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
Figure 5‑1. SRM Reprotect Process
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Site A
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Site B
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Direction of replication is reversed after a planned migration
Recovery site becomes
protected site
Protected site
becomes recovery
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How SRM Performs Reprotect on page 50
The reprotect process involves two stages. SRM reverses the direction of protection, then forces a
synchronization of the storage from the new protected site to the new recovery site.
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Preconditions for Performing Reprotect on page 51
You can perform reprotect only if you meet certain preconditions.
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Reprotect Virtual Machines on page 51
Reprotect results in the reconfiguration of SRM protection groups and recovery plans to work in the
opposite direction. With reprotect, you can recover virtual machines back to the original site after a
recovery.
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Reprotect States on page 52
The reprotect process passes through several states that you can observe in the recovery plan in the
SRM plug-in in the vSphere Client.
How SRM Performs Reprotect
The reprotect process involves two stages. SRM reverses the direction of protection, then forces a
synchronization 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 Replication
to reverse the direction of replication. After reversing the replication, SRM creates placeholder virtual
machines at 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 original
protected virtual machine to determine where to create the placeholder virtual machine. SRM uses the
identity of the original protected virtual machine to create the placeholder and any subsequent recovered
virtual machines. If the original protected virtual machines are no longer available, SRM uses the inventory
mappings from the original recovery site to the original protected site to determine the resource pools and
folders for the placeholder 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 virtual
machines in the placeholder datastore for the original protected site, not in the datastore that held the
original protected virtual machines.
Forcing synchronization of data from the new protection site to the new recovery site ensures that the
recovery site has a current copy of the protected virtual machines running at the protection site. Forcing this
synchronization ensures that recovery is possible immediately after the reprotect finishes.
When performing reprotect with vSphere Replication, SRM uses the original VMDK files as initial copies
during synchronization. The full synchronization that appears in the recovery steps mostly performs
checksums, and only a small amount of data is transferred through the network.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
50 VMware, Inc.