For the third article of the Virtual SAN interoperability series, I want to showcase the interoperability between Virtual SAN vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager. This demonstration presents one of the many possible ways in which customers can use of vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN.
In the demonstration below, I performed a fully automated planned migration of virtual machines hosted on traditional SAN infrastructures onto a Virtual SAN environment seamlessly. This example particularly shows how simple this type of operation can be achieved utilizing existing vSphere tools and technologies that possess integration capabilities with Virtual SAN.
This operation is extremely useful and efficient when considering migrating virtual machines onto a Virtual SAN cluster. There have been discussions about Virtual SAN being a solution for Greenfield environments only, and that is absolutely inaccurate. As demonstrated in the video below, this is one approach that can be used to migrate existing virtual machines onto Virtual SAN automatically without the risk of data loss and also fully orchestrated.
vSphere Replication provides the virtual machine replication capabilities and vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides the orchestration capabilities of the procedure. The operation can be performed solely with vSphere Replication, but then some portions of the procedure would have to be conducted manually.
While this demonstration is focused on a planned migration operation within a single site, the same example and capabilities are applicable to the following scenarios:
Planned migration across sites
Disaster Recovery
From the tools and solution perspective the difference between “planned migration” operation and a “disaster recovery” operation is a single click away which is determined in vCenter Site Recovery Manager.
Here is a list of some the key benefits vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager deliver to Virtual SAN:
Asynchronous replication – 15 minute RPO
VM-Centric based protection
Provide automated DR operation & orchestration
Automated failover – execution of user defined plans
Automated failback – reverser original recovery plan
Planned migration – ensure zero data loss
Point-in-Time Recovery – multiple recovery points
Non-disruptive test – automate test on isolated network
– Enjoy
A special Thanks to Graham Daly VMware’s multimedia program manager for adding the nice voice over touch to my recording, @VMken, and @jhuntervmware from the TM Storage & Availability team for validating my demo recording.
For future updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter: @PunchingClouds
For the third article of the Virtual SAN interoperability series, I want to showcase the interoperability between Virtual SAN vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager. This demonstration presents one of the many possible ways in which customers can use of vSphere Replication and vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Virtual SAN.
