Part 8 – Recovery Plans

Now we reach the stage of creating a recovery plan. Click ‘Recovery Plans’ in the Site Recovery Manager portal Click ‘Create Recovery Plan’ You are now asked to select the site where the VMs will be recovered, select the desired site, then click ‘Next’ Now you should tick the ‘Protection Groups’ to be included in this recovery plan to select […]

Part 7 – Protection Groups

It’s now time to create a protection group, this is the group of virtual machines we want to have protected and replicated to the second location. Click the ‘Protection Groups’ option at the bottom of the screen Click the ‘Create Protection Group’ button at the top of the screen Select the protected site and the array pair created earlier, then […]

Part 6 – Site Recovery Manager Inventory Mappings

This stage is all about configuring the Inventory Mappings.  This includes resource mappings, folder mappings, network mappings and placeholder datastores.  This is basically linking the resources being used at the protected site with the resources to be used at the recovery site. Resource Mappings Make sure that you are in the ‘Site Recovery Manager’ section of the vSphere client and […]

Part 5 – Configuring the XIV SRA

Although we have gone through and connected together the Site Recovery Manager instances between the local and remote sites, and have installed the SRA software to connect to the XIVs, we haven’t actually connected anything across to the XIV units themselves.  This next part configures the connections to the XIV. In the ‘Site Recovery Manager’ section of the vCenter client, […]

Part 4 – Site Recovery Manager Site Pairing

The next stage in our process is to connect the two Site Recovery Managers together – this means that your vCenters do not need to be configured in Linked Mode.  This process is called pairing. Open up the vSphere client, click the ‘Home’ entry at the top of the application Click on the ‘Site Recovery Manager’ icon to switch to […]

Part 3 – Installing the XIV SRA

To utilise the XIV storage to perform the replication tasks, we need to install the XIV SRA (Storage Replication Adapter).  This is the process to be performed to install the XIV SRA. Please note that you should only download the SRA for your storage directly from VMware, these adapters have been fully tested and approved by VMware… downloading later SRAs […]

Part 2 – Site Recovery Manager Installation

Log onto the SRM application server Locate and start up the SRM installation program Select your language and then click ‘OK’ After a short while the installation wizard will begin… click ‘Next’. On the ‘Patents’ screen, click ‘Next’ Accept the license agreement and click ‘Next’ Change the installation directory to the D: drive as shown below and click ‘Next’: As […]

Part 1 – Site Recovery Manager Database Setup

The first part of our guide to install and configure VMware Site Recovery Manager, is to configure the database.  When installing and configuring Site Recovery Manager, there are a couple of items that you should be aware of, prior to setting up the environment: Both the protected site (source) and the recovery site (destination) need to have a Site Recovery […]

10-part Site Recovery Manager – with IBM XIV

This is a step-by-step process on how to install, configure and utilise VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) with the IBM XIV SRA (Storage Replication Adapter).  This has been loosely based on a similar post on the Sys@dmin Tutorials site (http://www.sysadmintutorials.com/tutorials/vmware-vsphere-5-x/site-recovery-manager-5/) but has been used in a Production environment to migrate servers from one data centre to another.  Please also note […]

Virtual Machine Disk Alignment

Some of this information is taken from the excellent work that Ricky El-Qasem (http://read.virtualizeplanet.com/) has done.   I have gone through and tested this procedure on a few machines with good results but please note that I do not take any responsibility for any damage that occurs to a virtual machine through performing these tasks.  My advice is to always […]