Providing everything to this point has been configured properly, we are ready to push the test button.
Let’s get right to it.
From the Recovery Site Virtual Center Server, Click the “Site Recovery” button on the ribbon menu.
Expand the Recovery Plans, and Click on the Recovery Plan created earlier.
Click the “Recovery Steps” tab.
The steps listed here have been automatically created via the Create Recovery Plan.
Take a few moments to review the steps in the recovery plan. You have many options to tweak the plan but that is slightly outside the scope of this document.
When you are ready to proceed…
Click on the Green “Test”’ Button (The Red “Run” Button is reserved for the actual failover event!) Acknowledge the following dialog
SRM will start by configuring the storage components. Without a long dissertation, SRM will ready the remote storage and present a writeable snapshot to the ESX server in the DR site.
Notice the status in the recent task panel at the bottom of the main Virtual Center
window.
The next step in the process will suspend any Virtual Machines (if they where selected to do so during the creation of the Recover Plan)
Next the plan starts recovering, in order of priority, the virtual machines (these are the place holder VMs created during the Protection Groups configuration)
Once the VM have been recovered and all of the recovery plan steps have been completed, the plan will pause for user input. During this pause the virtual machines are running and “connected” to the network previously defined in the recovery plan. Remember, by default this network is referred to as the “bubble” network and maintains no connectivity to other physical networks and does not provide for network-based services such as AD, DNS or DHCP. This is unless you have made provisions ahead of time.
Testing complete? Great! Click “Continue”
Site Recovery Manager will clean up the storage, place the VMs back into a powered off state in the placeholder datastore and return to the Recovery Plan main panel.
You have just executed a successful Site Recovery Manager test using Celerra VSAs. How did it go?
It is a lot of work but this document in conjunction with the Celerra VSAs allow for the creation of an environment fully capable of testing SRM and a very real manner. Please let me know if you found this document useful. I would also welcome feedback on the accuracy of the content.
Thanks for taking time to look at the Celerra VSA and testing VMware Site Recovery Manager in this manner.
Appendix A: Configuring the Replication Target (Command Line Interface)
Replication involves a source and a target - if you're replicating file systems, then they are file systems. If you are replicating LUNs then they are LUNs. This step shows how to configure an iSCSI LUN that will be the replication target. To be a replication target, it needs to have the same size as the source, it needs to be configured to be read only, and the file system has to be bigger than the LUN itself. Therefore, you need a bit of "space reservation". This "space reservation" is common to many storage use cases involving snapshots. One nice thing is that EMC has always philosophically chosen that an "out of space condition" should cause snaps/replicas to fail, not production.
This step assumes the existence of a second Celerra VSA configured as per the contents of this document. That said, on the target VSA, there needs to be a LUN designated as a read-only LUN that the primary Celerra VSA will use as a replication target.
These next several pages will walk thru the CLI version of all these steps. The process is streamlined and much faster that using the Celerra Manager GUI. If you want to see the GUI version of these steps please refer to Section 4, Step 3 Configuring the Replication Target via the Celerra Manager GUI.
From the Celerra Console
These commands will configure the Celerra VSAs with the following components:
iSCSI Target
iSCSI LUN
Replication Interconnects
Replication
Create and Mount a file system for use with the iSCSI LUN csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ nas_fs -name fs1-csprod1 -type uxfs -create size=45G pool=clar_r5_performance -option slice=y
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_mount server_2 fs1-csprod1 /nas/fs1
csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ nas_fs -name fs1-csdr1 -type uxfs -create size=45G pool=clar_r5_performance -option slice=y
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_mount server_2 fs1-csdr1 /nas/fs2
Start the iSCSI service csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -service -start csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -service -start
Create an iSCSI target that will be used to serve LUNs to each Celerra VSA csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -target -alias target1-csprod1 -create 1:np=172.16.1.150
(This is the iSCSI interface on you created in Section 1-eth2)
csdr1:[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -target -alias target1-csdr1 -create 1:np=172.16.1.160
(This is the iSCSI interface on you created in Section 1-eth2)
Create an iSCSI LUN
Note that the LUN on the secondary needs to be set as “read-only”
csprod1: (Primary)
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 lun number 1 create target1csprod1 -size 10G -fs fs1-csprod1
csdr1: (Secondary)
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -lun -number 1 -create target1-csdr1 -size 10G -fs fs1-csdr1 -readonly yes
Note: In order to setup reverse replication, from secondary to primary, a second set of LUNs needs to be created. This time the target replication LUN on the Primary must be set to read-only. The source LUN on the secondary is configured normally as a read/write LUN.
Set the iSCSI LUN masking for each ESX host csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -mask -set target1-csprod1 -initiator iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx2-29d419e2 -grant 1
csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 -mask -set target1-csdr1 -initiator iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx3-017f4fc5 -grant 1
Note: The IQN number is associated with the software iSCSI interface on the ESX host. You
will need to retrieve this from the ESX server via Virtual Center as noted earlier.
Configuring Replication
Set up mutual trusts between Celerra VSAs
This trust needs to be setup in both directions; primary to secondary and secondary to primary. The passphrase must be the same in both cases:
csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ nas_cel -create cel1 -ip 192.168.1.160 –passphrase nasadmin csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ nas_cel -create cel1 -ip 192.168.1.150 –passphrase nasadmin
Configure the Data Movers to converse and share replicated data csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ nas_cel -interconnect -create cel1-to-cel2 -source_server server_2 -destination_system cel2 -destination_server server_2 -source_interfaces ip=172.16.1.150 -destination_interfaces ip=172.16.1.160
csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ nas_cel -interconnect -create cel2-to-cel1 -source_server server_2 -destination_system cel1 -destination_server server_2 -source_interfaces ip=172.16.1.160 –destination_interfaces ip=172.16.1.150
Note: Perform this interconnect from both directions; primary to secondary and secondary to primary. If you only set it from one side replication will only work in
one direction.
The interconnect must be the same in both cases.
Establish Replication from the primary Celerra VSA to the secondary Celerra VSA csprod1:
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 –target –l
This will provide the Celerra VSA IQN number for the next command
csdr1:
[nasadmin@csdr1 ~]$ server_iscsi server_2 –target –l
This will provide the Celerra VSA IQN number for the next command
csprod1 (only):
[nasadmin@csprod1 ~]$ nas_replicate -create rep1 -source -lun 1 -target 05.com.emc:bb0050568a59e40000-3 -destination -lun 1 -target
iqn.1992-05.com.emc:bb0050569a3d070000-3 -interconnect cel1-to-cel2 -source_interface
Appendix B: iSCSI and NFS
Discrete LUN Creation & Assignment
Some people may have downloaded this document hoping for a “I just need to add an iSCSI LUN or NFS export to my ESX server from my existing Celerra VSA or physical Celerra” type of document. This appendix discussed just that. It falls outside the scope of the SRM discussion earlier but nevertheless provides insight to some of the basic functions of the Celerra VSA.
This appendix assumes that all LUNs and file systems are created for non-replicated uses.
This appendix also assumes that you have completed all of the steps in Section 1 of this document. If you need to create LUNs greater than 20GB in capacity you may also want to complete Section 2.