Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

srm

Where should you get SRA’s from?

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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!

New whitepapers

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VMware just published two whitepapers. I hadn’t noticed them yet and especially the second one is a very good read!

  1. VMCI Socket Performance
    The VMCI (Virtual Machine Communication Interface) device allows fast, efficient communication between virtual machines running on the same host, without using the guest networking stack. This paper presents VM-VM performance results using VMCI Sockets and compares these results to the VM-VM performance achieved using regular TCP/IP sockets.
  2. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 Performance and Best Practices for Performance
    The goal of this white paper is to provide you with Site Recovery Manager performance data and recommendations so that you can architect an efficient recovery plan that minimizes the downtime for your environment.
    This white paper addresses various dimensions on which the recovery time depends:

    • Recoveries with iSCSI, FC, and NFS storage
    • Number of virtual machines and protection groups associated with a recovery plan
    • Virtual machine to protection group relation
    • Recovery site performance in a cluster with DPM and DRS
    • Configuration of various recovery plan parameters
    • Priority assignment of virtual machines in the recovery plan
    • High latency network between protected and recovery sites

    Furthermore, best practices are suggested in applicable areas so that you can optimize the recovery time using Site Recovery Manager.

SRM 4.0; where is my SRA?

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I received the following question a couple of times already; where is my <random vendor+array> SRA?

The answer is simple, if it is not on the VMware it has not been certified yet. Every SRA needs to go through a quality assurance process to validate/certify it. If this hasn’t been completed the SRA will not be available for download on the VMware website.

Most of the questions I received where about the EMC SRDF SRA by the way. I have been told that it should be available really soon, I am not allowed to disclose any details though but who knows Chad might chip in and give a hint…

SRM 4.0, Howto’s by Cormac Hogan

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One of my colleagues, Cormac Hogan, posted some excellent guides for SRM 4.0:

  1. Steps to setup VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 with IBM SVC
    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 is a disater recovery product which uses array replication technologies to failover from one site to another. This particular document looks at one particular vendor (IBM) and one particular array model (SVC). The document will take you through the replication and snapshot setup steps.
  2. Steps to setup VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 with EMC Celerra NAS Replications
    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 is a disater recovery product which uses array replication technologies to failover from one site to another. This particular document looks at one particular vendor (EMC) and one particular array model (Celerra). This document also focuses on configuring a new feature introduced in SRM 4.0, namely NAS (NFS) replictions. The document will take you through the replication and snapshot setup steps using only the command line interface (CLI).
  3. Steps to setup VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 with NetApp NAS Replications
    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 is a disater recovery product which uses array replication technologies to failover from one site to another. This particular document looks at one particular vendor (NetApp) and uses their FAS simulator. However the steps are also applicable to their standard arrays. This document also focuses on configuring a new feature introduced in SRM 4.0, namely NAS (NFS) replictions. The document will take you through the replication and snapshot setup steps using only the command line interface (CLI).

Make sure to read them if you are implementing SRM in combination with one of the mentioned arrays!

SRM 4.0 Evaluator Guide

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For those starting out with SRM 4.0 the following documents/links might be very useful:

  • Site Recovery Manager 4.0 Evaluator’s Guide
    The Site Recovery Manager 4.0 Evaluator’s Guide is intended to provide Site Recovery Manager customers and evaluators a guide that walks them through the Site Recovery Manager workflow that has to be completed to allow for the successful and automated service failover from the designated Site Recovery Manager protected site to the designated Site Recovery Manager recovery site. It also provides an overview that includes the considerations and guidance to execute a failback of services from the recovery site back to the site that was originally designated as the Site Recovery Manager protected site. In addition, this guide covers the new Site Recovery Manager features – VMware vSphere support, NFS support, and shared recovery site. Evaluators can work through the exercises provided in this guide to gain a first-hand experience on operating the core and new features.
  • A Quick tour of SRM 4.0
    Now that SRM 4.0 is here it seemed like a good time to take quick tour around a few of the new features and also highlight some less obvious elements of the vSphere platform that make working with SRM 4.0 simpler