Book Image

Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager - Second Edition

By : Abhilash G B
Book Image

Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager - Second Edition

By: Abhilash G B

Overview of this book

VMware vCenter Site Recovery manage is an orchestration tool used to automate disaster recovery in a manner that no other solution does. It is programmed to leverage array-based replication and VMware's proprietary vSphere Replication engine. The book begins by talking about the architecture of SRM and guides you through the procedures involved in installing and configuring SRM to leverage array-based replication. You will then learn how to protect your virtual machines by creating Protection Groups and validate their recoverability by testing recovery plans and even performing failover and failback. Moving on, you will learn how to install and configure vSphere Replication as a standalone disaster recovery solution. It also guides you through the procedures involved in configuring SRM to leverage vSphere replication. Finally, you will learn how to deploy and configure vRealize Orchestrator and its plugin for SRM and vSphere Replication.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Disaster Recovery Using VMware vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding the vSphere Replication architecture


vSphere Replication is VMware's hypervisor-based replication solution. Unlike array-based replication, the data is replicated over the network, using the VMware Network File Copy (NFC) protocol. VMware NFC is a proprietary VMware protocol, which is used to transfer disk (VMDK) blocks between ESXi hosts.

A vSphere Replication Appliance is a Linux virtual machine running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 for VMware. The machine runs VRMS, a vSphere Replication Server, and an embedded database.

The vSphere Replication architecture comprises of the following components:

  • One or more instances of vCenter servers managing the protected and the recovery sites

  • A vSphere Replication Server deployed at the protected site

  • A vSphere Replication Server deployed at the recovery site

  • The VRM plugin for the vSphere Web Client

  • The vSphere Replication agent that runs on every ESXi host

For vSphere Replication to work, you will need a VRMS at the protected site and...