VCAP6-DCV Design – Section 2 – Objective 2.6

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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