VMware’s Site Recovery Manager and what it means for you
At long last, and after much fanfare, VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is finally here. Given the buzz around this product, we get a lot of folks asking “This is gonna be so great!….now, exactly what does SRM do?”
In a nutshell: SRM takes the hassle out of validating and testing your disaster recovery plan. DR plans have historically been complex and difficult to errect and test, often involving heroic levels of scripting and finger-crossing. SRM removes that and is honestly a quantum leap in simplifying this once daunting part of IT.
SRM ties into compatible replication engines from most leading vendors (EqualLogic, EMC, NetApp etc..) and allows you to create a “recovery image” that includes VM’s, storage and network connections at a remote location and to autonomously switch over to that image in the event of a disaster. It also allows you to segregate this environment, allowing you to freely test it to ensure your environment fails over correctly without fear of impacting production ops.
One thing to keep in mind: SRM does NOT replicate data. That duty is still the responsibility of the SAN, so make sure your storage platform has the requisite storage adapter for SRM. EqualLogic has a great SRM adapter and when coupled with their excellent replication engine, creates a bulletproof DR platform.
If you’d like to see a demo of VMware’s SRM and EqualLogic in action, simply let us know.
$virtual_page = "Scale_Datacom_Blog";