After installing Zerto Virtual Replication, you configure the site. Zerto Virtual Replication is configured and managed from within the Zerto GUI. This chapter describes the initial configuration required after installing Zerto Virtual Replication.
The following topics are described in this chapter:
■ “Register Zerto Virtual Replication”, below
■ “Install Virtual Replication Appliances”, on page 33
■ “Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site”, on page 38.
■ “Set Up a Remote Site”, on page 41.
Cloud service providers must configure both Zerto Virtual Manager and a Zerto Cloud Manager as described in Zerto Virtual Replication Zerto Cloud Manager Installation and Configuration.
Register Zerto Virtual Replication
On the very first access to Zerto GUI, you have to either register your use of Zerto Virtual Replication, by entering the license key supplied by Zerto or pair to a site where a license has already been entered.
Note: A customer using a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to manage the disaster recovery, pairs to the CSP using the IP address supplied by the CSP and does not enter a license key. A CSP with more than one cloud site must enter a license for each cloud site and not pair to a licensed cloud site. The license can be the same license used in another cloud site.
Register Zerto Virtual Replication After entering a valid license, the How-To-Guide is displayed. Use this to learn a little about Zerto Virtual Replication and the initial configuration that is required. If you do not want to see the guide again, uncheck the Show on startup checkbox in the bottom left of the window. After closing the guide details of the local site are displayed on the left and the remote site on the right in the Summary tab.
The local site name, specified during the installation, is displayed in the header at the top with the location displayed on the right. If an express installation was performed, the location is the machine domain name where the Zerto Virtual Manager is installed.
In the top left of the header an indicator show the Zerto Virtual Manager status. The alert status indicators are green when there are no problems, yellow for warnings and red for errors. Hovering the mouse over the red or yellow indicator, when it is showing, displays the reason for the error or warning and a link to the Alerts tab (More Alerts), under the Alerts & Events tab, where all the alerts are displayed in the Alerts tab.
Install Virtual Replication Appliances The number of unacknowledged alerts is displayed inside the indicator and by clicking on the indicator you can see more information about the alert.
Install Virtual Replication Appliances
The Zerto Virtual Replication installation includes the OVF template for Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs). A VRA is a Zerto Virtual Replication virtual machine that manages the replication of virtual machines across sites. A VRA must be installed on every ESX/ESXi which hosts virtual machines that require protecting in the protected site and on every ESX/ESXi that will host the replicated virtual machines in the recovery site.
A VRA can manage a maximum of 500 volumes, whether these are volumes being protected or recovered.
It is recommended to install a VRA on every ESX/ESXi host so that if protected virtual machines are moved from one host in the cluster to another host in the cluster there is always a VRA to protect the moved virtual machines. If you are protecting a vApp, you must install a VRA on every ESX/ESXi host in the cluster on both the protected and recovery sites and ensure that DRS is enabled for these clusters.
VRA Installation Requirements
To install a VRA you require the following:
■ 12.5GB datastore space
■ At least 1GB of reserved memory.
■ ESX/ESXi host version 4.0U1 and higher.
■ Ports 22 and 443 are enabled on the host during the installation.
For the duration of the installation of the VRA, the Zerto Virtual Manager enables SSH in the vCenter Server.
You must also know the following information to install a VRA:
■ The datastore the VRA will use and the local network used by the host.
■ The network settings to access the peer site; either the default gateway or the IP address, subnet mask and gateway.
Install Virtual Replication Appliances
■ If a static IP is used, which is the Zerto recommendation1, instead of DHCP, the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway to be used by the VRA.
To install Zerto Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs) on ESX/ESXi hosts:
1. In the Zerto GUI, click the Manage VRAs button or VRAs tab to display the VRAs tab content.
2. If the access to the peer site VRAs is not via the network default gateway, check the Paired Site Routing checkbox and click the link.
The Configure Paired Site Routing dialog is displayed.
1. In a non-production environment it is often convenient to use DHCP to allocate an IP to the VRA. In a production environment this is not recommended. For example, if the DHCP server changes the IP allocation on a reboot, the VRA does not handle the change.
Install Virtual Replication Appliances Specify the IP address, subnet mask and gateway to access the network for the peer site VRAs and click Save. These access details then apply to every VRA defined on this site to access the peer site.
3. Select a host which require a VRA and click Actions and then click Install. The Configure & Install VRA dialog is displayed.
Note: If you selected a cluster or multiple hosts, only the first host in the displayed list is installed.
Specify the following Target Host Details:
Host – The target ESX/ESXi host for the VRA. The drop-down displays the hosts managed by the vCenter Server which do not have a VRA installed, with the selected host displayed by default.
Host Root Password – The password used to access the host for the root user. This field is required for ESXi 4.x and 5.x hosts. This field is disabled for ESX 4.x hosts. When the checkbox at the side is checked the password is displayed as asterisks. The password is used by the Zerto Virtual Manager when deploying and upgrading the VRA on this host. Also, root access is required in case the Zerto host component is down and needs an automatic restart.
The Zerto Virtual Manager checks the password is valid once a day. If the password was changed, an alert is triggered, requesting the user enter the new password.
Datastore – The datastore that the VRA will use for mirror virtual machines and for its journal. You can install more than one VRA on the same datastore.
Network – The network used to access the VRA.
Amount of VRA RAM – The amount of memory to allocate to the VRA. The amount determines the maximum buffer size for buffering IOs written by the protected virtual machines by the
Install Virtual Replication Appliances protecting VRA, before they are sent over the network to the recovery VRA. The recovery VRA also buffers the incoming IOs until they are written to the journal.
The protecting VRA can use 90% of the buffer for IOs to send over the network and the recovery VRA can use 75% of the buffer. That is, for example, a protecting VRA defined with 2GB of RAM can buffer approximately 1337MB before the buffer is full and a Bitmap Sync is required.
VRA Group – Specify the VRA Group as free text to identify the group or select from a previously specified group. You group VRAs together when VRAs use different networks so they can be grouped by network, for example when the same vCenter Server supports two datacenters with separate networks and you are replicating from one datacenter to the second datacenter. The group name is free text you use to identify the group.
Note: The priority assigned to a VPG dictates the bandwidth used. The Zerto Virtual Manager distributes bandwidth among the VRAs based on this priority and the VPGs with higher priorities are handled before writes from VPGs with lower priorities.
Specify the following VRA Network Details:
Configuration – Either have the IP address allocated via a static IP address or a DHCP server.
If you select the Static option, which is the recommended option, enter the following:
Address – The IP address for the VRA.
Subnet Mask – The subnet mask for the network. The default value is 255.255.255.0.
Default Gateway – The default mask for the network.
4. Click Install.
The installation starts and the status is displayed in the VRA Status field in the VRAs tab.
Amount of VRA RAM VRA Buffer Pool Size
1GB 461MB
2GB 1485MB
3GB 2509MB
Install Virtual Replication Appliances
This process includes a number of tasks, which you can see in the recent tasks list in the Zerto GUI.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add a VRA to every ESX/ESXi host that hosts virtual machines for which you want replication.
Note: It is recommended to install a VRA on every listed ESX/ESXi host. In the above diagram an alert is issued after the first VRA is installed because it is recommended to install a VRA on every host in the cluster. The alert is automatically removed when all the hosts have VRAs installed.
You can display a list of hosts with VRAs installed along with the hosts still requiring a VRA to be installed by toggling Show hosts without a VRA installed at the bottom left of the tab to On.
After a VRA has been installed on the site the left panel in the Summary tab displays the name and IP address of the site and information about what is protected on the site.
Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site
Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site
Note: When a customer is using a Cloud Service Provider to manage the disaster recovery, the pairing is done during the registration of Zerto Virtual Replication, described in “Register Zerto Virtual Replication”, on page 31.
Zerto Virtual Replication can be installed at multiple sites and each of these sites can be paired to any of the other sites enabling enterprises to protect virtual machines across multiple vCenters.
In this case the sites must be paired as described in the following procedure.
When a single vCenter is used, for example with remote branch offices, when replicating from one datacenter to another datacenter, both managed by the same vCenter Server, you have to enable replication to the same vCenter Server and pairing is not required. In this case, replication to the same vCenter must be set in the Advanced Settings dialog.
To pair the sites for the first time:
1. In the Zerto GUI, in the Summary tab click the Pair button in the right panel.
The Manage Sites dialog is displayed.1
2. Click the Add New Site button.
The Add Site dialog is displayed.
1. The Manage Sites dialog enables pairing to multiple sites. The number of sites you can pair with is determined by the license agreement.
Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site
3. Specify the following:
Remote Site ZVM IP Address – IP address or host name of the remote site to pair to. The remote site is the site where the remote Zerto Virtual Manager is installed.
Port – The TCP port communication between the sites. Enter the port that was specified during the installation. The default port during the installation was 9081.
4. Click the Pair button.
The sites are paired, the process being reflected in the Status column. Once paired the status changes to Paired meaning that the Zerto Virtual Manager for the local vCenter Server is connected to the Zerto Virtual Manager on the remote server.
5. Click the Close button.
After the pairing completes the content of the Zerto tab for the vCenter node changes to present summary information about the paired site.
Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site Note: When the local site is paired with multiple sites, the remote site area, on the right, specifies multiple sites and a site name and IP address is not displayed.
After pairing, each Zerto Virtual Manager can manage up to 5000 virtual machines, either being protected by, or recovered to, the Zerto Virtual Manager.
To enable replication to the same vCenter Server:
1. In the Zerto GUI, click the configuration (cog) button in the top right of the header.
The Site Settings dialog is displayed.
2. Click Advanced Settings.
The Advanced Settings dialog is displayed.
3. Check the Enable Replication to Self checkbox.
4. Click Save.
5. Close the Site Settings dialog.
The Zerto Virtual Manager when used to protect to itself can manage the protection of up to 5000 virtual machines.
Set Up a Remote Site
Set Up a Remote Site
When you are recovering to a remote site, and not the same site, you set up a remote site by pairing to the site as described in “Pair Sites to Enable Replicating From One Site to Another Site”, on page 38 and then installing VRAs in the site.
To install VRAs on ESX/ESXi hosts in the remote site:
■ Repeat the procedure, “Install Virtual Replication Appliances”, on page 33, via the Zerto GUI for the remote site vCenter Server.
If you install a VRA on a remote site before pairing the site, you have to enter the license to use Zerto Virtual Replication, as described in “Register Zerto Virtual Replication”, on page 31.
Note: A cloud service provider, using Zerto Cloud Manager can install VRAs on all the cloud sites from within the Zerto Cloud Manager.