vmware SRM ignore volume

[people45]

Is there a way to ignore a specific volume/datastore from being used within SRM? I know it possible with Netapp.

I have 3 datastores, each get replicated to the DR site and SRM is working correctly from that front.

The problem that I have is that one datastore/volume has all of our Test/Dev VMs that we do not need for SRM and if I don't configure the VM for protection, then the SRM plan will not run fully.

SRA version 2.0.5

Nimble OS: 2.0.6

Vmware ESX 5.5

SRM 5.5

Thanks

[jmonger96 · Accepted solution]

Appreciate this is an old thread, but I wanted to post an answer in case it helps others.

In SRM you can create multiple protection groups to allow different groups of VMs/services to be moved between sites. When creating protection groups you select which SRM defined "consistency groups" are assigned to it. A SRM consistency group maps to a volume collection in Nimble terms.

So in answer to this question make sure the Test/Dev VMs are in a separate datastore which maps to a Nimble volume in its own volume collection (not shared with other datastores).

Gotcha - All datastores used by all VMs are included in a consistency group - and this can't be changed. For example, if I have some virtual machines on datastoreA which maps to Nimble volumeA can volumecollectionA this could map to a single consistency group/protection group. However if one of my virtual machines has an ISO attached on a separate ISOdatastore (and this is in a separate volume collection from datastoreA/volumeA) SRM won't allow me to select just datastoreA in the protection group, instead I can only select datastoreA and ISOdatastore.

This caught me out when trying to assign a single datastore/volume/volume collection to a protection group, I could only select multiple datastores (some I didn't want) because of the ISO connected to some of the virtual machines.

Hope this helps

Jason