Tag: Site Recovery Manager

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Site Recovery Manager with PowerCLI Automation Gotcha

Quick post here. So I have been reviewing some great posts from @vmKen and @BenMeadowcroft about automating Site Recovery Manager operations with PowerCLI and wanted to give it a try myself. They outlined the process rather clearly in their blogs so it was a breeze to get most of the stuff up and running. But when I went to actually execute a test recovery or a recovery etc. it kept failing! The PowerCLI command to start the recovery  was $VMrp.Start($RPmode)–the $VMrp being my recovery plan and the $RPMode being the recovery plan mode of a recovery. The command was accepted but the recovery plan never started.

I got the following error in vCenter:

Unable to start the requested operation. Another operation may be in progress. Please wait for it to finish and try again.

Hmm…weird. I could kick off a test from the GUI with no issue so nothing was “interfering” from what I could tell. I thought maybe since I was using Site Recovery Manager 5.8 maybe something had changed so I tried it with my 5.5 environment and got the same result.

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After I was about to lose my mind it finally occurred to me that I was connecting to the protected vCenter and the protected SRM server (I did enter in remote credentials for the recovery SRM server though). While I could query the recovery plan etc without issue from here, maybe SRM didn’t allow a recovery plan to be started unless you directly connected to the recovery vCenter/SRM server.

So I reconnected to the recovery site and it worked! So I guess it makes a difference, so FYI. Now there might be a workaround to this and it is definitely possible I missed something that allows this but this seems to be what you need to do. If you find this isn’t true please let me know!

Thanks Ken and Ben for getting me started!! Cool stuff. Kens posts:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/05/automate-failover-with-srm.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/05/srm-powercli-reporting.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/05/powercli-and-the-srm-api.html

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VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8

As people are probably aware, VMware just released the slew of new product updates that was announced at VMworld. vSphere 5.5 U2 at the core, but essentially all of the major products had updates–the one in particular interest to me was vCenter Site Recovery Manager. This latest release, numbered 5.8 is probably the biggest update to SRM since probably 5.0 moving to 5.1, arguably bigger. I am still playing around with it, but I wanted to share some of the things I found of interest in it.

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Minor update to the SRDF and SRM techbook

Quick post here. As some of you may or may not know, the SRDF and VMware Site Recovery Manager techbook that I have “owned” for four years or so is now out of my hands since I moved onto a different role within EMC. Drew Tonnesen (drewtonnesen.wordpress.com) from Symmetrix Engineering is now the author of the book. Anyways the techbook has been updated to include the latest changes included in the SRDF SRA version 5.5.1 which we released a few weeks ago.

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Service release SRDF SRA 5.5.1.0 for VMware Site Recovery Manager

As I wrote about in a recent post the 5.1 version of the SRDF Storage Replication Adapter was updated in a service release. Similar fixes and a few other changes have been also added to the SRDF SRA version 5.5. If you are running VMware Site Recovery Manager version 5.1 or 5.5 this is the SRA you should be using. SRM 5.0 users can only use the 5.1 SRA (while the 5.1 SRA supports SRM 5.0 and 5.1 I recommend SRM 5.1 users use the 5.5 SRA).

So what’s new in the latest SR for SRDF SRA (5.5.1.0)?

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Service release for VMAX SRDF SRA 5.1 posted

The service release for the Symmetrix SRDF Storage Replication Adapter version 5.1 has been posted and is available for download. This isn’t a must-update release for most users but there are some important changes in them that will be very relevant for a few environments. This release will be numbered 5.1.0.2 but in some places may be referred to as 5.1.1.

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Point-in-time test recovery with VSI RecoverPoint Management and VMware SRM

Today I’ll be filling in for Cody on his blog since I couldn’t find time for one if I tried and he has been gracious enough to let me post when topics come up.  My name is Drew Tonnesen (@drewtonnesen) and I’m a systems engineer in the ESD organization at EMC (basically the engineering side of the house).  I work on the integration of virtualization technologies (mostly VMware) with the Symmetrix platform but also focus on VPLEX and RecoverPoint.  Cody and I have worked together for many years now and though we get moved around a bit and re-organized, we both continue to work on VMware/Symmetrix integration like our TechBook (yes, shameless plug:  http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/solution-overview/h2529-vmware-esx-svr-w-symmetrix-wp-ldv.pdf).

So since I mentioned I work on Symmetrix, VPLEX, and RecoverPoint I thought what better post than one on all those – and Oracle Extended RAC to boot.  I’ve recently updated my white paper on this topic and it can be found here:

http://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h11767-vmware-vplex-rp-srm-wp.pdf.

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Point-in-time test recovery with SRDF and VMware SRM

As many are probably aware, RecoverPoint 4.0 recently released support for Point-In-Time test recovery and recovery for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. In conjunction with the RP SRA and the Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) users can select a PiT in the past instead of automatically being forced to use the latest copy.

Since this came out (and many times prior) I have been asked can we do this with the SRDF SRA and TimeFinder along with VMware SRM? The answer is yes! The process though is somewhat different of course. By far this question is mostly targeted for test recovery only, as most conversely prefer up-to-date images when they actually failover. So this post will focus on test recovery. Continue reading “Point-in-time test recovery with SRDF and VMware SRM”

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Symmetrix SRDF and VMware vCenter SRM Implementation Checklist

One of the products or maybe rather solutions that I work a lot with is integrating Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) with VMware’s vCenter Site Recovery Manager. For some shameless self-promotion (I suppose can probably drop that phrase when writing on this blog because by definition a blog is inherently self-promotion, but I digress) of the implementation guide I write it can be found here:

http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/technical-documentation/h10553-sra-vmware-5-0-tb.pdf

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