VMware’s vVol replication allows the replication of a Virtual Machine from the primary site to recovery site storage using array-based replication. This enables you to offload the replication of the virtual machines to your storage array and use the replication capabilities of an array. By leveraging vVol replication, organizations can achieve more granular and efficient replication, failover, and recovery processes than traditional LUN-based replication methods.
vVol replication can help recover the virtual machines in both planned migration and disaster recovery scenarios.
IBM’s FlashSystem provides this feature of replicating vVols through policy-based replication. To configure vVol replication on the IBM FlashSystem, you can leverage its built-in policy-based replication capabilities to replicate data between the production and recovery FlashSystem.
The following image shows a 2-site partnership using Policy-based Replication (PBR) between two IBM FlashSystems.
This blog will walk you through the steps to enable vVol replication on IBM’s FlashSystem, for detailed insights into VMware vVols, read our primary blog, Seamless Integration: VMware vVols and IBM FlashSystem
Prerequisites –
- vVols should be enabled before configuring the vVol replication on the FlashSystem.
- Create a 2-site partnership between production & recovery FlashSystems to allow access between a pair of systems, for more details refer this. Once the partnership is fully configured then proceed with enabling vVol replication.
Enable vVol Replication –
Perform the following steps to enable vVol Replication from FlashSystem’s GUI:
Go to Settings -> System -> VMware virtual volumes (vVols) and click Enable vVol replication.
- Under Select partnership – Select the partnered FlashSystem name from the drop-down menu, choose if this system will be used for creating production virtual machines and then click continue.
- Under Review ownership group and pool links – Review the information added for ownership groups. This will link both the ownership group and pool between the FlashSystems.
In the above image, the local FlashSystem’s pool vvol_child_pool is linked with the remote’s pool vvol_child_pool and the local ownership group VASA is linked with the remote’s ownership group VASA.
A pool can be linked to only one pool per partnership. A pool link is required to be configured for a partnership to create replicated volumes in that pool.
- Under Create volume group – Enter a name for the volume group to be created, for Ex:-Volume_Group_with_RPO_300
Volume groups are used to group VMs and virtual disks so that they will fail together on a remote site. You can replicate a single VM object, such as a virtual disk or group several VM objects or virtual machines to replicate them as a single unit. Replication is configured on the volume group by assigning a replication policy to the volume group.
- Under Create replication policy – Enter the Name, Topology, Location 1 (primary), Location 2 (Secondary) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to create a replication policy and click on the Create Replication Policy button.
Here a replication policy Replication_Policy_with_RPO_300 is defined with Topology 2 Site, Asynchronous and RPO 5 minutes.
Replication policies are a key concept for policy-based replication as they define how replication should be configured between partnered systems. The initial release supports only one topology: 2 Site, Asynchronous DR. This topology defines that two locations are involved (2-site) and asynchronous replication is being performed for disaster recovery.
- Under Summary Review –Review the configurations and now you can see the replication is enabled in the VMware virtual volumes (vVols) panel.
Conclusion -
The initial setup is configured for vVol replication, it can be managed and monitored using the volume group panel. Additional volume groups and replication policies can be created using the IBM FlashSystem GUI on either of the systems.
After enabling vVols replication on the storage system, re-scan the IBM VASA provider from the vCenter GUI to update the replication capabilities if it is already been registered on an earlier version or register the storage provider in vCenter GUI to discover the new replication capabilities, refer to this for more details on registration.
From the main menu navigate to Volumes -> Volumes groups and select the volume group to see the details.
From the main menu navigate to Policies -> Replication policies and select the replication policy to see the details.
References –
- https://barrywhytestorage.blog/2023/01/24/spectrum-virtualize-policy-based-replication-guest-post-by-chris-bulmer/comment-page-1
- https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/policy-based-replication-with/9780738461038/5704cover.xhtml
- https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-6346A936-5084-4F38-ACB5-B5EC70AB8269.html
For more details, please contact
@Carlos Fuente
@Rahul Fiske
@Warren Hawkins
@Vikrant Malushte
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