I published an article a while ago on getting started with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR). One thing I didn’t cover in any real depth was the connectivity requirements between on-premises and the VCDR service. VMware has worked pretty hard to ensure this is streamlined for users, but it’s still something you need to pay attention to. I was helping a client work through this process for a proof of concept recently and thought I’d cover it off more clearly here. The diagram below highlights the main components you need to look at, being:

• The Cloud File System (frequently referred to as the SCFS)
• The VMware Cloud DR SaaS Orchestrator (the Orchestrator); and
• VMware Cloud DR Auto-support.

It’s important to note that the first two services are assigned IP addresses when you enable the service in the Cloud Service Console, and the Auto-support service has three public IP addresses that you need to be able to communicate with. All of this happens outbound over TCP 443. The Auto-support service is not required, but it is strongly recommended, as it makes troubleshooting issues with the service much easier, and provides VMware with an opportunity to proactively resolve cases. Network connectivity requirements are documented here.

[image courtesy of VMware]

So how do I know my firewall rules are working? The first sign that there might be a problem is that the DRaaS Connector deployment will fail to communicate with the Orchestrator at some point (usually towards the end), and you’ll see a message similar to the following. “ERROR! VMware Cloud DR authentication is not configured. Contact support.”

How can you troubleshoot the issue? Fortunately, we have a tool called the DRaaS Connector Connectivity Check CLI that you can run to check what’s not working. In this instance, we suspected an issue with outbound communication, and ran the following command on the console of the DRaaS Connector to check:

drc network test --scope cloud

This returned a status of “reachable” for the Orchestrator and Auto-support services, but the SCFS was unreachable. Some negotiations with the firewall team, and we were up and running.

Note, also, that VMware supports the use of proxy servers for communicating with Auto-support services, but I don’t believe we support the use of a proxy for Orchestrator and SCFS communications. If you’re worried about VCDR using up all your bandwidth, you can throttle it. Details on how to do that can be found here. We recommend a minimum of 100Mbps, but you can go as low as 20Mbps if required.