VMware vCenter SRM 5.0 Extends DR Failover Protection

Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager 5.0 (SRM) pairs data center sites and provides replication and disaster recovery (DR) for VMware virtual infrastructure.

vSphere Replication

vSphere Replication (VR), shown in the lower right, is a new feature in SRM 5.0 and enables DR without requiring more expensive, hardware array-based replication.

Configuring the Replication Process

This test configured VR to run with a relatively generous four-hour recovery point objective that reduced network and system resource use, but created a greater exposure on the ability to recover the system.

Defining Protection Groups

Protection groups are collections of virtual machines and templates that are used to help determine how the recovery plan will work.

Priority Group

Priority Groups determine the restart order and can include dependencies.

Customize IP Address Assignments

VM IP address assignments can be handled by SRM according to rules included in the recovery plan.

Recovery Steps

Live action status shows the overall progress of the recovery plan.

Recovery Plan Report

The Recovery Plan history report shows what happened at each step of a recovery plan run.

Planned Migration

Planned migration is a new feature of SRM that can run a recovery plan, but will gracefully stop if an error is encountered.

Migration in Process

The live action recovery screen shows that the planned migration is going according to plan.

Panic Button

Once a disaster recovery operation is initiated, the process permanently alters both VMs and the virtual infrastructure, and thus requires additional confirmation before SRM will begin execution.