vVols Virtual Machines restore in DR

[TheeLaz]

Hi Guys,

My subject could be inaccurate but I have 2 environments; Prod where my VMs are hosted on Nimble vVols and replicated to Nimbles in my DR side. 

My question is; In a month or 2 I have to Lift and Shift the Prod environment to another Datacenter, but I am also expected to provision for any eventuality by bringing-up some of the critical VMs in my DR environment. Now in my DR environment I only have VMFS6 datastore in my cluster. 

What is the procedure to spin-up the VMs on the DR side? I can see the VMs in the cluster when I browse vvol vms through the nimble plugin and only have an option to clone. Will this restore the clone in my DR environment? 

[mamatadesaiNim]

How is the DR setup with vvol VMs, are you using vasa3?  What tool do you use for DR, do you use SRM?

[TheeLaz]

What I currenty have is Nimbles on both site and I have replication from Site A (Prod) to Site B (DR). I am not using any DR tool at the moment so I am hoping to be able to just use the replicas sitting on the DR nimble as a fail-over. 

My concern is on the DR side I have VMFS6 Datastores and on Prod I have vVols and if I have to restore in DR what complications could I possibly face? Resourcing is not an issue in terms of compute and storage. I just need to understand the Restore process.

[mamatadesaiNim · Accepted solution]

vvol and VMFS are different file system formats, DR from one to other may not work.  there are a few viable options:

1. setup the vvol vms to replicate to vvol vms without vasa3 - DR can work through the vcplugin
2. setup vvol vms to replicate to vvol vms with vasa3 - DR can work with SRM or with supported PowerCLI commandlets
3. migrate the vvol vms to vmfs datastore on prod, replicate vmfs to vmfs and test out DR - looks like you may be most comfortable with this option and have tried this before?