Implementing a Holistic BC/DR Strategy with VMware

(1)

Implementing a Holistic BC/DR

Strategy with VMware

(2)

What’s on the agenda?

•

Defining the problem

•

Definitions

•

VMware technologies that provide BC and DR

– vSphere HA and App HA

– vSphere FT

– vSphere Data Protection / Advanced

– vCenter Availability

– vSphere Replication

– vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

– vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity

Example: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM EDT - Magnitude 5.8

earthquake near Mineral, Virginia

Disaster recovery required? No

(7)

Fault Tolerance vs. High Availability

•

Fault tolerance

– Ability to recover from component loss

– Example: Hard drive failure

•

High availability

Uptime percentage in one year

Downtime in one year

99 3.65 days

99.9 8.76 hours

99.99 52 minutes

99.999 “five nines”

5 minutes

(8)

RTO, RPO, and MTD

•

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

– How long it should take to recover

•

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

– Amount of data loss that can be incurred

•

Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD)

– Downtime that can occur before significant loss is incurred

(9)

Making an Application Service Highly Available

•

vSphere HA

(10)

VMware vFabric™ tc Server

vSphere App HA

New

Policy-based

(11)

vSphere App HA

vSphere HA Cluster

vFabric Hyperic

Virtual Appliance

vSphere App HA

Virtual Appliance

Hyperic Agents

Running in VMs

vCenter Server

vSphere

(12)

(13)

vSphere App HA – Key notes

New

• Available only in vSphere Enterprise Plus

• Based on VMware vCenter Hyperic

(14)

What’s new in App HA 1.1

• Create • Duplicate • View • Delete

Edit policy

• Add a new service • Shell script

Custom

Service

• Support 5 new languages

Level 3

• vSphere 5.1 U2 • ESX 5.1

5.1 support

(15)

vSphere HA – Keep In Mind…

•

RTO – measured in minutes (not seconds)

•

Requires shared storage

•

Best practices

– Use admission control – percentage policy

– Test post-failure performance with host maintenance mode

– Isolation response – leave powered on

– Network and storage redundancy

(16)

vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT)

•

Zero recovery time, data loss

– Host hardware failure only

– Does not protect against OS and application failure

•

Works fine with HA, App HA

•

Why not FT?

– Resource requirements – does workload really need it?

– VM has multiple CPUs – see BCO5065 ☺

(17)

Data Protection (Backup and Restore)

•

Agents? No Agents? – Both!

– No agents for majority of workloads – keep it simple

– Agents for certain apps

•

vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Advanced

– Backup and recovery for VMware, from VMware – Based on proven, mature EMC Avamar™

– Agent-less VM backup and restore

(18)

(19)

VDP Advanced – Keep In Mind…

•

Engineered for SMB environments

•

Uses VADP – VM snapshots, CBT

•

Utilizes Windows VSS in VMware Tools

•

Works fine with HA, not with FT

•

RDM – virtual yes, physical no

•

Is it DR?

– Maybe – depends on RTO, RPO

(20)

VDP Advanced – Keep In Mind…

•

Best Practices

– Prepopulate DNS, always use FQDN

– Manage VM snapshots

– Avoid deploying to slow storage

– Do not power-off, always shut down gracefully

– Do not schedule backups during maintenance window

(21)

vCenter Availability

•

Run vCenter Server application in a VM

•

Run vCenter Server database in a VM

•

Run both in same VM?

•

Protect with vSphere HA

– vCenter and DB VM restart priority set to High

– Enable guest OS and App monitoring

(22)

vCenter Availability

•

Back up vCenter Server VM and database

– Image-level backup for vCenter Server VM

– App-level backup using agent for database backup

•

Why not FT for vCenter Server?

– vCenter Server requires minimum of 2 vCPUs

– FT does not protect against application failure

(23)

vSphere Replication – DR

•

Native tool built into the platform

•

Per-VM hypervisor replication, managed in VC

(24)

Replication Across Sites

vCenter Server ESXi NFC VRA ESXi NFC VRA ESXi NFC VRA Storage Storage (VMDK1) vCenter Server ESXi NFC VRA ESXi NFC VRA ESXi NFC VRA VR Appliance VR Appliance Storage Storage VMDK1

(25)

Four Steps for Full Recovery

Right-click, select “Recover” Right-click, select “Recover” Select a target folder Select a target folder Select a target resource Select a target resource Click Finish Click Finish

(26)

New Feature – Retain Historical Replicas

vSphere

VR Agent

(27)

MPIT Presented as VM Snapshots after Failover

(28)

vSphere Replication – Interoperability

_{Fault tolerance –}

Doesn’t work with VR

•

FT conflicts at the

vSCSI disk filter level.

_VDP

•

Mostly no problem!

•

If using VSS… ensure

you are using 5.5!!

_{HA, vMotion, DRS}

_{Storage vMotion}

and Storage DRS

(29)

vSphere Replication – Best Practices

•

RPO

– Only what is necessary!

– Just because you can…

•

RTO

– Don’t set one! No testing, no automation, manual process.

•

VSS – Only if necessary!

•

What about bandwidth?

– Very hard to determine.

Do a local loopback first.

•

RDMs?

– Don’t use them. If you must, use virtual compatible.

(30)

SRM

• A Disaster Recovery engine

• A tool that uses externally replicated data (VR or

array based) to speed the RTO of a BCP

• A product that allows for DR to be tested,

automated, planned, repeatable and customizable

What is it?

• A replication engine

• A tool for systems that need near-instant RPO

• A disaster avoidance stretched cluster

(31)

Key Components of SRM

Replication

vCenter Server

SRM Server

_{One vCenter Server}

(Windows or VCVA) per

site, same versions

_{One SRM Server per}

site, same versions

_{vSphere hosts,}

recommend same

versions per site (pre

vSphere 5.x only if using

array replication)

vSphere Essentials Plus and higher editions supported

(32)

SRM Replication Options

•

SRM can utilize BOTH array based

AND vSphere Replication

•

SRM will “see” existing standalone

vSphere

Replication protected VMs

(33)

Recovery Workflows

• User defined recovery plan • Minimize errors

Failover Automation Failover Automation

• Isolated test environment

• Increase confidence in DR process

Non-disruptive Failover Testing

• Zero data loss

• Operational migration

Planned Migration Planned Migration

• Re-protect VM’s, migrate back

(34)

SRM Interoperability

• Works with VR –and- ABR

• Backups, VADP or other

are fine

• HA is no problem at all

• vMotion and DRS are fine

• Storage vMotion and

Storage DRS – Sort of…

–

Replication Dependent

• FT is “yellow”

–

Array replicated only and the

FT status is not recovered

(35)

SRM – A Few Best Practices

Not

exhaustive

How long is VMworld?

Big ones:

Storage Layout

Test Network Configuration Test often!

Size vCenter correctly

Biggest

one:

Do a Business Impact Analysis

RPO, RTO, Cost of downtime, interdependencies, criticality of applications, priorities, units of failover, overlooked

(36)

Protection Groups (PGs)

•

More PGs = more granular testing/failover

– DR testing is easier – fewer resource requirements

– Fail-over only what is needed

– More configuration/complexity

•

Less protection groups = less complex

– Fewer LUNs, PGs, recovery plans

– Less flexibility

•

Find a good balance between flexibility and simplicity

(37)

Test Network

– Use VLAN or isolated network for test environment

• Default “Auto” setting does not allow VM communication between hosts

– Different vSwitch can be specified in SRM for test versus run

(38)

(39)

VMware – Multiple Levels of Protection

SQL

(40)

VMware – Multiple Levels of Protection

SQL

vSphere HA/FT

VDPA

(41)

(42)

(43)

Find Out More

• Take an

online hands on lab

• Ask for a demo

(44)