Help with DR setup for VMware 5.5 environment

MirrorView comes as part of Remote Protection Suite so you could use that as your replication mechanism. Be aware of MirrorView limitations (number of sessions, number of LUNs per consistency group ..etc)

Hi Joe_Cole,

Welcome to EMC Community.

Mirrorview will allow you to replicate the data to the remote site, however, I highly recommend you to purchase VMware SRM license  and use SRA for Mirrorview for replication, I know it is an extra cost but you will get the best of a DR solution.

Recoverpoint for VMs might be considered as well but i do not have full details about it.

-Mohammed Salem

You have purchased the Remote Protection Suite which includes Recoverpoint which you could deploy on vRPA's (Virtual Recoverpoint Appliances) quite easily.

You will not get the complete failover Automation unless you purchase VMware SRM for integration, but complete site protection and granular VM protection is easily achievable.

EMC RecoverPoint Disaster Recovery and Data Protection - EMC

does VRPa require editional licenses ?

vRPA licensing is included in the Remote Protection Suite.

Thanks guys for all quick responses and great info. This is my first instance of using an EMC unit or VMware cluster setup. I've dealt with custom NAS setups, XenServer and Hyper-V setups. So any advice is always appreciated.

Yea at this point I don't believe they were expecting automatic fail over. Is there any good documentation that can help with the setup process using the software suites I mentioned above?

vRPA requires that you have iSCSI modules on your array, doesn't ?

Yes, using vRPA's needs iSCSI, so it's a pre-requisite. Hopefully the solution you have purchased meets the pre-req's otherwise you have a whole lot of expensive software licensing suites that are not of much use to you !

Prereq's, Design and installation references can be found @ https://support.emc.com/search/?product_id=1249&text=vrpa

https://support.emc.com/docu47346_RecoverPoint-vRPA-Technical-Notes.pdf?language=en_US

Chapter 7;

https://support.emc.com/docu54084_RecoverPoint-SE-4.1-Quick-Start-Installation-Guide.pdf?language=en_US

For a general overview of all the replication technologies available to you, see;

https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h12079-vnx-replication-technologies-overview-wp.pdf

We were looking to utilize iSCSI for this setup so vRPA should be no issue. Should this appliance be running outside the PRIMARY site?

joe_cole wrote: We were looking to utilize iSCSI for this setup so vRPA should be no issue. Should this appliance be running outside the PRIMARY site?

You'll create a RP cluster at each site with one or more vRPA's in each cluster and your VNX. The clusters are then connected and you create Consistency Groups which contain the LUNs you want to replicate.

At each site you are required to have 'Journal' LUN's which store the snapshots that you can recover to that have been or are waiting to be distributed to the replicated storage. On source side the amount of journal space required is generally a lot smaller than that required on the DR site, where typically you'll size according to your RPO/Protection Window.

This is just a high level bit of info and there's good reference in the links in earlier posts. You'll also find some helpful vids on youtube if you have a search.

The install is done using the 'Deployment Manager' application which is included in the RecoverPointSE Installation Kit.

https://download.emc.com/downloads/DL49084_RecoverPoint-SE-Installation-Kit.zip

..also loads of info in the support portal: https://support.emc.com/products/1249_RecoverPoint-SE

It can sound a little daunting, but is quite easy to get up and running fairly quickly.

Happy to help further if there's any specifics you need.

edit: One other thing, your licensing refers to a VNX5200 but your post references 5400. Is that just a typo ?

Brett@S wrote: joe_cole wrote: We were looking to utilize iSCSI for this setup so vRPA should be no issue. Should this appliance be running outside the PRIMARY site? You'll create a RP cluster at each site with one or more vRPA's in each cluster and your VNX. The clusters are then connected and you create Consistency Groups which contain the LUNs you want to replicate. At each site you are required to have 'Journal' LUN's which store the snapshots that you can recover to that have been or are waiting to be distributed to the replicated storage. On source side the amount of journal space required is generally a lot smaller than that required on the DR site, where typically you'll size according to your RPO/Protection Window. This is just a high level bit of info and there's good reference in the links in earlier posts. You'll also find some helpful vids on youtube if you have a search. The install is done using the 'Deployment Manager' application which is included in the RecoverPointSE Installation Kit. https://download.emc.com/downloads/DL49084_RecoverPoint-SE-Installation-Kit.zip ..also loads of info in the support portal: https://support.emc.com/products/1249_RecoverPoint-SE It can sound a little daunting, but is quite easy to get up and running fairly quickly. Happy to help further if there's any specifics you need. edit: One other thing, your licensing refers to a VNX5200 but your post references 5400. Is that just a typo ?

Will this replicate just the vmdk of the VM to the DR site?

joe_cole wrote: Will this replicate just the vmdk of the VM to the DR site?

Replication is done at the LUN level (not file level), so the entire LUN contents are included. (In this context, effectively the whole datastore).

A Consistency Group can contain single or multiple LUNs also, if you have a vm that spans multiple LUNs (datastores).

If you want per vm granularity, you need to use Recoverpoint for VMs, which is a different product.

Brett@S wrote: joe_cole wrote: Will this replicate just the vmdk of the VM to the DR site? Replication is done at the LUN level (not file level), so the entire LUN contents are included. (In this context, effectively the whole datastore). A Consistency Group can contain single or multiple LUNs also, if you have a vm that spans multiple LUNs (datastores). If you want per vm granularity, you need to use Recoverpoint for VMs, which is a different product.

Without Recovepoint for VMs, we would need to replicate the LUN from the primary to the DR site, then allocate each vmdk that resides on the replicated LUN to a VM ?

No, when you enable image access or fail over on the dr side, you can then use the replicated LUN. So you can present them to your esxi hosts, mount the datastore(s) contained on them and then add the VM's to the Virtual Center Inventory. (browse the datastore folders, find the vmx file and add to inventory).

If you have configured the DR VC to be the same as the production one (Network names, stretched VLANS, resource pools etc) your VM will be good to go.

Just remember, we're talking at a high level here, and there's more details to this than can be adequately explained over a forum. All this is easier done when RP is integrated with SRM or you use RP for VMs, but it's certainly achievable without.

That being said, if you have budget and resources, it may be worth seeing if adding SRM into your design is feasible, as doing so will remove a lot of this complexity.