6.1

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel [phone] Fax [phone] www.vmware.com
Copyright © 2015 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellec
tual property laws. VMware products a
re covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents.
VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other mark
s and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Exercise 3: Configure placeholder datastore
Site Recovery Manager creates a placeholder virtual machine at the recovery site for every
protected virtual machine. Placeholder virtual machines are contained in a datastore and
registered with vCenter Server at the recovery site. This datastore is referred to as a
“placeholder datastore”. Placeholder virtual machines do not have virtual disks (VMDK files) so
they consume minimal storage capacity.
Create a small datastore that is accessible by all hosts at the recovery site for use as a
placeholder datastore. Create a similar datastore at the protected site, as well. At least one
placeholder datastore is required at each site to utilize the failover and failback functionality in
Site Recovery Manager. If you are using array replication, do not configure replication for the
placeholder datastores.
It is possible to configure multiple placeholder datastores at each site. Typically, one
placeholder datastore at each site is sufficient. Multiple placeholder datastores may be
beneficial in larger environments such as a site with multiple vSphere clusters or a shared
recovery site.
Figure 9. Placeholder Datastores in the Site Recovery Manager User Interface
Exercise 4: Add Array Manager and Enable
Array Pair (If Using Array Replication)
This exercise is necessary only if using array replication. If you are using vSphere Replication,
this exercise can be skipped.
When using array replication, a storage replication adapter is required for the specific array
replication solution to be used with Site Recovery Manager. Storage replication adapters are
software components that are produced and supported by the array replication vendors. The
Site Recovery Manager compatibility guide on VMware’s web site should be used to determine
if a storage replication adapter is available for the array replication technology in the evaluation
environment. Only storage replication adapters downloaded from vmware.com should be used
to ensure compatibility and support.