VM Recovery Manager HA & DR for Power Systems Version 1.6
- Support for Power10 servers
Power10 servers will be listed in the Add Hosts tab as shown below.
Host Groups can have Power10 and other supported Power hardware also. All the operations discovery, verify, planned and unplanned move DR operations are supported with Power 10. Failover rehearsal DR operations are also supported.
- DR support for EMC Unity storage with synchronous replication:
Already 1.5 SP1 version supports EMC Unity storage with asynchronous replication. Version 1.6 is enhanced to support synchronous mirror also.
EMC Unity storage agent can be added with below command:
ksysmgr add storage_agent name ip=x.x.x.x site=site1 storagetype=unity serialnumber=123456 login=admin password=xxxxxxx
To configure synchronous mirroring use system level tunable.
ksysmgr modify system replication_type=sync sites=site1,site2
Synchronous replication makes sure local data is completely written at backup/non-active site.
- Recovery with reduced SAN configuration on DR site
Previously during recovery, VM should have DR paths equal to production or source site. With the enhanced features, VM can be recovered at DR site with reduced paths, when few ports are not available.
As shown in the picture, VM is having two paths on source site through VIOS1. Here VM has two NPIV adapters and each one would be handled by a different FC adapter at VIOS. If user says to perform DR move with reduced paths having 1 path at target site, then VM would come up using a single adapter at target site. Here all paths should be redundant to handle all disks are accessible with reduced paths at target site.
Note that if paths are not redundant, few disks can be missed on target side. So it is must to have all paths are redundant having disk access to all disks.
Command to set number of paths to 1
ksysmgr modify system min_redundancy_paths=1
When path is set to 1, VM will restarted on backup site, if at least on NPIV adapter can be successfully configured with target disks access.
- Support for ping disabled environments:
Health of the HMC and storage systems are tracked with periodic ping. In the event of consecutive ping failures, respective resource will not be used for recovery. With the enhanced feature, users can disable ping monitor to align with security firewall guidelines.
Ping command helps to identify the health of HMC quickly and switch over to backup HMC, if the primary HMC is down in dual HMC configurations. If ping is disabled, it takes longer time to switch over.
Command to disable ping
ksysmgr modify system ping=disable
- Support to disable LPM:
User can choose disable LPM tunable at KSYS to avoid LPM usage by VM Recovery Manager. LPM is used in HADRHA/HADR/HA configurations, where HA and DR enabled for the VMs.
Once the LPM is disabled, KSYS will not invoke LPM validation also in HA context.
Command to disable LPM
ksysmgr modify system lpm_support=disable
- Support for Hybrid Network:
VM Recovery Manager DR enhanced to supports SR-IOV Hybrid network for all DR operations including recovery.
As shown up in the picture, KSYS supports SR-IOV Hybrid network across the sites. As part of move and failover rehearsal, VMRM uses the respective SR-IOV configuration across the sites through the HMCs and brings up VMs. Here VFs can be given to VMs and DR will be managed through Hybrid network.
No special config changes are needed. KSYS discovers and enables same config using target SR-IOV at remote site.
- RAS:
- Additional LUN masking validations at storage
KSYS goes through LUN masking validations for Storwize, EMC and Hitachi storages. As part of this validation, KSYS reaches to target storages and verifies, LUN masking is rightly handled at remote storage or not.
- Improved error message details
Various messages are improved like vLAN and vSwitch details verification and detailed error messages are shown at KSYS
- Command to display mapping information among disk, NPIV and VIOS
# ksysmgr q disk_pair vm=vm1
Storage: storwize11 (Site1) <-> Storage: storwize21 (Site2) VM-WWPN VIOS
===========================================================================================================================================
60050768028084C1400000000000188D <-> 60050768028104268800000000000D77 C050760899700165 VIOSv1
Tertiary Disks:
Source disk -> Tertiary disk
====================================================================
60050768028104268800000000000D77 -> 60050768028084C140000000000018DF
This command shows list of disks attached to VM and also serving VIOS with WWPN details. This helps to create similar LUN masking and number of paths on target site.
Enhancements in VM Recovery Manager DR GUI
1. 1. Enhanced reports and system status view
Status button shows complete system level details and error details, observed in last operation.
2. 2. Additional tunables support
Added selection option for Quick discovery and HA monitor.