In this recipe, we will look into how to automate SRM (Site Recovery Manager).
You will need SRM installed and base configured. Meaning that SRM should be configured either with vSphere Replication or an SRA (Storage Replication Adapter) that connects to your storage. If you are new to SRM, have a look at the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drOdnRaDZ4Q .
Last but not least, you need the vSphere Replication plugin (see the introduction to this chapter).
This recipe is broken up into several sections.
You need to make sure that the following things are set:
- Orchestrator is authenticating to the PSC (vSphere authentications)
- Orchestrator is configured to use both the protected and the recovery vCenter
- The protected and the recovery vCenter must be in the same SSO domain
- The user that is used in the vCenter connection should have SRM rights on both the protected and the recovery vCenter
The following steps are needed to connect to SRM:
- Run the workflow Library | SRM | Configuration | Configure Local Site.
- Just accept the certificates; nothing much to do here.
- Run the workflow Library | SRM | Configuration | Configure Remote Site.
- Click on Local Site and expand the SRM tab in the inventory. If the tab is empty, then you need to check the rights of the vCenter user. Select the protected vCenter and accept the certificates.
- Run the workflow Library | SRM | Configuration | Login Remote Site.
- Select the local site and enter a user that has SRM administrator rights.
- Check the Orchestrator inventory; it should now show the protected and the recovery sites.
Now that it is all configured, let's try something. For this we will use vSphere Replication. You need a defined protection group and a recovery plan.
- Make sure you have protected a VM using vSphere Recovery. You could use the vSphere Replication plugin as discussed in recipe vSphere Replication in this chapter.
- Run the workflow Library | SRM | Protection Group | Add Replicated VM to vSphere Replication Protection Group.
- Select the Protection Group and the VM you have replicated.
- Wait until the workflow is finished. The VM added to the protection plan, however, is not configured.
- Run the workflow Library | SRM | Protection Group | Protect All Unprotected Virtual Machines Associated with Protection group.
- The VM is now protected with the recovery plan in the protection group.
The SRM plugin lets you automate the protection of your VMs. The plugin comes with a lot of good workflows and actions that fulfill almost all your automation needs.
The only negative is that you can only use the plugin on vCenters that are in the same SSO domain, therefore limiting its use.
Let's talk about the integration possibilities for the plugin.
Integration into vSphere Web Client is pretty straightforward. You can either implement the existing workflows or modify them using configurations to create fixed settings.
Another choice is to create a workflow that will replicate a VM, add it to a recovery plan, and configure its protection in one go. What would be good in addition to that is to assign tags to the VMs that show the protection group and the recovery plan (see Custom Attributes and Tags (vAPI) in Chapter 12, Working with vSphere).
Also, see the example workflow: 11.04 Protect.