Before the Dell PowerFlex SRA can be installed, the following prerequisites must be met. This holds true for both PowerFlex versions 3 and 4:
- VMware vCenter and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) must be installed and configured at each site according to the VMware documentation. The two SRM sites must be in a paired state.
- Two PowerFlex clusters with replication configured between them.
- Any ESXi host that is part of either SRM site must have the SDC package installed on it, such as sdc-4.0.2000.128-esx8.x.zip, unless the host is not participating in the configuration.
- Though not required for initial installation, Dell recommends creating at least one Replication Consistency Group (RCG) with a device pair configured between the two clusters. The source volume should be presented to one vCenter while the peer or target volume is presented Read Only to the other vCenter. This process is covered later in the paper.
- HTTPS TCP port 443 must be opened between the SRM server and PowerFlex at each site.