5.5

Disaster Recovery and Reprotect of Virtual Machines on Datastores that Use
SIOC
If you run a recovery with SIOC enabled, the recovery will succeed with errors. After the recovery, you
must manually disable SIOC on the protected site and run a planned migration recovery again. You cannot
run reprotect until you have successfully run a planned migration.
Protection and Recovery of Virtual Machines with Components on Multiple
Arrays
Array-based replication in SRM depends on the concept of an array pair. SRM defines groups of datastores
that it recovers as units. As a consequence, limitations apply to how you can store the components of virutal
machines that you protect using array-based replication.
n
SRM does not support storing virtual machine components on multiple arrays on the protected site that
replicate to a single array on the recovery site.
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SRM does not support storing virtual machine components on multiple arrays on the protected site that
replicate to mulitple arrays on the recovery site, if the virtual machine components span both arrrays.
If you replicate virtual machine components from multiple arrays to a single array or to a span of arrays on
the recovery site, the VMX configurations of the UUID of the datastores on the protected site do not match
the configurations on the recovery site.
The location of the VMX file of a virtual machine determines which array pair a virtual machine belongs to.
A virtual machine cannot belong to two array pairs, so if it has more than one disk and if one of those disks
is in an array that is not part of the array pair to which the virtual machine belongs, SRM cannot protect the
whole virtual machine. SRM handles the disk that is not on the same array pair as the virtual machine as a
non-replicated device.
As a consequence, store all the virtual disks, swap files, RDM devices, and the working directory for the
virtual machine on LUNs in the same array so that SRM can protect all the components of the virtual
machine.
Protection and Recovery of Active Directory Domain Controllers
Do not use SRM to protect Active Directory domain controllers. Active Directory provides its own
replication technology and restore mode. Use the Active Directory replication technology and restore mode
technologies to handle disaster recovery situations.
Using SRM with Admission Control Clusters
You can use Admission Control on a cluster to reserve resources on the recovery site. However, using
Admission Control can affect disaster recovery by preventing SRM from powering on virtual machines
when running a recovery plan. Admission Control can prevent virtual machines from powering on if
powering them on would violate the relevant Admission Control constraints.
You can add a command step to a recovery plan to run a PowerCLI script that disables Admission Control
during the recovery. See “Creating Custom Recovery Steps,” on page 58 for information about creating
command steps.
1 Create a pre-power on command step in the recovery plan that runs a PowerCLI script to disable
Admission Control.
Get-Cluster cluster_name | Set-Cluster -HAAdmissionControlEnabled:$false
Chapter 10 Troubleshooting SRM Administration
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