Backup and DR — Partner Solutions — Google Cloud Platform — Part 2 — VMware SRM

Backup and disaster recovery are vital components in your business continuity plan & Google Cloud is committed to providing suitable solutions that meet your business needs through partner and first-party solutions.

A broad ecosystem of ISV and system integration (SI) partners provide backup and disaster recovery offerings on, and/or integrated with, Google Cloud. This provides Google Cloud customers with freedom of choice and facilitates frictionless use of preferred third-party products and services.

In this blog series, I along with Jasbirs would cover third party products and services(Zerto, Veeam, VMware SRM) that could be leveraged for backup and disaster recovery use cases on Google cloud platform. This blog in particular would cover about VMware SRM, One Solution for Cloud Data Management and Protection.

Previous blog on Zerto Part I- https://medium.com/google-cloud/backup-and-dr-partner-solutions-google-cloud-platform-part-1-e5334b87f4e6

What is VMware SRM?

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) simplifies disaster recovery. Site Recovery Manager provides policy-based management, minimizes downtime in case of disasters via automated orchestration, and enables non-disruptive testing of your disaster recovery plans. Site Recovery Manager is the only VMware integrated solution that runs on any storage platform and is purpose-built to ensure that your Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) are met.

VMware Site Recovery Manager on Google Cloud VMware Engine is designed for virtual machines (VMs) and scalable to manage all applications in a VMware vSphere environment. To deliver flexibility and choice, it integrates natively with VMware vSphere® Replication™.

Site Recovery Manager natively leverages the integrated benefits of VMware vSphere®, VMware NSX®, and VMware vSAN™, accessible within Google Cloud VMware Engine.

FIGURE 1: Site Recovery Manager automates the failover and migration of virtual machines to a secondary site within Google Cloud VMware Engine.

Site Recovery Manager on Google Cloud VMware Engine can be configured and deployed within a few hours. Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication, which are both deployed as virtual appliances, are installed at the source and target sites to ensure that neither site has dependencies on the other in a disaster. Site Recovery Manager requires a vCenter server at both the protected data center and Google Cloud VMware Engine locations for the same reason.

Primary components of VMware SRM

1. vCenter Server

VMware vCenter is an advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling vSphere environments for visibility across hybrid clouds.

Gain centralized visibility, simplified and efficient management at scale, and extensibility across the hybrid cloud — all from a single console. VMware vCenter is advanced server management software that provides a centralized platform for controlling your VMware vSphere environments, allowing you to automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure across the hybrid cloud with confidence.

2. vSphere Web Client

vSphere Web Client is essentially an administrative interface that VMware administrators can use to access VMware hosts. It allows administrators to create new virtual machines and manage existing ones and their resources. As a cross-platform web application, it can be used on all supported operating systems through the supported versions of different web browsers.

The key benefit of using vSphere Web Client over the traditional, Windows-based vSphere one is flexibility. Administrators can work from any location and use any OS, including Linux and macOS. On the downside, it is based on Apache Flex, which requires Adobe Flash to run; however, it does also utilize an HTML5 web client. It has complete feature parity with the vSphere desktop client plus a few additional advantages and functionalities.

3. Site Recovery Manager Server

VMware Site Recovery Manager is a business continuity and disaster recovery solution that helps you plan, test, and run the recovery of virtual machines between a protected vCenter Server site and a recovery vCenter Server site.

You can use Site Recovery Manager to implement different types of recovery from the protected site to the recovery site.

Planned migration is the orderly migration of virtual machines from the protected site to the recovery site. Planned migration prevents data loss when migrating workloads in an orderly fashion. For planned migration to succeed, both sites must be running and fully functional.

Disaster recovery does not require that both sites be up and running, and it can be initiated in the event of the protected site going offline unexpectedly. During a disaster recovery operation, failure of operations on the protected site is reported, but otherwise ignored.

Site Recovery Manager orchestrates the recovery process with the replication mechanisms, to minimize data loss and system downtime.

4. vSphere Replication appliance and vSphere Replication servers

vSphere Replication is a hypervisor-based, asynchronous replication solution for vSphere, enabling disaster recovery and data protection for all virtual machines in your environment.

It is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client. vSphere Replication delivers flexible, reliable and cost-efficient replication to enable data protection and disaster recovery for all virtual machines in your environment.

VMware SRM Solution Overview & Highlights

VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager provides business continuity and disaster recovery protection for virtual environments. Protection can extend from individual replicated datastores to an entire virtual site.

In a Site Recovery Manager environment, there are two sites involved — a protected site and a recovery site. Protection groups1 that contain protected virtual machines are configured on the protected site and these virtual machines can be recovered by executing the recovery plans on the recovery site.

Site Recovery Manager leverages array based replication between a protected site and a recovery site. The workflow that is built into Site Recovery Manager automatically discovers which datastores are setup for replication between the protected and recovery sites.

Site Recovery Manager provides protection for the operating systems and applications encapsulated by the virtual machines running on an ESX host. A Site Recovery Manager server must be installed at the protected site and at the recovery site. The protected and recovery sites must each be managed by their own VMware vCenter™ Server.

1. Disaster Recovery

To migrate virtual machines (VMs) from an on-premises data center to your private cloud vCenter environment, several options are available. The private cloud provides native access to VMware vCenter, which supports tools for workload migration. This document describes some of your vCenter migration options.

Site Recovery Manager can be configured and deployed in a few hours easily. Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication, which are both deployed as virtual appliances, are installed at the source and target sites to ensure that neither site has dependencies on the other in a disaster. Site Recovery Manager requires a vCenter server at both locations for the same reason.

Recovery site resources can be expensive. Site Recovery Manager when combined with the dynamic, on-demand scalability of Google Cloud VMware Engine provides the ideal mixture of cost and recovery time. The recovery site resources can be kept at a minimal level until needed, and then expanded as part of the recovery process.

Site Recovery Manager automates the orchestration of the failover process from on-premises to Google Cloud VMware Engine and between Google Cloud VMware Engine instances. It also handles failback. The benefit? Automating these workflows eliminates errors inherent in manual processes and reduces complexity. This level of automation also enables users to test their recovery plans non-disruptively, as frequently as required, which in turn increases the predictability of recovery times and, ultimately, the level of confidence in the recovery plan. Non-disruptive recovery plan tests do not impact the protected VMs, replication, or recovery points.

2. Continuous Replication

Site Recovery Manager can use vSphere Replication to replicate data to servers at the recovery site.

You deploy the vSphere Replication appliance and configure vSphere Replication on virtual machines independently of Site Recovery Manager. See the vSphere Replication documentation at https://docs.vmware.com/en/vSphere-Replication/index.html for information about deploying and configuring vSphere Replication.

vSphere Replication does not require storage arrays. The vSphere Replication storage replication source and target can be any storage device, including, but not limited to, storage arrays.

You can configure vSphere Replication to regularly create and retain snapshots of protected virtual machines on the recovery site. Taking multiple point-in-time (PIT) snapshots of virtual machines allows you to retain more than one replica of a virtual machine on the recovery site. Each snapshot reflects the state of the virtual machine at a certain point in time. You can select which snapshot to recover when you use vSphere Replication to perform a recovery.

Site Recovery Manager Architecture with vSphere Replication

• Replicating a Virtual Machine and Enabling Multiple Point in Time Instances
  You can recover virtual machines at specific points in time (PIT), such as the last known consistent state.

3. Long-Term Retention

SRM makes it dead simple to meet your regulatory or legal requirements: send data to the cloud or the purpose-built storage appliance of your choice for retention spanning months or years. These long-term copies can be taken from local backups or DR replicas, are done on a schedule of your choice, and can be stored wherever makes most sense for your business. Powerful indexing & search makes finding and restoring files as easy as 1–2–3 no matter what your 3–2–1 strategy looks like. In it for the long haul? Use cost-effective cloud tiering to move LTR copies from hot to cold to deep freeze storage for data you want to keep but only infrequently access.

4. Data Mobility and Migrations

Whether for datacenter consolidations, mergers & acquisitions, or an on-ramp to the cloud, SRM helps our customers move their data and applications with none of the pain typically associated with migrations. Dramatically speed up your migration project with SRM’s fully orchestrated platform, even if migrating to/from the public cloud.

5. Test and Development

SRM’s continuous replication means you can always get a copy of production systems that’s only seconds behind. Customers use SRM to quickly deploy test/dev servers that are nearly identical to production, then let SRM efficiently clean up once the servers are no longer needed. Easily validate patches or test new code in isolated environments that won’t interfere with production. It’s a win-win for everyone when continuous data protection meets continuous integration and deployment.

6. Security and Compliance

The unmatched granularity SRM provides means ransomware or other malware doesn’t have to stop your business — let alone force you into paying a ransom. Use SRM to quickly rewind to a point in time just prior to the infection and restore your unencrypted files and VMs. That granularity of seconds also enables on-demand sandboxes that are ideal for post-incident forensics, analysis, or proactive scanning. Even pen-testing is made simpler when production replicas can be hammered with no impact to the live systems.

Combine the Protection of VMware SRM with the Power of Google Cloud

VMware SRM lets you seamlessly migrate workloads and perform disaster recovery on Google Cloud VMware Engine without refactoring your applications.

How VMware SRM for Google VMware Engine Works

Scenario 1 — On-premises VMWare to GCVE

The following sections describe how to deploy a DR solution using SRM in a private cloud. The process consists of the following steps:

• Estimate the size of your disaster recovery environment.
• Set up private cloud networking for SRM using VPN or Interconnect.
• Set up connectivity between your on-premises and cloud environments.
• Set up infrastructure services in your private cloud.
• Install a vSphere Replication appliance in your on-premises environment.
• Install a vSphere Replication appliance in your private cloud.
• Install a SRM server in your on-premises environment.
• Install a SRM server in your private cloud.

Follow this link for concentrated details on the above 8 points.

Scenario 2 — GCVE (Region1) to GCVE (Region2) as recovery site

• Deploy Private cloud (GCVE) in the DR region
• Set up private connectivity between Primary region and Recovery region using VPN (e.g. HA Cloud VPN)
• Install a vSphere Replication appliance in your on-premises environment.
• Install a vSphere Replication appliance in your private cloud.
• Install a SRM server in your on-premises environment.
• Install a SRM server in your private cloud.