Metro Cluster High Availability or SRM Disaster Recovery?

Several years I continuously try to explain my customers that metro cluster is not disaster recovery. I have finally found some time and summarize my thoughts into slide deck which I published on SlideShare. I'm planning to present it at Czech VMUG local meeting on 6 December this year. More info about this particular Czech VMUG event is here.

The goal of my presentation is to explain the difference between multi site high availability (aka metro cluster) and disaster recovery. General concepts are same for any products but presentation is obviously more tailored for specific VMware products and technologies.

You can look at presentation here on SlideShare ...

Metro Cluster High Availability or SRM Disaster Recovery? from David Pasek

It would be great to see you at the event if you will be in the town. But in the meantime don't hesitate to write any comment or feedback here and we can have good discussion as there are still two months till the event.

BTW: Kudos to Stanislav Jurena @stan_jurena who already did several reviews and gave me some comments and feedback before first public release.  

Script to create VMware SRM database

VMware SRM installer creates tables in database automatically but you must prepare MS-SQL database, DB schema and ODBC data source before SRM installation.

Note: SRM has technical requirement to use database schema having the same name as DB user.

Here is the script to prepare MS-SQL database (SITE-A-SRM), schema (SRMlogin) and DB user (SRMlogin) with password (SRMpassword) for SRM:

CREATE DATABASE [SITE-A-SRM];
GO
USE [SITE-A-SRM];
GO
CREATE LOGIN [SRMlogin] WITH PASSWORD=N'SRMpassword', DEFAULT_DATABASE=[SITE-A-SRM], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF
BEGIN
EXEC sp_changedbowner 'SRMlogin'
EXEC sp_executesql N'CREATE SCHEMA SRMlogin'
END

I hope it is obvious to everybody that the same procedure (probably with little bit different colored items) must be done in database on SITE-B for second SRM instance.

I generally believe that scripts are better, faster, more consistent and less error-prone then manually creating something via GUI.

Credits: SQL script has been created  by customer's database admin (Ladislav Hajek) contributing with me on SRM project.

VMware Site Recovery Manager network ports

Here are documented network port numbers and protocols that must be open for Site Recovery Manager, vSphere Replication, and vCenter Server. Very nice and useful VMware KB article however during my last SRM implementation I have realized that some ports are not documented on KB article mentioned above.

We spent some time with customer's network admin to track what other ports are required so here they are. These other ports must be opened for full functionality of  SRM + vSphere Replication.

Source	Target	Protocol_Port
SRM SERVER	VCENTER SERVER	http_80, https_443, tcp_80, tcp_8095
SRM SERVER	ESX HOSTS	tcp/udp_902
VCENTER SERVER	SRM SERVER	http_9085, https_9086, tcp_8095, tcp_9085
REPLICATION APPLIANCE	VCENTER SERVER	tcp_80
REPLICATION APPLIANCE	ESX HOSTS	http_80, tcp/udp_902
ESX HOSTS	REPLICATION APPLIANCE	tcp_31031, tcp_44046
VCENTER SERVER	VCENTER SERVER	http_80, tcp_10443, https_443

If you use external MS-SQL database don't forget to allow network communication to database server. It is typically udp_1434 (MS-SQL Resolver) and tcp port of MS-SQL instance.

Credits: Network protocols and ports has been grabbed by customer's network admins (Ladislav Hajek and Ondrej Safranek) contributing with me on SRM project.

Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication Network Ports Required - Simplified!

Sunny Dua published very usefull blog post describing SRM network ports among different SRM software components. When you need to known what ports are required for SRM look at  http://vxpresss.blogspot.cz/2013/11/site-recovery-manager-and-vsphere.html

Operational Limits for SRM 5.1 and vSphere Replication 5.1

Link to VMware KB article 2034768

VMware SRM

SRM Scripts
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\scripts\SAN

command.pl
discoverArray.pl
discoverLuns.pl
testfailover.pl
failover.pl


SRM Logs
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\Logs\

Links:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/01/20/sra-discoverluns/
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/01/10/hacking-site-recovery-manager-srm-a-storage-array-adapter/
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/01/12/fiddling-around-with-srms-storage-replication-adapter-part-ii/