Dell PowerVault MD Series Storage Arrays Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) Best Practices Guide (Client)

When designing a disaster recovery strategy using VMware Site Recovery Manager and MD Series storage arrays, keep in mind these considerations:

• Protection works on a datastore level (storage array virtual disk). All VMs on the same datastore that requires protection are also protected and replicated.
• Multiple small-sized datastores and virtual disks must be used to limit the amount of data replicated to the recovery site.
• Locate (migrate) protected VMs to the same datastore and migrate any VMs that do not require protection to other locations.
• SRM does not provide for application-consistent failover, but does provide VM-consistent failover. Therefore, even with a successful failover of a VM, the applications that are running on the VM may not be in a consistent state. More recovery methods may be required to return to normal operation.
• Only MD Series storage arrays running firmware versions 07.84.XX.XX or later support asynchronous Remote Replication groups. The groups are treated as consistency groups, so all virtual disks in the group is treated as a single entity.
• Synchronization priority dramatically affects the speed of replication, assuming that sufficient bandwidth is available between the protected and recovery storage arrays.