VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Updates
I work for Triangle Computer Services who are an IT services company here in the UK. Triangle are a VMware VAC partner which meant I was able to attend a VMware Partner Solution Track last week.
I must say it was one of the best business partner related days I’ve ever been on and VMware really tried to make everyone have a good time.
There was some fun, but mostly a lot of learning and the area that interested me most was Site Recovery Manager. We have customers that are buying into VMware and more specifically ESX 3.5 on the back of the release of SRM alone, that’s how useful this tool is perceived to be.
I think this level of anticipation is well justified and here’s some of the reasons why (NDA disallows some areas from being disclosed):
- GUI based script builder will provide a simple interface to building DR fail-over procedure
- Storage level communication to fully automate the fail-over process
- Storage vendors to link with VMware API (XML based) to allow snapshot calls to the storage processor from SRM
- Fully isolated testing at the DR site to check consistency of LUNs and allow for a ‘real-life’ testing scenario
There was a lot more than this discussed, but some I’m not allowed to say due to partner NDAs.
The bit that intrigued me the most was the fact that, if supported by the storage vendor, SRM will be able to invoke snapshots of secondary mirror LUNs at the DR site and use the snapshots in an isolated test environment. This gives a DR administrator the ability to fully test real copies of the DR LUNs, VMFS volumes, with actual copies of those Virtual Machines.
Someone else who is going to love this feature… auditors. If a company is bound by compliance to test their DR implementation once or twice a year, SRM will make this a piece of cake. Imagine being able to take an auditor to your DR site and bring copies of your DR LUNs and those VMs being registered in a matter of minutes. Just imagine…
You can find a really useful PDF that I stumbled upon a while ago here.
There are going to be a number of storage vendors that support SRM from GA, but the only one that I know of that has already announced it is 3Par. Check out their press release here.
Hopefully I haven’t said too much, if so, sorry VMware.
