VM recovery or SRM

[Lilaa]

Hi,
I am looking for some option for VM recovery without using SRM, could i do it manually ? if so what are the steps necessary ?

Thank You.

[Steven Clementi]

What kind of storage are you using?

Do you have spare space? or a second aray you can keep copies on?


Steven

[Lilaa]

I am using LH san & replicating the volumes to a DR site where i have a standby esx running but volumes are not attached.

Note: my idea is to recover single vm or multiple vms.
option 2 - in worst case i should be able to recover the entire volume.

[Steven Clementi]

The manual process would involve stopping the running vm's at the primary site, presenting the replicated lun's to your backup ESX server, rescanning for vmfs datastores and adding all the vm's to your inventory... reconfiguring each of them to have appropriate ip information if there are different networks in place....

The process is painful if you have to do it manually. SRM automated ALL of these, or at least most of it for you.


To get an idea of the process, you might be able to view the online, selfpaced SRM Fundementals training from VMware.

You can alsy get a 60 day trial for SRM.

You could also try to get a demo of SRM from your reseller... or at least a list of the tasks SRM does in a failover scenario. I don;t have one handy at the moment otherwise i'd post it.


Steven

Steven

[Lilaa]

Thanks Steve for your reply, lets say that i am going with SRM, could i use the SRM to just to recover one VM with in a volume or lun ?

what number of vms will justify use of SRM ? 10, 20 , 100, etc..

[Steven Clementi]

"... lets say that i am going with SRM, could i use the SRM to just to recover one VM with in a volume or lun ?"

No. You would have to fail the whole LUN over to the recovery site.


"what number of vms will justify use of SRM ? 10, 20 , 100, etc.."

I don't think you can really measure the need for SRM by the number of VM's, but rather the acceptable downtime necessary in regards to a site failure.

If you have 1 VM...it is easy to recover without SRM. It is likely that you can be down for 10-15 minutes and be ok.

If you have to reconfigure 10 vm's for use at a backup site... it might take 30-60 minutes to do it manually (or more).

How long can your vm's be down for before your company starts spurting dollars out of the window?


Sure, SRM will "help" in a larger environment, but the vm count is not the only thing to consider, and by far not the most important.


Steven

[Lilaa]

Good points, if i have 30 VM in site A where i need to protect only 20vms in a cluster where i have 3 host in a cluster. in site B I have 10 vms in cluster 3 host in cluster but need to protect only 5 vms.

How to have the SRM setup ?
How many license i will need to buy considering two protection sites and cluster setup (protection for site A and B ).

Note:
3 host in cluster mean 2 to take the load and 3rd to be standby for HA in case one down, may be i am wrong and all three are in action.

thx again.