You’ve probably also noticed a whole bunch of Site Recovery Manager(SRM) related articles popping up with people installing and configuring it in their home lab:
- Site recovery Manager is a hit
- VMware SRM with Lefthands VSA
- SRM in a Box final release (the complete setup)
- VI,SRM in a box(VMTN Blog)
I love these articles because they are prove of the fact that SRM is really easy to set-up. But, and this actually scares me, it might seem a bit too easy. I said “too easy” because implementing a Disaster Recovery solution isn’t about the tools you are using. The tools, which will make your life a lot easier, are not the most important piece of the puzzle. Indeed PUZZLE.
There a whole bunch of SRM projects going on globally where VMware PSO, the department I work for, is assisting. These projects typically have a duration of 3 to 9 months, while it seems that with the ease of VMware Site Recovery Manager this should be a matter of days.
People tend to forget that the most important thing about Distaster Recovery / Business Continuity is the business. You need to know the organisation and IT environment very well before you can even start:
- SLA’s? –> RPO / RTO?
- Which services are most important to the business?
- Which servers are part of the service?
- In which order need these be started?
- Which service have the highest priority?
- Are there any dependencies between services?
- What about the desktops?
And these are just a couple of questions one should normally have to answer before even going down the SRM road. The fact that SRM is so easy to setup makes it really hard to actually explain to a customer why a BCDR project will take much longer then he expected. And remember that although SRM is a great tool you would still need to create a Disaster Recovery Plan, SRM will be part of the plan but it needs to be in place!
I’m not saying that you should not go down the BCDR / SRM road, but be sure to be prepared. (read this e-book, it’s good and it’s free) Get to know your “business”, and be prepared for a long engagement… cause my experience is that normally people have a hard time answering really obvious questions.
You will talk to a lot of people who don’t have a clue of what the core business services / applications actually are. And the same goes for the sys admins, dependencies? Why would you want to know about that and how would I know?
Do you know which questions to ask, do you know how to get the right answers… This is why BCDR subject matter experts are needed for SRM engagements, so before you start give VMware a call, or your local VAC partner for that matter and make sure you get the best out of the SRM product.