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Product Documentation

Last Published: 2024-09-29

Product(s): Resiliency Platform (10.4)

Managing virtual machines for remote recovery (DR) using Resiliency Platform Data Mover

This topic is applicable if you are recovering VMware virtual machines from one VMware datacenter (in premise or in cloud) to another VMware datacenter (in premise or in cloud). For this recovery use case, you can configure Resiliency Platform Data Mover in either of the following two modes:

In-Guest mode (replicate virtual machine data using an in-guest component)
Hypervisor mode (replicate virtual machine data using VAIO interfaces)

To provide disaster recovery protection, you organize virtual machines into a resiliency group and apply the remote recovery for hosts service objective. The wizard prompts for the inputs that are needed for the selected service objective and for the replication technology. The wizard then creates the configuration that is required for the DR operations.

To manage virtual machines for remote recovery using Resiliency Platform Data Mover

Prerequisites
- Ensure that you have completed the configuration prerequisites for your virtualization and replication environment.
  See Prerequisites for recovering VMware virtual machines using Resiliency Platform Data Mover in Hypervisor mode.
  See Prerequisites for recovering VMware virtual machines using Resiliency Platform Data Mover in In-guest mode.
- To replicate the virtual machine data, a storage policy which includes vtstap capability in the Common Rules section is required. For details on how to add a capability to storage policy, refer to VMware documentation on Storage Policy Based Management.
  Note:
  Ensure that the corresponding storage policy or its rules are not altered in vCenter (using the UI or other means) after the virtual machine is protected for disaster recovery.
- After configuring the virtual machines for disaster recovery, do not rename the datastores.
  If you rename, See Troubleshooting: If datastores are renamed.
Navigate to Assets (navigation pane) > Resiliency Group(s) tab > Manage & Monitor Assets.
You can also launch the wizard from the Unmanaged or Overview tabs.
Select the assets:
- Select Host as the asset type, select the data center, and select other filters as needed to display a list of virtual machines.
- Drag and drop virtual machines to Selected Assets.
  For resiliency group consisting of VMware virtual machines, ensure that each resiliency group is mapped to only one ESX cluster.
The next page displays the environment for the selected assets.
The next page lists the service objectives that are available for the selected asset type. You can expand the service objective to view details. Select the service objective that provides disaster recovery operations.
Select the target (recovery) data center.
Select the Replication Gateway pairs.
See Replication Gateway pair selection options for on-premises data center.
Select the virtual machine storage policies for the source data center. You can choose to apply the selection to all the disks or apply individually.
Select the replication mode. The replication mode is automatically selected on certain conditions.
If any of the selected virtual machines are prepared for replication using the Prepare Host for Replication operation, the In-guest mode is selected as it is a prerequisite. If none of the selected virtual machines is prepared for replication, but the Resiliency Platform Data Mover VIB is detected on the ESX clusters in both data centres, the Hypervisor (VAIO) mode is selected as it is a prerequisite.
For Hypervisor mode, select the virtual machine storage policies for the source data center. You can choose to apply the selection to all the disks or apply individually.
Select the target infrastructure.
See Target Infrastructure Selection options.
For Hypervisor mode, select the virtual machine storage policies for the target data center. You need to apply the datastore selection per disk.
Verify the replication gateway pair selection and the target asset information.
View the network summary. Expand a virtual machine to view additional information about the source and target networks.
Complete the network customization steps for the virtualization technology.
See Network customization options.
Use the Customize System Generated Workflows panel to enable manual intervention at predefined points during the Migrate and Recover operations on both the data centers. This is an optional step.
See About manual intervention.
Verify the summarized information and enter a name for the resiliency group.

When you finish the wizard steps, Resiliency Platform invokes a workflow which initializes the DR configuration. You can view the progress or ensure that this operation is successfully completed on the Activities page.

See Viewing activities.

Verify that the new resiliency group is added to the Resiliency Groups tab.

When you want to add a new data disk or remove a data disk from the virtual machine, it may happen that the data may not remain consistent on source and target data center. Hence, it is recommended to first place the resiliency group in maintenance mode, perform the required disk configuration changes for the virtual machine in the data center, then edit the resiliency group in maintenance mode and then exit the maintenance mode.

See Editing a resiliency group in maintenance mode.

See Placing a resiliency group in maintenance mode.

See Viewing resiliency group details.

More Information

Managing resiliency groups