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VMware – VMworld 2014 – BCO2629 – Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication: What’s New Technical Deep Dive

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Disclaimer: I recently attended VMworld 2014 – SF.  My flights and accommodation were paid for by myself, however VMware provided me with a free pass to the conference and various bits of swag. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

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BCO2629 – Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication: What’s New Technical Deep Dive

BCO2629

Jeff Hunter – VMware, Senior Technical Marketing Architect (@jhuntervmware)

Ken Werneburg – VMware, Senior Technical Marketing Architect (@vmKen)

Intro from Jeff
These guys do the Uptime category on the VMware blog.

Now to Ken
Talks about the transition to software-defined storage and availability.

SRM 5.8

Abbreviations

  • SRM – vCenter Site Recovery Manager
  • ABR – array-based replication
  • VR – vSphere Replication
  • VRMS – vSphere Replication Management Server
  • VRS – vSphere Replication Server
  • SVR – Standalone vSphere Replication (No SRM involved)

What does SRM do?
Key features:

  • Centralised recovery
  • Non-disruptive testing
  • Automated DR
  • Integrated with VMware product stack

Used for Disaster Recovery, Disaster Avoidance and Planned Migration (Unexpected, Expected and Planned)

Recovery Workflows

  • Failover Automation
  • Non-disruptive failover testing
  • Planned Migration
  • Failback Automation

What’s new?

  • DR for the SDDC
  • Enhanced scalability
  • Simplified Ops

DR for the SDDC
Architecture

  • SRM using ABR
  • vCAC management across 2 sites
  • Integration via vCO plugin for SRM
  • New APIs for PowerCLI integration

Capabilities

  • Self-service DR provisioning using vCAC blueprints
  • Automated protection mapping according to pre-defined tiers

Benefits

  • DR control as service to application tenants
  • Quicker time to market for apps
  • Reduced complexity for infrastructure admins

SRM protection is exposed through the vCAC portal, then runs a standard vCO workflow after provisioning.

You can also

  • Create protection groups and add VMs
  • Find protection groups by datastore
  • Add protection to unprotected VMs in the replication datastore
  • And most everything available via SRM API can be used by vCO

Scalability in SRM 5.8

  • 5000 protected VMs per individual SRM (with ABR only, still 500 for VR)
  • 2000 concurrent VMs recovery

Performance Improvements
There’s a whole bunch of tweaks that have been done (Up to 75% Faster RTO particularly with ABR)

This was tested using

  • 250 protection grps
  • 2000 VMs with I am a pineapple customisation on

With the old method 29H (Storage Time 17h15), with the new method 13h (Storage Time 4h13). Total time drops dramatically when you leave out IP customisation.

Converged UI with plugin for vSphere Web Client (finally)
Rule-based management at subnet level
dr-IP-customizer was a bit of hard work. You can now setup IP customisation rules via the web client on a per subnet basis.

VSAN + VR and SRM
VSAN compatible with:

  • VR
  • SPBM configured as part of replication
  • SRM
  • SRM configuration based on VR

VR and SRM

  • Supports asynchronous replication – 15min RPO
  • VM-centric based protection
  • Automated DR op and orchestration
  • Automated failover – user defined plans

SRM can use BOTH ABD and VR. SRM will see existing standalone replication protected VMs. SRM can also install VR from scratch if required.

What’s new in VR 5.8? (Jeff)
What is VR?
Per-VM host-based replication integrated with vSphere. Note that this is included with Essentials Plus and higher.

Features:

  • Easy virtual appliance deployment
  • Integration with web client
  • Protect any VM
  • Flexible RPO
  • Quick for recovery for VMs
  • Replication engine for SRM
  • Compatible with SAN, NAS, local and VSAN storage
  • Replicate workloads to vCenter Server and vCloud Air (New feature)

Use cases:

  • Data protection and DR
  • DC migration
  • Replication engine for SRM
  • Standalone Replication
  • Within the same site
  • Across Sites with vCenter Server and vCloud Air (“Replicate to a cloud provider”)

Components:

  • vCenter Server, Web Client
  • VR Agent (VRA) built into vSphere
  • VRMS (virtual appliance)
  • VRS (virtual appliance)

Consistency
Disk consistency within a VM: Yes, across VMs? No.

Application Consistency? Supports VSS quiescing on Windows. Use this only is you need to.

VR Reporting

  • Replicated VMs (by VC and by Host)
  • Transferred bytes, RPO violations

VR Multiple point in time recovery (MPIT)

  • Up to 24 recovery points (also supported in 5.5)
  • Recovered as VM with snapshots – recovers latest replica, uses snapshot manager to recover

Best Practices

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.

  • Set RPO only to what’s needed
  • Set MPIT only what’s needed
  • Use VSS only if needed

VR Resources

All in all a very informative and useful session. 4.5 stars.