Introduction

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) provides an automated method for fail-over of protected resources. Before you purchase SRM you are likely to want to evaluate your needs and how SRM might work in your environment. This document provides a detailed guide on performing such an evaluation, as used by VMware with customers.

Intended Audience

The Site Recovery Manager (SRM Evaluator Guide is intended to provide the SRM customers and evaluators with a guide that will walk them through the SRM workflow that has to be completed to allow for the successful and automated service failover from the designated SRM protected site to the designated SRM recovery site. This guide will also provide an overview which includes the considerations and guidance to execute a failback of services from the recovery site back to the site that was originally designated as the SRM protected site.

This practice is targeted at Business Continuity professionals and VCPs.

Outline

Chapter 1 Overview of VMware Site Recovery Manager

Chapter 2 Planning for BC/DR when using VMware SRM

Chapter 3 SRM Workflow setup at the Protected and Recovery sites

Chapter 4 Using SRM to run a Test against a Recovery Plan

Chapter 5 Using SRM to failover the Protected Site to the Recovery Site

Chapter 6 Failback from the Recovery Site to the Protected Site

Chapter 7 SRM Alarms and Site Status Monitoring

Chapter 8 SRM Roles and Privileges

Conclusion

Author

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the data center. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.33 billion, more than 120,000 customers and nearly 18,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest-growing public software companies. VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and on the Web at www.vmware.com.

Resources

- You can find this document on the VIOPS portal at The specified document was not found.

- See the attached srm_10_eval_guide.pdf document

Disclaimer

You use this proven practice at your discretion. VMware and the author do not guarantee any results from the use of this proven practice. This proven practice is provided on an as-is basis and is for demonstration purposes only.

Evaluating Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

To successfully use this SRM Evaluator Guide the following is assumed:

• ESX Server 3.0.2, ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 has been installed on physical servers in the SRM protected and recovery sites.

• An instance of VirtualCenter 2.5 exists in each of the SRM protected and recovery sites.

• A multisite SAN infrastructure is in place, and setup to replicate designated VMFS datastores between the SRM protected and recovery sites.

• The virtual machines (VMs) that have been selected to be protected VMs for the SRM evaluation have been moved onto the designated replicated datastores. VMs that have not been selected to be protected VMs for the evaluation should be moved to non replicated datastores. If you are running ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5, Storage VMotion could be used to complete the move with zero downtime.

Referring to the SRM Installation and Administration Guide for details complete the following:

• The basic installation of Site Recovery Manager on the SRM or VirtualCenter servers in the SRM protected and recovery sites has been completed.

• A SRM license is installed on the VirtualCenter license server at the protected and recovery sites.

• The installation of the SRM plug-in has been completed and the SRM plug-in has been enabled on the Virtual Infrastructure Client instances that will be used to access the SRM protected and recovery sites.

VMware Infrastructure Documentation

If you need additional information on VMware Virtual Infrastructure, consult the VMware Infrastructure documentation, which consists of the combined VMware VirtualCenter and ESX Server documentation set. Documentation is available from: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/

See the attached PDF for the SRM Evaluation Guide.