Section 2 – Create a vSphere 6.x Logical Design from an Existing Conceptual Design
Objective 2.6 – Build Recoverability Requirements into a vSphere 6.x Logical Design
Tips for this section include understanding all vSphere recovery solutions. These include Array replication, vSphere Replication, SRM and VDP
Overview
Array replication
- Array replication can typically handle the best RPOs, generally less than 5 minutes
- Replication is at the block level, there is no VM granularity as all LUNs will be replicated
- Is generally compatible with SRM, however it does depend if the vendor has a compatible SRA available in conjunction with SRM
- There are no appliances as such however an SRA is required to be installed, typically on the SRM server to manage the communications between SRM and the Array
vSphere Replication
- RPOs can be as low as 15 minutes (if the storage is vSAN then this can go down to 5 minutes)
- As the replication is on a per VM basis, we can use VSS on the VMs and exclude VMDKs from replication jobs to reduce storage requirements at the DR site
- Is fully compatible with SRM
- Is included with vSphere Essentials Plus and higher editions of vSphere
- It’s a virtual appliance that’s linked into the vCenter Server or VCSA upon install
VDP
- RPOs are typically in the region of hours or days
- Per VM basis
- Scheduled to run at a certain time with a fixed retention
- Can backup to other datastores or deduplication appliances such as EMC Data Domain
- Is not compatible with SRM
- Is included with certain vSphere editions
- It is a virtual appliance
SRM
- SRM is not a replication or backup product. It is used for the automation of DR invocation and DR testing. It performs hundreds of tasks for you during a DR test or real invocation to greatly reduce RTOs and remove almost all manual tasks involved with DR management
- It’s installed on a Windows server at both the production and SR sites. If the production site goes down, you can invoke DR from the DR site
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