SQL and Exchange application consistent recovery with RecoverPoint and SRM

If you want application consistency you need to look into Replication Manager (RM). SRM always chooses the latest PIT and that PIT is crash consistent. So whenever you use SRM the PIT chosen is crash consistent and there is not way around that.

What you can do is use RM. The only issue is that SRM is enabled on the consistency group (CG) and once you enable it you cannot failover unless you disable SRM on that CG. Once you disable SRM on the CG you'll be able to choose any PIT in the journal, including the ones RM created which are application consistent.

Hope this helps.

One note on this statement. SRM will not failover to an application consistent PIT that RM created.

Here's a link to a whitepaper from a year or two back that covers SRM / RecoverPoint / MS Exchange. Technology versions have changed since then, but the concepts and architectures are still valid

http://ireland.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h7261-business-continuity-vsphere-recoverpoint-wp.pdf

Hope this helps!

Steve

Hi Ernes,

Sorry if I'm being dense, but I need some additional clarification on that. Are you saying that they would need to disable SRM and not use it for failover? Or would they be using SRM for failover, but just disabling it on the specific Consistency Group prior to failover?

No. If they want to failover to an application consistent PIT in RecoverPoint then they need to disable SRM on the CG. In other words, a manual failover using solely RP, no SRM.

For example, they have an Exchange VM; OS lives on VMFS datastore and the logs/database LUNs live on RDMs. To use RM for application consistency the RDM LUNs need to be in its own CG, seperate from the OS. So you would have two CGs; one containing the VMFS datastore and the other containing the RDM LUNs. If you want to use SRM to failover the Exchange VM you will have to enable SRM on both CGs. However, if you want to failover to an application consistent PIT you have to disable SRM on the RDM CG.

Indeed, EMC Replication Manager integrates with VMWare SRM to create and present application concistent copies on the DR site (as well as the local, depening on the replication being used: CDP/CRR/CLR).

I'm kind of in the same position, we have recently implemented SRM replicating via Recoverpoint, but from previous experience we know that the images presented at DR are crash consistent only. Discussions with EMC pointed us in the direction of Replication Manager and after asking the question over interaction between RM and SRM  I was sent this document from Powerlink (hope the link works)

https://powerlink.emc.com/nsepn/webapps/btg548664833igtcuup4826/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/h8221-sql-2008-data-protection-wp.pdf?mtcs=ZXZlbnRUeXBlPUttQ2xpY2tDb250ZW50RXZlbnQsZG9jdW1lbnRJZD0wOTAxNDA2NjgwNWU5ZmQ2LGRvY3VtZW50VHlwZT1wZGYsbmF2ZU5vZGU9MGIwMTQwNjY4MDIwODRiMl9Hcmlk

(Title is Continous Data Protection for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 enabled by Recoverpoint, EMC Replication Manager, and Vmware)

We haven't yet implemented RM, but will be doing so in the next few weeks....