRM Operational Issues
- SRM Doubles the Number of Backslashes in the Command Line When Running Callouts
- Powering on Many Virtual Machines Simultaneously on the Recovery Site Can Lead to Errors
- LVM.enableResignature=1 Remains Set After a SRM Test Failover
- Adding Virtual Machines to a Protection Group Fails with an Unresolved Devices Error
- Configuring Protection fails with Placeholder Creation Error
- Planned Migration Fails Because Host is in an Incorrect State
- Recovery Fails with a Timeout Error During Network Customization for Some Virtual Machines
- Recovery Fails with Unavailable Host and Datastore Error
- Reprotect Fails with a vSphere Replication Timeout Error
- Recovery Plan Times Out While Waiting for VMware Tools
- Reprotect Fails After Restarting vCenter Server
- Rescanning Datastores Fails Because Storage Devices are Not Ready
- Scalability Problems when Replicating Many Virtual Machines with a Short RPO to a Shared VMFS Datastore on ESXi Server 5.0
- Application Quiescing Changes to File System Quiescing During vMotion to an Older Host
- Reconfigure Replication on Virtual Machines with No Datastore Mapping
- Configuring Replication Fails for Virtual Machines with Two Disks on Different Datastores
- vSphere Replication RPO Violations
- vSphere Replication Does Not Start After Moving the Host
- Unexpected vSphere Replication Failure Results in a Generic Error
- Generating Support Bundles Disrupts vSphere Replication Recovery
- Recovery Plan Times Out While Waiting for VMware Tools
- Index
How SRM Interacts with vSphere High Availability
You 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 on
new hosts within the same site. SRM protects virtual machines against full site failures by restarting the
virtual machines at the recovery site. The key difference between HA and SRM is that HA operates on
individual virtual machines and restarts the virtual machines automatically. SRM operates at the recovery
plan level and requires 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 the
placeholder virtual machine before performing recovery, at any time after you have configured the
protection of the virtual machine.
You can replicate HA virtual machines by using array-based replication or vSphere Replication. If HA
restarts a protected virtual on another host on the protected site, vSphere Replication will perform a full
sync after the virtual machine restarts.
SRM does not require HA as a prerequisite for protecting virtual machines. Similarly, HA does not require
SRM.
Protecting Microsoft Cluster Server and Fault Tolerant Virtual
Machines
You can use SRM to protect Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) and fault tolerant virtual machines, with
certain limitations.
To use SRM to protect MSCS and fault tolerant virtual machines, you might need to change your
environment.
General Limitations to Protecting MSCS and Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
Protecting MSCS and fault tolerant virtual machines is subject to the following limitations.
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You can use array-based replication only to protect MSCS virtual machines. Protecting MSCS virtual
machines with vSphere Replication is not supported.
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Reprotect of MSCS or fault tolerant virtual machines requires VMware High Availability (HA) and
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). When you move MSCS or fault tolerant virtual
machines across their primary and secondary sites during reprotect, you must enable HA and DRS, and
set the affinity and antiaffinity rules as appropriate. See “DRS Requirements for Protection of MSCS
Virtual Machines,” on page 42.
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vSphere does not support vSphere vMotion for MSCS virtual machines.
ESXi Host Requirements for Protection of MSCS Virtual Machines
To protect MSCS or fault tolerant virtual machines, the ESXi host machines on which the virtual machines
run must meet certain criteria.
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You must run a fault tolerant virtual machine and its shadow on two separate ESXi Server instances.
Chapter 4 Creating, Testing, and Running Recovery Plans
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