Using VMware Site Recovery Manager to Simplify DR

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Using VMware Site Recovery
Manager to Simplify DR
By Darrin Chapman
SRM provides automated virtual infrastruc- Inability to meet your recovery point Darrin Chapman ture failover for virtual machines (VMs) objective (RPO) and recovery time Data Protection Subject and servers; it relies on the existing objective (RTO). For many of you the Matter Expert and Technical replication capabilities provided by storage RPO and RTO your business operations Marketing Manager, NetApp ® ®vendors-such as NetApp SnapMirror require are not being met because your Darrin Chapman is the person you technology-rather than provide its own plan depends on expensive infrastructure, turn to for just about any question data replication mechanisms for moving time-consuming restores, and/or system involving disaster recovery or backup VM data to the DR site. NetApp has worked installations from scratch. The resources to and recovery at NetApp. He's been closely with VMware to enable the advanced implement and run a test plan are just too involved with almost every NetApp best capabilities of SnapMirror and other NetApp demanding, especially if a true disaster has practices guide about data protection technologies to be fully leveraged by SRM. never occurred at your company.since 2002, and in his spare time he In this article I'm going to discuss the Administration vs. RPO/RTO. When failing designs training courses for customers challenges of DR planning and explain how over business operations to recover from and NetApp technical staff. VMware SRM-in conjunction with NetApp a disaster, there are many steps that are Originally schooled as an electrical storage functionality-can greatly simplify manual and time consuming. Often, though engineer, Darrin's background includes DR for virtual infrastructure. custom scripts are written and utilized to several years in systems architecture simplify some of these processes, it is Disaster Recovery Planningfor AT&T, Nortel, and EMC. the processes that must be followed that Planning and execution are the most crucial affect the real RTO that any DR solution aspects of a disaster recovery scenario. can deliver. Consider the flow of a typical Nothing is scarier than the prospect of There are many natural, human-caused, and disaster recovery process: having to recover an entire site after computer-driven disasters that can affect a disaster, and the addition of virtual data availability. Here are a few of the most 1. A situation occurs that requires failover to a DR site. (This could result from a infrastructure to your environment may common problems with DR planning today. power outage that is too long for the ®further complicate the situation. VMware No plan at all. For some, the cost and business to withstand without failing over Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is designed complexity of DR is simply too much to or a disaster that causes the loss of data to simplify and accelerate disaster recovery address given current resource and budget and/or equipment at the production site.) for VMware infrastructures, and it also constraints. There is no time available for 2. The DR team takes the necessary steps includes nondisruptive testing so you can planned downtime, and the process of to confirm the disaster and makes the make sure your site recovery plan will work making-and, more importantly, testing- decision to failover.before you need to use it. a real DR plan is continuously delayed. Figure 1) With SnapMirror alone or in conjunction with SRM, you can flexibly mirror high-end storage configurations (high-performance platforms, FCP disks, FC SAN configurations) to less-expensive solutions (lower-cost storage platforms, SATA disks, iSCSI).
3. Assuming that the necessary testing was 7. Once the production environment has Five Tips to Increase done to confirm that data replication was been recovered, the original replication NetApp Resiliency successful and that the DR site is in a schedule and relationships must be A recent Tech OnTap article (http:// usable state: reestablished (from the production site partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/ a. Replicated storage must be presented to the DR site). matl/storage_resiliency.ht... [download for more]