Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines 6.0.1 Installation and Deployment Guide

Preparing the network

The RecoverPoint for VMs splitter communicates with the vRPAs through a VMKernel port. Setting up separate VMkernel ports is the best practice for isolating splitter traffic from other network traffic. You isolate the traffic by placing the vRPA data interface and a dedicated VMkernel port on a private (separate) subnet. Avoid using the same subnet that is used also for high availability (vMotion) and hosts (applications).

Depending on your existing network, you may not need to configure any additional VMkernel ports, or if so, you can do so later from the RecoverPoint for VMs plug-in, even after you have protected VMs and are ready to begin replication. RecoverPoint for VMs informs you after protection if there are possible communication issues between vRPAs and splitters. When needed, RecoverPoint for VMs assists in automatically creating VMkernel ports for all the ESXi hosts in the ESX cluster. The procedure is described in the RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines HTML Plugin Administrator's Guide.

Alternatively, you can configure VMkernel ports manually by following the procedure in Configure VMkernel ports.

The number of VMkernel ports you need is based on the network adapter topology you previously selected. If you decided to use four network adapters for the topology, create two VMkernel ports. Otherwise, one VMkernel port is required.