This section provides guidance for installing and configuring SRM with PowerFlex SRA.
See VMware documentation for instructions on installing the SRM appliance.
The SRM server instances at the protected and recovery sites must be connected before starting to use it. Following is the procedure for site pairing:
Figure 5. Site pair summary
The PowerFlex SRA must be installed on each SRM server. PowerFlex offers SRA for the Photon OS-based SRM appliances only. Following are the steps to add PowerFlex SRA to the SRM appliance:
Figure 6. PowerFlex SRA
For configuring PowerFlex SRA certificates for Photon OS (optional), see the PowerFlex SRA installation document that accompanies the SRA download.
To allow SRM to manage PowerFlex storage, the PowerFlex SRA must be able to communicate with the corresponding PowerFlex Gateway. You can configure the array manager from the Array Managers module. You must add an array manager for each site. Before adding Array Pairs, verify the status of the installed SRAs.
Figure 7. Verify status of installed SRAs
Following is the procedure to add an array pair:
Note: Ensure to use a PowerFlex user with administrator privileges.
Figure 8. Verify the array pair and discover devices
Mappings are used to specify how SRM maps virtual machine resources on the protected site to resources on the recovery site. Site-wide mappings can be configured to map objects in the vCenter Server inventory on the protected site to corresponding objects in the vCenter Server inventory on the recovery site. Following mappings should be created:
SRM creates placeholder virtual machines at the recovery site after creating array-based protection groups. A non-replicated datastore should be selected to store all the placeholder virtual machine files. SRM replaces the placeholder virtual machines with real virtual machines at the recovery site while running a recovery plan with array-based protection groups. Typically, only one placeholder datastore per site is required. The placeholder datastore need only be large enough to hold the configuration files for all the recoverable virtual machines, creating a 16 GB non-replicated datastore will suffice, or reuse an existing one. PowerFlex thin volumes can be used for creating placeholder datastores. The placeholder volume should not be replicated or protected because SRM places only transient data on this volume.
Note: These settings may vary depending on the configuration and size of your vSphere environments. Users should review these settings and their implications as mentioned in VMware’s documentation.
Table 3. SRM advanced settings
Setting |
Description |
storageProvider.hostRescanDelaySec = 5 |
Delay storage rescan start until the storage devices are available on the ESXi hosts. |
storageProvider.fixRecoveredDatastoreNames = true |
Remove snap-xx prefix applied to recovered datastore names after successful recovery. |
storageProvider.fixRecoveredDatastoreNamesDelaySec = 5 |
Modify the time SRM waits before removing the snap-xx prefix applied to recovered datastore names. |
storageProvider.autoResignatureMode = 1 |
SRM resignatures all known VMFS snapshot volumes. |
storageProvider.hostRescanRepeatCnt = 10 |
Repeat host scans while testing and recovery. |
storageProvider.datastoreUnmountRetryCount = 5 |
Number of retries for unmounting datastores |
storageProvider.fetchDatastoreDelaySec = 2 |
Time to wait before fetching datastores on the ESXi hosts after receiving response from PowerFlex SRA during test and recovery. |
Protection groups are used to protect virtual machines. You can create a new protection group after configuring all the mappings.
Following are the steps to create protection group:
Figure 9. Verify protection status
Recovery plan manages and controls each step of the recovery process, including the order in which SRM powers on and powers off virtual machines, the network addresses that recovered virtual machines use, and so on. A recovery plan includes one or more protection groups. Following are the steps to create recovery plan:
Figure 10. Verify recovery plan status