"Site Recovery Manager in a Can" - Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 401

UPDATED Jan 19th, 2009 - the updated doc (v1.01) reflects SRM update 1, general minor corrections, and the removal of the ONLY step (Solutions Enabler) that required an EMC powerlink login.

Folks, here it is - the "all-in" step-by-step guide for setting up Site Recovery Manager with nothing more than two ESX servers (which you can even do with home-brew servers, as noted here) and the Celerra VSA.

If this is your first read, you can either just click on the document below or start the 101, 201, 301, 401 journey here.

This guide isn't the first one of these out there.  I think my respected friend Adam Carter at Lefthand did it first (Adam, hope you're enjoying HP!).  The NetApp one is pretty good too.   What I like about ours is the extreme completeness.   It's also nice that the Celerra VSA has no timeouts, no limits (except that you'e not allowed to use it in production).

A quick shout out...   This was absolutely yeoman's work by one of the newest members of the Global EMC VMware Specialist squad - Bernie Baker, with strong assists from one of the other newbies - Stephen Spellicy.   Both of these guys started relatively recently, and this work is (IMHO) FANTASTIC - it highlights that this stuff can be EASY (and that they have what it takes to have a early impact).  Bernie - you've set the bar high for the team and yourself - GREAT WORK!

Until the next major revision of the Celerra VSA (which will be linked to major feature releases), expect to see only one more "301"-level Celerra VSA post (downloading and using EMC Replication Manager for VMware for point-in-time, VM-consistent instant VM backup/restore) - we're warming up in the batter's box a series on Avamar Virtual Edition....

Comments

[tomas]

Great document! I was wondering when this was released, but i know how much time it cost on devoloping such a complete document! Nice job. Now everybody has something to do during the hollidays ;-)

Tomas

[Chad Sakac]

Thanks Tomas - your documents are excellent also

[Daniel]

Chad,

Its xmas time so SPARE TIME :) maybe time to have a look at this paper!

Would you mind if I linked this site on my own blog?

Dan

[Chad]

Dan - not at all! Happy holidays and happy new year!

[sergio]

First of all, Happy new year and thank you very much for this document. I have been following the whole serie of docs, and i have to tell you that you have done a great job. Congratulations. I have read the pdf, and i want to try the solutions to learn how this solution works, replication, snapshot,... and the vmware product. Your pdfs and the celerra virtual appliance let me do it before thinking in buying an solutions. By now i am not an emc customer but i would like to test the solution. I read that i need the software EMC solutions enabler to install the EMC Celerra Replicator Adapter in the virtual center boxes. Please, is there a way to try download the software solutions enabler to test the solution.
Thank you very but for this great document.

[Bernie Baker]

Sergio,

Apologies for the delayed response. We posted an update to the document on Jan 19. The revised document removed the solutions enabler "requirement" from the list of software. Hopefully you have installed the solution and tested it successfully. Your feedback is welcomed.

Best Regards,

Bernie

[sergio]

Hi, Bernie, it has taken me more time to try to test the solution. I was trying to test the solution over workstation 6.5 but the host machine hasn´t enough resources to configured the 2 celerra, 2 esx3i and 2 virtualcenter over workstation 6.5.
I have bought another workstation with 12G of ram and core i7 920.
I have configured everything and everything is running. I have configured over workstation 6.5, 2 esx3i virtual machines with 1 virtual processor and 2 GB of ram. 2 virtual center with 1 gb of ram and a virtual processor and the 2 celerras with 3GB of ram and 1 virtual processor. For the network connectivity, every VM has 2 nics one bridged for lan and another nic type host-only for iscsi. Everything is running smoothly. I have 1 iscsi lun with 2 virtual machines running and replicating to the other celerra.
I downloaded the evaluation version of SRM and the EMC Celerra Storage Replication Adapter Version 1.1 | Released 12/09/2008.
I have configured the recover group, recovery plan, etc but when i try to test the recovery plan, SRM throws an Error: Non-fatal error information reported during execution of array integration script: Failed to create lun snapshots.
in the logs i can see,
[#1] dynamicType = ,
[#1] faults = (vmodl.MethodFault) [
[#1] (dr.san.fault.ExecutionError) {
[#1] dynamicType = ,
[#1] errorMessage = "Failed to create lun snapshots",
[#1] msg = ""
[#1] }
[#1] ],
[#1] msg = ""
[#1] }
It is failing trying to create the snapshot lun for the test.
I have thought about it and it have re-check that the SRM iscsi lun is marked as READ ONLY as the document says.
Can you help with this error? Everything seems to be correct.

If you want i can give you more datails of the configuration. It is running smoothly over only 1 physical machine. in my case it the best way for testing as everything is running over one machine and i can take this lab wherever i want.

Thank you very much.

[Bernie Baker]

Sergio,

The first thing that leaps to mind is the filesystem size on the target Celerra VSA. As the document states the target filesystem on the "remote" Celerra VSA should be 2.5 to 3 times larger than the LUN. This assures ample space to create the writable snapshots. The snapshot(s) is/are mounted to the target ESX host. I would double check this first.

Thanks,

Bernie

[sergio]

Hi, Bernie, it waswhat you have told me about the filesystem size. The day after posting my post a google to this url and I saw what you are telling me about the filsystem size. http://goingvirtual.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/emc-celerra-iscsi-sizing-with-celerra-replicator-v2/
I change the flesystem to give more room in the target to snapshot
and i could launch my fist SRM test.
I post this on sunday but i don´t know why the post didn´t got uploaded ok.
Really I didn´t notice reviewing the document what you tell me about 2.5 or 3 times larger than the lun.
Thank you very much for your help.

[Brian Norris]

Hi Everyone, After getting a fair few referal hits from the virtualgeek site and after actually finally understanding how it all hangs togeather, Ive created another post using some very usefull information from EMC documents.

If your using the Celerra for SRM or with Replication Manager, then this post might help to understand the file system requirements for iSCSI Luns.

http://goingvirtual.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/celerra-iscsi-luns-and-file-system-sizing/

Hope this helps, and im sure everyone will agree the work which has gone into the Celerra simulator and SRM in a CAN document is outstanging.

[nuoc hoa]

If I have a query about this, how long will respond? But nice and informative document so thanks guys!!!

[Andy]

Oh, man, this document is massive :) Many thanks!
I'm going use it while playing with SRM 4.0

[teeshirt]

Thnks a lot for this how to 401 help.
Nice blog !

Anto

[ベネトリン]

What an idea,
Great tips, I would like to join your blog anyway,

[Appliance Repair West Vancouver]

If you really think, is a small machine part to facilitate the daily life so much easier. You wake up in the morning and youre using an electric oven - these are small parts of the device is working properly. In the late afternoon in the office, you pay a coffee maker these are small parts of the device working again.

[nuoc hoa xe hoi]

If your using the Celerra for SRM or with Replication Manager, then this post might help to understand the file system requirements for iSCSI Luns.

[John]

Is there an updated version of this document?