Luke Huckaba, vExpert

Virtualization Architect

@ThepHuck

Pairing VMware® vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ with Virtual SAN

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

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• Setup

– VSAN

– vCenter & SRM

– Installation Speed Bumps

• vSphere Replication

– Upgrading

– Limitations

– Storage Policies

• SRM Configuration

– Protection Groups

– Recovery Plans

• Live Demo!

– Let’s hope it doesn’t crash!

Agenda

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SANSetup

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• VSAN Setup

– Check VSAN HCL for RAID controller: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan

– 3-node minimum

– 4-node Best Practice minimum

– Disk Group configuration

• Minimum 1 flash device (SSD, PCIe, etc) and 1 magnetic disk per group for hybrid

• Minimum 1 flash write buffer device and 1 flash storage disk for all-flash (vSphere 6.0 only)

• 2 disk groups per host is recommended, 5 is maximum

• 2 10Gbps network adapters dedicated to VSAN traffic

• Requires IGMP snooping multicast, separate multicast addresses per VSAN cluster

Setup

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• VSAN Setup

– Sizing

• Raw capacity: Hosts x Capacity disks per host used for vSAN (or disk size X total N of capacity disks)

– 1 host = 3x 1000GB magnetic disks for vSAN; 4 hosts X 3 X 1000GB = 12,000GB raw capacity

• Failures To Tolerate: N+1 copies of data and 2N+1 hosts are needed

– FTT1 data = two copies; FTT2 = three; FTT3 = four

– FTT1 hosts = three; FTT2 = five; FTT3 = seven

– Default is FTT1

• Usable Capacity is directly dependent on FTT

• vSwap file is created twice regardless of FTT

– vSwap file: 2 X vRAM

• Example: VM1 with 8GB of RAM 64GB VMDK and 128GB VMDK

– FTT1 = (2 X 8) + ((64 + 128)X2) = 16 + 192 X 2 = 16 + 384 = 400GB

– FTT2 = (2 X 8) + ((64 + 128)X3) = 16 + 192 X 3 = 16 + 576 = 592GB

– FTT3 = (2 X 8) + ((64 + 128)X4) = 16 + 192 X 4 = 16 + 768 = 784GB

• Sizing Chart: https://vsantco.vmware.com

Setup

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• vCenter & SRM

– Windows or Appliance?

• SRM & VUM require Windows OS

– What’s new in SRM 5.8

• Web Client plug-in

• Auto-configure resource mappings for recovery back to protected site

– vSphere Replication should be installed prior to installing SRM

• SRM 5.8 installer will not prompt you to install vSphere Replication

Setup

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• Installation Speed Bumps

– VUM is Windows application

• requires 32-bit DSN if using external database

– SRM is Windows application

• requires 64-bit DSN if using external database

– SRM database password considerations

• No longer breaks when ending with an exclamation point!

• Still cannot have quotes in password, but the installer warns if it detects a “

– SRM installation cannot handle space in path

• Default: C:\Program Files\VMware\Site Recovery Manager

• Changed to: D:\Program Files\VMware\Site Recovery Manager

• Installer fails saying Cannot find “D:\Program”

Setup

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SANvSphere Replication

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vSphere Replication

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• Upgrading

– If on 5.1, must upgrade to 5.5 or 5.6 before upgrading to 5.8

– Can upgrade from 5.5 directly to 5.8

– Power off appliance in vCenter, then power on (not reboot via VAMI)

• An HA event clears the OVF environment

• Power On in vCenter builds /opt/vmware/etc/vami/ovfEnv.xml

vSphere Replication

Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• Limitations

– 1 vSphere Replication Appliance (VRA) per vCenter

• Hosts Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI)

• vSphere Replication Management Server

• Serves as initial vSphere Replication Server (VRS)

– 9 additional VRSs to spread out the load

– 500 VMs per VRA

– 100 VMs per VRS

vSphere Replication

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

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• Storage Policies

– vSphere Replication lists available storage polices at target/recovery site

– vSphere Replication will allow non-compliant storage policies

– SRM won’t create placeholder

vSphere Replication

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SANSRM Configuration

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• Same rules still apply

– VM can be a member of only one Protection Group

– Protection Group can contain one or more VMs

– Protection Group can be a member of multiple Recovery Plans

– Can have multiple Recovery Plans consisting of different Protection Groups

– Can have multiple Recovery Plans with different network mappings

– Boot Priority is an attribute of the VM and follows the VM across Protection Groups

• Set boot priority based on Protection Group

– Example: Tier 1 Protection Group VMs all set to boot priority 1; Tier 2 VMs set to boot priority 2, etc

– Multiple boot priorities extends recovery time

SRM Configuration

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN

• IP Customizations have changed in 5.8

– Define at network mapping

• Specify Network Prefix to change

– Will change subnet, leaves host number the same

• Specify gateway

• DNS servers

• DNS search suffixes

• Primary & secondary WINS server

– Manually configure each VM

– Dr-ip-customizer.exe still exists

SRM Configuration

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Pairing vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SANLive Demo!

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