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 Manager server
• Make sure that your SRM application server is created prior to performing the following steps.  I would advise that the SRM server is a dedicated application server.
• As both locations require a functioning SRM server, both locations therefore also need to have a functioning database connection as well.
• If you are utilising array based replication (as discussed in these instructions), you need to make sure that you have compatible arrays at both locations and that you have already configured the replication configuration between the sites.

These are the instructions on how to create the database, these instructions need to be followed on both the protected and recovery sites:

• Log onto the SQL Server and start up SQL Server Management Studio
• Make sure that that you have created the relevant database and log folders on the relevant disks (this is in line with Microsoft best practices)
• Create a new database making sure that the database and log files are located in the relevant folders on the correct disks.  Name your database so that it is distinguishable, in this test environment I would suggest calling the Recovery SRM database:  RecoverySRM and the Protected SRM database:  ProtectedSRM
• You should now create a new SQL user account for the database – I would suggest calling the user by the same name as the database name making sure that the password is relatively complex – a suggestion for Recovery Site could be:
  R3c0v3Ry51t3RM
  Protected Site could be:    pR0t3ct3D51t3RM
• When selecting Server Roles for the new account, it only needs to have the ‘Public’ role.
• On the ‘User Mapping’ section, make sure that both ‘Public’ and ‘db_owner’ are selected for your database.
• You should now also create a new schema, expand the database in SSMS, then ‘Security’ and then right mouse click on ‘Schemas’ and select ‘New Schema’
• Call your schema by the same name as your database and then click ‘OK’
• Go back to your new user within the database, right mouse click the user and select ‘Properties’
• On the ‘Default schema’ line, replace the ‘dbo’ with the name of the new schema:
• Click ‘OK’ to accept the changes
• You can now close the SSMS and log off of the SQL server
• You will now go through and configure a DSN for connectivity to the new SRM database.
• Log onto the SRM application server
• Make sure that you have installed the latest SQL Native Client onto the server.
• Start up the ODBC application.
• Switch to the ‘System DSN’ tab and click ‘Add’
• Select the latest ‘SQL Server Native Client’ option and then click ‘Finish’
• Give a suitable name to the DSN and select the correct database server, click ‘Next’
• Select ‘SQL Server Authentication’ and then enter the username and password of the user you created on the SQL server.  Click ‘Next’ to continue
• Make sure that the default database is configured to the database created earlier, then click ‘Next’
• Click ‘Finish’ to complete the DSN creation.  Make sure that you test the connection to the database

This ends Part 1 of our instructions… please click here to continue to Part 2 or here to return to the 10-part Site Recovery Manager menu.