Mike Laverick

VMware needs feedback from SRM (Site Recovery Manager) customers. The SRM product team is asking that customers take a 15 minute survey about their deployments. In return, the first 1000 to participate will receive a free PDF copy of Mike Laverick’s SRM 4.0 book, and VMware will donate $10 to charity. Laverick indicated in an email the chosen charity is UNICEF.

Here’s the VMware Communities: Survey for SRM customers – please … original post from May 27:

Hello SRM users,

The VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) product team is looking for product feedback on SRM deployments. If you have purchased SRM, we would like to hear from you. Your participation will be very valuable to us and the information you provide will be used to improve the SRM product going forward.

You can provide your feedback by completing the survey

The survey should take no longer than 15 minutes and will expire on June 10, 2010. Please note that this survey is for SRM customers only.

Upon completion of the survey, if you are among the 1st 1000 respondents, VMware will donate $10 per response to charity. You will also receive a link to download the electronic copy of Mike Laverick’s book "Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0" upon completion of the survey.

We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your valuable feedback.

Thank you,

The VMware SRM Team

Check out Laverick’s post on this survey as well:

SRM Customer? Complete this survey, and VMware will donate $10 to UNICEF

VMware customers who currently own SRM with active Sales and Support (SnS) contracts will receive the upgrade at no additional cost. VMware has not changed the per processor licensing model or cost for new customers wishing to purchase.

Some quick links for SRM 4:

• SRM 4. Release notes – http://www.vmware.com/support/srm/srm_releasenotes_4_0.html
• Upgrade KB article – http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013166
• SRM download – http://downloads.vmware.com/d/ and select Site Recovery Manger
• Michael White’s post SRM 4.0 is here! The wait for vSphere and NFS support is over! on the VMware Uptime Blog covers upgrade strategy options.
• VMware’s documentation for all version of SRM – http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html

vSphere 4.0 Supported

The main requirement to enable the new compatibility and features in SRM is upgrading vCenter to version 4. In fact,

SRM 4 can manage the fail over of multiple VMware Datacenters configured from a single pairing of a primary vCenter instance and a secondary vCenter instance at a recovery site (DR site). The key to this configuration is the dependency on and the location of the 2 vCenter 4 servers. Although I do not recall it being specifically stated in the product pre release call I participated in, technically speaking, it seems as if VI storage at multiple physical locations could be replicated to multiple DR sites if all the sites involved were managed by only the 2 vCenters. This implies vCenter management, and the necessary Site Recovery Agents (SRA), would be remote to some of the shared storage replication taking place. Since the storage replication is configured independent of vCenter and SRM, SRA connectivity and SRM workflow automation via the SRM vCenter plugins would be possible.

NFS Support

New SRAs are being released from the storage vendors for automating fail over between sites with NFS storage replication in place. Although not all vendors currently on the SRM HCL will have NFS SRAs available today, we were told most of the missing vendor agents will be available immediately. Each vendor has to go through a separate qualification process for the new storage protocol.

My notes about NFS included a bullet about SRM 4 now being able to support up to 1000 VMs. This is up from a 500 VM maximum previously.  This is per VMware Datacenter in vCenter. Multi VMware datacenter pairings would be the method to go beyond the 1000 max. I’m not sure if this is only for NFS storage, or if the maximum number of VMs applies to all supported SRM storage protocols.

vCenter Linked Mode Supported

vCenter Linked Mode enables an administrator to manage objects from multiple instances of vCenter in a single VI Client (VIC) session. With SRM now supporting Linked Mode, VI administrators can more easily monitor and manage SRM at both the primary and secondary sites. Note that SRAs must be installed separately on both instances of vCenter, but the SRM plugin can be installed once in a administrator’s VIC connecting to a Linked Mode vCenter.

Other Notes on SRM 4

Probably the largest feature of interest which SRM users have been
waiting for has still not been implemented in this latest release – an
automated fail back method. The process still requires manual reconfiguration effectively reversing the primary and secondary sites after storage device replication is established (in the reverse direction as well).

If you are interested in possible long term futures and the roadmap for SRM, check out the session titled BC3421
SRM Architecture & Features: The Road Ahead from VMworld 2009 recently in San Francisco. PDF of the session available at http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-3498.

I am not suggesting that SRM is a sham. In fact, it provides automation of virtual infrastructure fail over between sites that is truly wizard-like. Understand however, VMware SRM software is just the last piece of the total data center recovery “machine”. Many organizations may be seeking the semblance of automated site fail over, but have they really considered in detail what it takes to start up their business critical systems at a secondary location?

A simple determination of readiness for SRM’s wizardry is answering this question:

For those that are considering SRM, take the time to at least put on paper every possible step you would need to restart your business in another data center. This includes the mundane like providing power and cooling, racks, internet access, and telephones as well as the mission critical like employee access, email, and business processing. Analyze how much time it would take to rebuild and restart systems, and what recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) are acceptable for each system or service. When it’s time to map your disaster site fail over solution to the runbook you will clearly see the efficiencies and the speed that VI 3.5 and SRM allow.

Therefore, unlike the line from The Wizard of Oz, you better pay close attention to the man and machine behind the curtain in order to achieve the prodigious expectation and pyrotechnic results of a SRM implementation.

Be sure to follow all links to read the original content, but I am briefly quoting from each source to provide some descriptions.

New SRM posts and links seem to be popping up daily. If you have a great SRM link please leave it in the comments for all to find.

Enjoy!

Run an entire SRM setup on your Laptop

from run-virtual.com by Richard Garsthagen

After posting the video demonstrating SRM, I received a lot of feedback and new tips and tricks. One I thought I should share with you all. If you really got exited after watching my video about SRM (which I hope of course ) then you should check this out:

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1235

It is a document that explains how you can run ESX servers with the entire SRM setup on your laptop

NEW VMware SRM (Site Recovery Manager) Demo Video

from run-virtual.com by Richard Garsthagen

Hello Everyone,

After more then a year making the vi3demo video, we finally made some time to shoot a new video about the new VMware Site Recovery Manager. This video hopefully explains what SRM can do and also of course give a live demo of the product in Action

SRM in a Box final release (the complete setup)

This document will guide you trough the setup of Site Recovery Manager with the Netapp simulator, just on 1 host.

Posted and created by Tomas ten Dam who works for a Netapp gold partner as a senior technical engineer.

Site Recovery Manager in a Can” – Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 401

Posted and created by Chad Sakac, repsonsible for all things VMware at EMC

VMware Site Recovery Manager with LeftHand VSA

From The virtualization blog by Joep Piscaer

Introduction

As a demo/test I wanted to build a complete SRM setup with both sites being protected. This requires two SRM installations and configurations and two replicated LUN’s. Since I am rather limited in available hardware at the moment, I needed to run every component in a virtual Machine on a single laptop.

Luckily, LeftHand Networks has a virtual SAN appliance, which actually is supported by VMware SRM. This way, I can use a supported SAN, and still use ony one laptop.

All used software (VMware ESX, vCenter, LeftHand VSA and Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005) are available for free (or as evaluation software).

Another Free Chapter from the SRM Book: Setup/Config of Lefthand Networks VSA

So what’s this free chapter for? Well, its for any VCI who’s looking for step-by-step guide to setting up the VSA (please consult the offical VMware VATC guides when they become available – FYI when its ready the will be a “at cost/authors edition available for VCIs prior to the main commerical release of the book) and for anyone out there who needs to quickly get to grips with SRM product but like me doesn’t have guru like storage knowledge or access to 50K+ worth of storage technology

post by Mike Laverick who is also the book author

Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager Book Released

It gives me great pleasure to announce that my book on VMware Site Recovery Manager 1.0 is now available from lulu.com. You can buy the book by clicking the book cover at the top of the blog or by clicking this link here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/4343147

In case you missed it – I have two free chapters available from the rough “Authors Edition” that was sold in limited copies at this years VMworld 2008:

Install and Configure Lefthand Networks VSA ready for SRM
PowerShell and DR

post by Mike Laverick who is also the book author

VMware Site Recovery Manager – “From general release to Update1, what have we learnt and what’s new?”

As one of VMware’s technical folks my main interest is what has been good, bad or plain ugly from an implementation point of view. I spend a lot of my time assisting customers and partners with their SRM deployments, configuration woes and the like so I wanted to give you all a quick run down of some of the key gotchas as well as some pointers to useful references for SRM help.

from the VMware Uptime blog, posted by Lee Dilworth

VMworld 2008 SRM Sessions and Labs

The following links are from the 2 VMworld’s of 2008. I have copied the descriptions from VMworld.com for reference here, and linked the downloads in each section. These files are available from the VM /ETC Files Page as well.

VMware Site Recovery Manager Technical Deep Dive

This presentation will discuss Disaster Recovery and the benefits of virtual DR. Next, VMware Site Recovery Manager will be introduced along with key SRM concepts, Architecture, Deployment and Configuration. Each component of SRM workflow will be discussed, including Site Pairing, Array Managers, Datastore Groups, Protection Groups, Recovery Plans and how to test your DR plan.

BC03 - VMware Site Recovery Manager Technical Deep Dive (827)

Architecting DR Solutions with VMware Site Recovery Manager

This presentation is based on John Arrasjid’s VMworld 2008 super session. It will include lessons learned from his work designing SRM solutions for customers. Participants will be provided with guidance on the assessment phase and how to translate requirements into a workflow for SRM. The session will include information on network and storage considerations, application priorities and sequencing in the workflow, workflows with and without SRM, and preparation of both the protected and recovery site. The session will close with a case study from an early SRM based DR engagement

BC1693 - Architecting DR Solutions with VMware Site Recovery Manager (837)

Site Recovery Manager: Lessons Learned in the First 90 Days

In this session, attendees will learn how Site Recovery Manager (SRM) can provide enhanced disaster recovery operations through automation during setup, testing and failover. The session will review lessons that have been learned in the field during the first 90 days since the release of SRM, including: tips for configuring storage replication with SRM, VM alignment to replicated datastores, and using test VLANs at the recovery site. The session will also focus on how SRM can be leveraged for the failback of services after a SRM failover operation due to a disaster event

BC4260 Site Recovery Manager (SRM) – Lessons Learned in the First 90 Days (851)

VMware Site Recovery Manager – Installing, Configuring and Troubleshooting

Learn to install, configure and troubleshoot VMware Site Recovery Manager so you can bring virtual machines up in a recovery site using a simplified and automated workflow engine. Challenging tasks like re- signaturing LUNs, or changing IP address information between protected and recovery sites are not only easier but automated. The subject matter experts experienced with VMware Site Recovery Manager will be on-hand to help you learn the power of simplified and automated disaster recovery for the virtualized environment.

Lab03-Manual-VMware Site Recovery Manager - Installing, Configuring and Troubleshooting (833)

“Because these snapshots are not, by default, integrated in any way with VMware ESX Server, we have to perform a few extra steps to ensure consistently reliable and usable storage array snapshots.”

Read all of Scott’s tip at the link to the article above.

My “2 cents” on this is that trying to configure the combination of the two snapshots manually might not

really be worth the complexity or the effort. I would lean toward using one or the other, and the storage array snapshots would be the preferred method.

Not to mention if another one of your objectives is to replicate the LUNs to a secondary location for disaster recovery. In that case not only do you have to configure or script a synchronized schedule of snapshots between ESX and the SAN, you also introduce the likelihood of an increase in the amount of data to be replicated nightly.

Of course, VMware’s answer to part of this whole delimma is Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Part of the advantage of SRM is the single point of control of both the SAN and the ESX hosts. With the help of a storage vendor provided SRM Agent, VirtualCenter with the SRM plug-in is able to coordinate the ESX snapshots with the SAN snapshots in order to provide site replication. Wouldn’t it be cool if a future version of SRM or a “sister” application was able to become a Snapshot Recovery Manager locally within the same site on the same storage device?

As Scott points out in his cross linked post at blog.scottlowe.org, NetApp may be the only storage vendor with an application today that can centrally manage the ESX and array snapshot process within a single storage device.

“NetApp, for example, has SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure; this product is specifically designed to address this problem (among other problems).”

Finally, Scott and I have exchanged emails about an important additional design consideration related to the snapshots topic. That is, you need to strongly consider VM to LUN assignment. In other words, the traditional concept of creating large VMFS volumes to store multiple VMs is not the best design for using snapshots or site replication. Multiple ESX snapshots on a single LUN combined with a storage array’s snapshot of the entire LUN is bad news for consistency. Possible supporting LUN strategies could be:

• Using a 1:1 VM to LUN ratio
• Creating separate virtual disks for each OS partition of your VMs and Splitting those disks across separate LUNs

The 1:1 ratio is straight forward. The second option means that, for example, the C:, E:, F:, etc. drives of a Windows VM would each be different .vmdk files that would be placed on different LUNs. This allows you to snapshot or replicate only the LUN with the F: partition most frequently. The C: and E: partitions can be snapped or replicated less frequently. Grouping multiple VMs of the same application type or similar snapshot / replication needs on these same LUNs in this same manner is the ultimate design goal.

Be sure to read both of Scott’s posts, and feel free to add your thoughts and comments.

SRM requirements:

• VirtualCenter licensed and running at both the primary and secondary sites.
• ESX hosts licensed and running at both the primary and secondary sites.
• Backend database for SRM at both the primary and secondary site.
• Shared storage capable of, and licensed for, block level replication (SAN based) at both the primary and secondary sites.
• Site Recovery Agent (SRA) installer provided by the SAN manufacturer.

Note: if your SAN manufacturer does not create a SRA you can not use SRM. There is not an official SRA manufacturer list at this time. The instructors in my lab indicated most all major SAN manufacturers are working on developing SRAs, but the list will not be official until product release. My lab used a LeftHand Networks SRA.

Preparation for SRM:

LUNs

Organize your LUNs / volumes for SRM because you will probably not need all of your VMs to be replicated. For example, your VC server, Update Manager server, and SRM server (if they are VMs) should not be replicated. If other similar infrastructure server VMs should not be replicated then move these VMs out of the LUNs / Volumes containing the VMs that will be replicated. Move all of your non critical VMs to their own LUNs. The idea is to reduce replicated traffic as much as possible by syncing only select LUNs containing your critical VMs. Obviously, this will be a significant project for some organizations by itself. Leverage storage vmotion to minimize VM downtown during this process as much as possible.

Database

I was told the database requirements are exactly the same as VirtualCenter. Since the product has not been fully user tested yet, my instructors indicated there are no solid best practices yet for SRM database design. In other words, can SRM be installed on VC? Can Update Manager and SRM be installed on the same server? Should all of these servers be VMs or physical servers? Personally, considering VirtualCenter, SRM, Guided Consolidation, and Update Manager all require a database, I am of the opinion it will make the most sense to use ODBC connections to a stand alone database server. If I am going to make all of these servers VMs then I would make a separate server for each as well. Be sure to include this design in the LUN preparations!

Lab and Configuration overview:

Primary Site

1. Install SRM code on SRM server (SRM was installed on VC in my lab)
2. Install SRM plugin in VI Cleint connecting to VirtualCenter and enable plugin
3. Install SRA on SRM server

Secondary Site

1. Install SRM code on SRM server
2. Install SRM plugin in VI Client connecting VirtualCenter and enable plugin
3. Install SRA on SRM server

Replication from Primary Site

1. Use SRM plugin to configure and verify replication to secondary site

Test fail over and work flow using the SRM plugin from the primary site

When the lab materials are released to the public I will post a copy here on vmetc.com. I do not have them as of this writing.

VMware VI3.5 is scheduled to be generally available by the end of 2007. Based on a public .pdf released by VMware, this post is my summary of the new features. I’m guessing this .pdf is really a .ppt presentation that VMware is delivering, but I have not attended this presentation myself.

The screen shot is from the document and shows the new features in the defined layers.

After some sales and marketing slides the document classifies the VI3 features today across 3 layers. These layers are then used to group the new features for the rest of the presentation.

The features are divided into 3 layers:

1. Platform – ESX server
2. Virtual Infrastructure – combining multiple ESX servers in farms and resource clusters for VMs
3. Management – automated IT processes for administration

Here’s my feature summary table in .pdf format

Here is the full VMware .pdf – What’s New with VI3.5_public.pdf

Site Recovery Manager

DR Pain points

• lack of reliable plan
• can’t meet RTO or RPO reqs
• expenses for hardware at DR site

VI3 improves DR

• RTO / Cost / Reliability
• Failover / Planning / testing
  • isolate network for live testing
• Hdw independence / encapsulation / boot from san / drs and resource pools / snap shots & vlans
• instant repurposing

Site recovery Manager – DR workflow automation product

Objectives:

• increase DR plan coverage
• reduce recovery time of all servers – hours not days
• improve success rate – 100% of servers
• assurance DR plan works

How does it ?

• automate dr failover
• propogate vcbs into dr plan
• enable regular non disruptive testing
• manage vi3 and storage replication
• set up networking – changing ip addresses
• QOS
• implement change control

How it works

• plugs in to VC2

Technical Objectives

• Setup: integrate with storage replication to determine wich VMs are replicated
• Failover: auto promote LUNs at DR site
• test: auto LUN snap shots
• compatible: FC or iSCSI modules for OEMs

Workflow 1: Site prep

• pre-program the DR response
  • shutdown vms
  • startup order
  • VM recovery steps
  • repitition
• mirror design and layout at DR site
  • port groups / vswitch
  • volume folder
  • resource groups
• change control
  • role based access
  • instant changes
  • audit trails
  • exported as needed

Workflow 2: Failover

• Automate powering on of vms
• handle networking at remote site
  • vlans, port groups, ip addresses – srm changes ip addresses, subnet, dns, port group (vlan)
  • script dns updates – srm exports a list of changes and you can create script to make changes in dns
• ensure qos at time of DR – resource pools – auto shutdown of VMs

Workflow 3: Test

• non disruptive testing
• isolate storage i/o
• isolate network traffic
• report on testing metrics and success

Create Protection Groups of VMs which map to LUN groups

Recovery Plans prioritize Protection Groups and startup of the VM members. Different recovery plans can be created with different permissions for different business units.