6.1

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Associates the storage policies that you select with the storage policy protection group.
Site Recovery Manager protects all compliant storage policies that you include in the storage policy
protection group.
n
The local storage policy protection group actively protects the appropriate vSphere entities on the local
vCenter Server instance and determines the compliance of the storage policies that it contains. The
initial protection of the newly created storage policy protection group includes protecting all of the
virtual machines that are associated with the storage polices in the protection group, based on the latest
known state of the vSphere inventory.
NOTE The initial protection does not include any storage synchronization for the associated consistency
groups. You must replicate the storage according to its regular schedule, independently of vSphere and
Site Recovery Manager.
n
Starts vSphere inventory monitoring to detect any vSphere entities that are added to the inventory after
the initial protection. If Site Recovery Manager fails to protect any vSphere entities, the creation of the
storage policy protection group does not fail, but errors appear in the protection group properties.
n
Creates a peer managed object to represent the storage policy protection group on the
Site Recovery Manager Server instance on the recovery site. This object is ready for recovery
immediately after creation, even if the underlying storage is not yet ready for recovery.
After you create a storage policy protection group, you might need to synchronize the underlying storage to
make sure that the protected vSphere entities are recoverable. Run a test recovery with the option to
replicate recent changes as soon as possible after you create the protection group.
Prerequisites for Storage Policy Protection Groups
When you create storage policy protection groups, you must first create storage policies and ensure that
your environment meets certain prerequisites.
Prerequisites
n
Create datastore tags and assign them to datastores to associate with a storage policy:
n
If your environment does not use Enhanced Linked Mode, create tag categories and tags and
assign them to the datastores to protect on the protected site. Create tag categories and tags and
assign them to the datastores to which to recover virtual machines on the recovery site. The tag and
category names must be identical on both sites.
n
If your environment uses Enhanced Linked Mode, create tag categories and tags only on the
protected site. The tags are replicated to other vCenter Server instances in Enhanced Linked Mode
environments.
n
Create virtual machine storage polices in vCenter Server on both sites, that include the tags that you
assigned to the datastores to protect. Create virtual machine policies on both sites even if your
environment uses Enhanced Linked Mode. The storage policies can have different names on each site.
n
Associate virtual machines to protect with the appropriate storage policy on the protected site. You
must associate all of a virtual machine's disks with the same storage policy.
n
Configure array-based replication of the datastores from the protected site to the recovery site by using
the replication technology that your array vendor provides.
n
Configure inventory mappings in Site Recovery Manager. If you use storage policy protection groups
and you do not configure mappings, planned migration or disaster recovery fail and
Site Recovery Manager creates temporary placeholder mappings.
n
When Site Recovery Manager Server starts, Site Recovery Manager queries the storage policy-based
management and tag manager services in vCenter Server to find virtual machines that are associated
with a storage policy. These services and vCenter Server must be running when you start or restart
Site Recovery Manager Server. If they are not running, Site Recovery Manager Server does not start.
Chapter 5 Creating and Managing Protection Groups
VMware, Inc. 49