Part 4: Creating protection groups for virtual machines in SRM 6.1
Select the production site in SRM inventory and under Summary Tab select Create a recovery plan.
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Provide a name for the recovery plan and an optional description and click Next.
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Select the recovery site where you want the VMs to failover to and click Next.
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The Group type will be VM protection groups and then select the required protection groups to be added to this recovery plan. Only the VMs in the protection group added to the recovery plan will be failed over in an event of disaster. Click Next.
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We have something called as Test Recovery. Test recovery does a test failover of the protected VMs to the recovery site without impacting the production VMs working or network identity. A test network or a bubble network (A network with no uplinks) will be created on the recovery site and these VMs will be placed there and bough up to verify if the recovery plan is working good. Keep the default auto create settings and click Next.
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Review your recovery plan settings and click Finish to complete the create recovery plan wizard.
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If you select the protected site, Related Objects and Recovery plans you can see this recovery plan being listed.
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If you select the Recovery Plans in the Site Recovery Inventory, you will see the status of the plan and their related details.
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There are two options here, Recovery properties and IP customization.
The recovery properties discusses the order of VM startup, VM dependencies and additional steps that has to be carried out during and after Power On.
Since I just have one virtual machine in this recovery plan, the priority and the dependencies does not really matter. Set these options as to your requirement.
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In the IP Customization option, you will provide the network details for the virtual machine in the Primary and the Recovery Site.
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Once both are complete, you should see the below information in the IP Customization section. Click OK to finish configuring VM recovery.
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In the next article, we will have a look at testing a recovery plan.
Once you create a protection group, it's time to create a recovery plan. When you want to perform a DR test or a test recovery, it is the recovery plan that you will execute. A recovery plan is tasked to run a set of steps in a particular order to fail over the VMs or test the failover to the recovery site. You cannot change the workflow of the recovery plan, however you can customize by adding your required checks and tasks in between.
Select the production site in SRM inventory and under Summary Tab select Create a recovery plan.
Provide a name for the recovery plan and an optional description and click Next.
Select the recovery site where you want the VMs to failover to and click Next.
The Group type will be VM protection groups and then select the required protection groups to be added to this recovery plan. Only the VMs in the protection group added to the recovery plan will be failed over in an event of disaster. Click Next.
We have something called as Test Recovery. Test recovery does a test failover of the protected VMs to the recovery site without impacting the production VMs working or network identity. A test network or a bubble network (A network with no uplinks) will be created on the recovery site and these VMs will be placed there and bough up to verify if the recovery plan is working good. Keep the default auto create settings and click Next.
Review your recovery plan settings and click Finish to complete the create recovery plan wizard.
If you select the protected site, Related Objects and Recovery plans you can see this recovery plan being listed.
If you select the Recovery Plans in the Site Recovery Inventory, you will see the status of the plan and their related details.
Before you test your recovery, you will have to configure this recovery plan. Browse to, Recovery Plans, Related Objects, Virtual Machines. The VMs available under this recovery plan will be listed. Right click the virtual machine and select Configure Recovery.
There are two options here, Recovery properties and IP customization.
The recovery properties discusses the order of VM startup, VM dependencies and additional steps that has to be carried out during and after Power On.
Since I just have one virtual machine in this recovery plan, the priority and the dependencies does not really matter. Set these options as to your requirement.
In the IP Customization option, you will provide the network details for the virtual machine in the Primary and the Recovery Site.
Select Configure Protection and you will be asked to configure IP settings of the VM in protected site. If you have VM tools running on this machine (Recommended), then click Retrieve and it will auto populate the IP settings. Click DNS option and enter the DNS IP and the domain name manually. Click OK to complete. The same steps has to be performed in the Recovery Site too under Configure Recovery, however, all the IP details has to be entered manually (If DHCP is not used) since there are no VM tools or powered On VM on the recovery site.
Once both are complete, you should see the below information in the IP Customization section. Click OK to finish configuring VM recovery.
Once this is performed for all the virtual machines in the recovery plan, the plan customization is complete and ready to be tested. You can also use the DR IP Customization tool to configure VM recovery settings.