I received Michael White’s(VMware BCDR Specialist SE) weekly newsletter over the weekend and the following is a question I also receive on a regular basis so why not blog it?!
I had a disagreement with a friend about where to get SRA’s from. He was under the impression that we didn’t have the arrays in our premises for all of the SRA’s on the market and so it was OK to take an SRA from a vendor as they could test it. The fact is we do have most, or all of the arrays for each SRA in-house but that is actually not relevant. It is important to only take SRA’s from the VMware web site for a different reason. When a vendor finishes updating or writing an SRA, it is run against a special program that produces a log. The SRA and log are sent to VMware and we check them out. Sometimes they are sent back for improving or fixes. This continues until the SRA passes and then it is posted on our web site. If you took the SRA from the vendor you may accidentally get an SRA that in a week or a month we might decline and send back to be fixed. So please, make sure you get the only safe copy of an SRA available, and that is from our web site!
Disclosure – I’m an EMC employee.
I thought I would publicly share my response to Michael’s point:
For what it’s worth – I agree – ALWAYS get the SRA from VMware’s official site. Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating to have a delay an SRA getting posted there (when the array vendor has an SRA with a known fix or new feature).
But, since VMware is the first point of contact on SRM support (escalating to the vendor when the SRA is at fault), and there is a formal VMware qual process (which is a significant burden and effort) it’s the right call for support.
I would think that no matter how frustrating the delay. The storage vendors need to only distribute their SRA’s via VMware. It will cut down on the confusion.