WHITE PAPER

May 2008

Implementing 3PAR
Remote Copy
with VMware Site
Recovery Manager
Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Evolution of Business Continuity for VMware Environments 3

3PAR and VMware – Business Continuity Building Blocks 3

3PAR Remote Copy for Disaster Recovery 4
VMware Virtual Infrastructure for Disaster Recovery 4
3PAR and VMware: Partners in Consolidation and Virtualization 5
Addressing the Challenges of Disaster Recovery 6
3PAR Replication Adapter for VMware Site Recovery Manager 6
How 3PAR Remote Copy Benefits VMware SRM Deployments 7

IMPLEMENTING VMWARE SRM ON 3PAR INSERV STORAGE  7

3PAR Remote Copy Configuration  8
Site Recovery Manager Interface  8
Site Recovery Manager Configuration 9
Testing Recovery Plans 13
Failover 14

Summary 14

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Introduction
Virtual machine technology has quickly evolved from niche market applications such as test and
development to mainstream production as management tools have evolved and IT departments
have become increasingly familiar with the management paradigm. This rapid growth in host
virtualization has resulted in an increased need for cost-effective business continuity solutions
for virtual machine environments. This white paper describes how the combination of VMware®
Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and 3PAR® Remote Copy replication—3PAR’s disk-based array
replication solution for disaster recovery—eliminate the challenges and complexities of traditional
disaster recovery implementations.

Evolution of Business Continuity for VMware Environments

A key advantage of server virtualization is that it drives consolidation from many dedicated
physical servers to fewer inexpensive virtual machines that share the resources of a smaller physical
hardware pool. However, these consolidated virtual environments change the rules for disaster
recovery: the extra layer of virtualization increases the number of steps required to plan, test,
and manage a disaster recovery scenario. No longer is a simple mapping of application-to-host-
to-volume-to-replication sufficient to manage and protect the datacenter. As a result, customers
are demanding specific and easy-to-use business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for the
virtual machine infrastructure.

With the right business continuity solutions in place, virtual machines can actually ease disaster
recovery challenges. By encapsulating applications and operating systems in a generic virtual
machine wrapper, IT departments can leverage the homogeneity of the virtual machine environment
to reduce costs, ease administration, and increase agility. Physical server technology evolves over
time, requiring administrators to implement new server builds and drivers to support newer
hardware. However, virtual machines offer distinct advantages since they remain predictable and
unchanging—even while the physical hardware beneath them are upgraded.

Virtual machines sever the ties between the virtual environment and the unpredictable physical
environment, making them very portable. The portability of virtual machines allows administrators
to develop disaster recovery plans that are more flexible in terms of the hardware deployed at the site
being protected and the recovery site. In addition, the capital expenditure outlay for equipment and
the recurring management costs associated with that hardware both decrease with a consolidated
environment. As a result, more and more enterprises are starting to see virtual machines as an
ideal way to eliminate disaster recovery challenges and are accelerating the move toward virtual
machine adoption for business continuity needs. This shift has increased the need for business
continuity solutions specifically designed for virtualized environments to ease implementation and
management of disaster recovery.

3PAR and VMware – Business Continuity Building Blocks

All disaster recovery solutions are built out of a series of building blocks. This typically entails
engaging many end-user business unitsóincluding the system administrators, network administrators,
and storage administratorsóin a concerted professional services engagement.

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

3PAR Utility Storage and VMware Infrastructure bring unique qualities that positively change
how disaster recovery is planned, tested, implemented, and managed. Understanding these unique
qualities is key to appreciating why 3PAR and VMware work together to deliver an ideal combined
disaster recovery solution.

3PAR Remote Copy for Disaster Recovery

3PAR Remote Copy, based on 3PAR’s thin copy technology, brings a rich set of features and
benefits that cost-effectively address the challenges of planning and successfully implementing
disaster recovery. With 3PAR Remote Copy, organizations can cost-effectively protect and share
data from any application. Because Remote Copy is thin provisioning-aware, it allows customers
to replicate only written—not allocated—capacity. Remote Copy’s simplicity of configuration
and ease of use make prolonged and costly professional services engagements unnecessary. Its
supported native-IP implementation eliminates the need for protocol extenders or converters for
long distance replication.

A simple user interface allows storage administrators to easily and quickly create new remote
copy groups—collections of volumes also known as consistency groups—that provide write-order
consistency. Administrators can choose from synchronous or asynchronous periodic modes of
transport over Fibre Channel or IP links for additional disaster recovery flexibility. The simplicity
of implementing and managing 3PAR Remote Copy drives down the costs and eliminates the
complexity traditionally associated with disaster recovery, giving administrators the option of
protecting more applications while easing the burden on staff and budgets.

The inherent thin copy capabilities of 3PAR Remote Copy also make it very efficient. Since Remote
Copy is thin provisioning-aware, the target volumes provide dramatic cost savings and ease of use
benefits normally associated with thin provisioned source volumes. Any-to-any replication is also
supported, allowing users to flexibly mirror data between any 3PAR InServ® Storage Server and
different volume service levels (for example, replication between RAID 1 Fibre Channel volumes
and RAID 5 enterprise SATA volumes). Bandwidth is efficiently utilized since, with asynchronous
periodic mode, changed data within a volume or consistency group is transferred only once—no
matter how many times it has changed between synchronization intervals.

All of these features of 3PAR Remote Copy make it an ideal and efficient engine for transferring a
virtual machine infrastructure between sites during a disaster recovery scenario.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure for Disaster Recovery

VMware Infrastructure is a software suite used for optimizing and managing IT environments
through virtualization. Built on the benefits of host virtualization and virtual machines, VMware
Infrastructure virtualizes servers, networks, and storage and allows static IT infrastructures to be
turned into dynamic datacenters. Virtual machines encapsulate multiple operating systems and
applications while remaining independent of the underlying hardware. VMware Infrastructure
delivers operational cost savings along with increased operational efficiency and flexibility.

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

As previously mentioned, virtual machines are an ideal enabler for simplified disaster recovery.
Virtual machines, as seen by the guest operating system, represent a homogeneous, unchanging
machine environment with a simplified IDE, SCSI, Ethernet, and video hardware structure.
By encapsulating applications and operating systems into virtual machines, the resulting guest
operating system and application are portable via replication to a remote site without concerns
regarding differing physical hardware.

Furthermore, administrators can employ fewer physical assets at the remote location, trading off
higher performance for lower hardware cost as suitable for the organization’s recovery needs.
Organizations are no longer bound to the “buy two of everything” approach to disaster recovery.
As a result of this flexibility, applications running on VMware virtual machines are simpler and
more efficient to protect as part of a disaster recovery solution than comparable applications
running on physical hosts.

3PAR and VMware: Partners in Consolidation and Virtualization

When used together in datacenter consolidation efforts, 3PAR Utility Storage and VMware
Infrastructure offer a unique alignment of benefits. Through the use of virtualization, each
product severs the relationship between the usable resources and the physical hardware behind
those resources. By breaking these ties, the stranded capacity and unused CPU processing power
associated with individual applications become shared resources that are now available to all
applications. Table 1 illustrates how the benefits of virtualization apply to both storage arrays and
physical servers.

Table 1: 3PAR and VMware Virtualization Benefits

Storage Consolidation with 3PAR Server Consolidation with VMware

Cut storage TCO by 50% or more Cut server TCO by up to 70%

Increase capacity utilization by up to 75% Increase CPU utilization by up to 80%

Reduce storage administration effort by 90% Improve server to administrator ratio from
10:1 to 30:1

Provision new storage in seconds Provision a new server in minutes

Optimize service levels / rebalance resources with Optimize service levels / rebalance resources by
one command dragging and dropping

Save 3,100 kWh and $310 per year for each Save 6,800 kWh and $680 per year for each
usable TB virtualized workload

50% or more reduction in floor space 70% or more reduction in floor space

Simple and efficient disaster recovery for better and broader application recoverability

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Addressing the Challenges of Disaster Recovery

Management of a multi-layered, highly virtualized disaster recovery environment is challenging
if the system administrator must coordinate actions through multiple management applications
across the various components of the solution. For example, one such task involves mapping the
applications and virtual machines down through storage fabric zoning to the physical array volumes
and VMware VMFS filesystems in what can be a many-to-many relationship. To accomplish this,
the administrator must map the array volumes between sites, and again those volumes must be
associated with physical servers and their specific virtual machines. If a VMware administrator
migrates virtual machines between datastores, this can very easily disrupt the carefully crafted
mapping for array-based replication. Failure to monitor and maintain the end-to-end mappings
results in loss of availability of the application at the remote site.

To alleviate these challenges associated with manual disaster recovery planning, VMware
introduced VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to provide end-to-end management of array-
based replication and virtual machine failover for VMware Infrastructure environments. VMware
SRM enables system administrators to discover which array volumes are protected via replication,
to manage the testing and production failover of these volumes, and to restart the virtual machines
at the remote site. As part of the storage discovery, VMware enumerates the volumes on each site
and ensures that, for any given virtual machine requiring remote replication, all the necessary
virtual machine components, datastores, and disk assets are properly mapped and accessible at
both sites.

Figure 1: VMware SRM Deployment

Protected site recovery site

Virtualcenter srM site recovery srM Virtualcenter

Manager

App App App App App App App App

Protected
OS OS OS OS virtual OS OS OS OS
machines

App App App App App App

OS OS OS OS OS OS

Virtual Machines Virtual Machines

VMware Infrastructure VMware Infrastructure

servers servers

replication via
3PAr remote copy
storage storage

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

3PAR Replication Adapter for VMware Site Recovery Manager

VMware SRM supports 3PAR InServ Storage Servers via the 3PAR Replication Adapter for
VMware Site Recovery Manager. VMware SRM uses adapters developed specifically for each
supported array to facilitate the integration with different storage arrays and their associated array-
based replication technology. 3PAR has developed and certified the 3PAR Replication Adapter for
VMware SRM to enable VMware Site Recovery Manager to integrate with 3PAR Remote Copy.
3PAR Replication Adapter for VMware SRM was developed and tested in close association with
VMware to provide integrated virtual infrastructure and disaster recovery management, including
data replication between 3PAR InServ Storage Servers with 3PAR Remote Copy. The adapter is
distributed by VMware at no cost.

The 3PAR adapter allows the VMware Infrastructure Client—via connections to a Virtual
Center server—to manage testing and failover of 3PAR Remote Copy consistency groups. This
model allows administrators to use a “single pane of glass” to manage their VMware disaster
recovery solution.

How 3PAR Remote Copy Benefits VMware SRM Deployments

Combining 3PAR Remote Copy and VMware SRM to protect VMware Infrastructure assets
creates a best-of-breed solution that provides users with simplified disaster recovery and flexible
replication options. In conjunction with VMware SRM, the 3PAR Replication Adapter enables
users to replace independent storage and server disaster recovery processes with a single automated
process and centralized interface, ensuring rapid and reliable recovery. This is complemented by
the ease and simplicity with which 3PAR Remote Copy can be set up and tested with just a few
commands, thus eliminating the usual need for professional services. Together, 3PAR and VMware
ensure that recovery time and recovery point objectives can be met simply and predictably.

This combined solution also provides a new level of replication flexibility not possible with
traditional disaster recovery solutions. With 3PAR and VMware, organizations can easily recover
virtual machines on different x86 server hardware. 3PAR Remote Copy enables customers to
flexibly replicate between 3PAR InServ Storage Servers of any model and between different service
levels (for example, RAID level or drive type) for greater infrastructure agility.

The combination of 3PAR Remote Copy and VMware SRM blends the unique capabilities of
each company for compelling disaster recovery for VMware deployments. Even customers with
stringent disaster recovery requirements can implement the automated, easy-to-use solution.

IMPLEMENTING VMWARE SRM ON 3PAR INSERV STORAGE

The ease-of-use of both 3PAR Remote Copy and VMware SRM make the implementation of a
disaster recovery solution significantly easier and more cost-effective than previous methods.

3PAR Remote Copy makes configuring the replication piece of the disaster recovery solution very
easy without the need to hire professional services. Once the 3PAR arrays are installed, replication
between the two sites can be easily and quickly configured with a few commands. Remote Copy

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

can be configured, managed, and tested in a matter of minutes. Costly and prolonged professional
services engagements common with other replication technologies are eliminated. Special extenders
or converters to permit-long distance replication are also eliminated.

3PAR Remote Copy Configuration

Only a few simple commands are required to configure and implement 3PAR Remote Copy1:

Step 1: Port Configuration. Configuring the Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel ports on
each InServ is a process that takes as few as two commands and only needs to be done once
during the first-time setup of Remote Copy.

Step 2: Array Relationship. With a few simple commands, the administrator configures the
logical links between the InServ ports and the InServ-to-InServ pairing that replicates data
over the dual redundant links. These commands need only be entered once for the duration
of the relationship between the two arrays. Numerous remote copy groups (also known
as consistency groups) can be created and managed across these links with no further link
management.

Step 3: Volume Groups. Creating a volume group requires only one command, with an
additional command for each volume admitted to the group. For a simple volume group of
one host with one volume, this equates to just two commands. By default, 3PAR Remote
Copy uses a mirror_config policy that specifies that all configuration commands involving
the specified target are duplicated at the remote InServ. This allows the administrator to
manage one side of the link while the other side is managed automatically.

After configuring Remote Copy, the 3PAR Replication Adapter must be installed on the Virtual
Center servers at both the primary site as well as the remote site. Each Virtual Center server
running the 3PAR Replication Adapter must also have the 3PAR CLI and the Microsoft Visual
C++ Redistributable Package installed2. Before installation of the SRM components, storage
administrators need to ensure that 3PAR Remote Copy is configured properly and that replication
outside of SRM is functional.

Site Recovery Manager Interface

VMware SRM integrates tightly into VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client. When installed, a new
management pane is available in VMware Infrastructure Client where administrators can create,
manage, and execute disaster recovery plans (Figure 2).

1 For details on 3PAR Remote Copy, please read the 3PAR Remote Copy White Paper available at
3PAR.com.

2 Available at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-

9C99-220B62A191EE&displaylang=en 8
Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Figure 2: VMware SRM Plug-In

Site Recovery Manager Configuration

The Protection Setup and Recovery Setup options will guide you through the wizard-based process
of configuring VMware SRM. The first step in the Protection Setup process is to establish a
connection between the protected and the recovery site (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Establishing SRM Connectivity Between Sites

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

After connectivity is established between the two sites, the 3PAR InServ Storage Server can be
added in the Add Array Manager window. To use SRM with 3PAR arrays, select the Array 3PAR
Native Interface as the Manager Type and then enter the IP address and login information for the
3PAR InServ Storage Server (Figure 4). SRM uses this information to determine which LUNs are
being replicated and which virtual machines reside on those LUNs.

Figure 4: 3PAR Replication Adapter for VMware SRM

Once the VMware administrator determines which virtual machines need to be replicated, those
virtual machines are mapped via the Inventory Mappings tab to the Networks, Compute Resources,
and Virtual Machine folders available at the recovery site (Figure 5).

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Figure 5: Virtual Machine Mappings

The protection group window lists all of the protected datastores together in a datastore group and
then specifies the recovery site datastore for the placeholder virtual machines (Figures 6 and 7).

Figure 6: Protected Datastores

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Figure 7: Recovery Site Datastore

Recovery plans for protection groups are created in the Recovery Setup tab. The organization
of this interface resembles that of a traditional runbook, which specifies all of the manual steps
required for a recovery; however, SRM turns those steps into a completely automated process.

To create a recovery plan, the VMware administrator must specify which virtual machines to shut
down, which virtual machines VMware SRM should power on, the order in which those virtual
machines need to be powered on, and when to pause this process to launch any required scripts
(Figure 8).

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Figure 8: Recovery Steps

Testing Recovery Plans

Once VMware SRM configuration is complete, testing of the recovery plan can be initiated at any
time without impacting the virtual machines at the protected site (Figure 9).

The VMware administrator can simulate a failover and can monitor the status of each step while
the simulated failover test runs. After the simulated failover test is complete, a report of the test run
is available. This report contains all the steps in the recovery plan along with their status of success
or failure and the duration of each step.

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Implementing 3PAR Remote Copy with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Figure 9: Recovery Plan Testing

Failover
Due to the failover testing enabled by VMware Site Recovery Manager in conjunction with the
3PAR SRM Adapter, all that is required to begin a recovery in the event of a real disaster is to click
the Recovery button. Although Site Recovery Manager provides notification when it loses contact
with the primary site, the administrator must initiate recovery. The administrator declares that a
disaster requiring recovery has occurred, and then Site Recovery Manager takes over and executes
its recovery process.

During failover, Site Recovery Manager shuts down virtual machines, promotes the replicated copy
of storage, attaches it to the ESX servers at the recovery site, brings up the virtual machines, and
generates reports about the recovery process.

Summary
The cost and complexity of replicating data using traditional recovery products can deter some
customers from implementing a disaster recovery plan at all. By leveraging the simplicity and
efficiency of 3PAR Remote Copy, 3PAR Replication Adapter for VMware Site Recovery Manager
enables 3PAR customers to easily implement VMware Site Recovery Manager for end-to-end
management of array-based replication and failover of virtual machines. The combination of 3PAR
Remote Copy and VMware Site Recovery Manager lets customers build resilient utility computing
infrastructures, protect applications at a lower cost, and recover data more quickly and efficiently
compared to traditional disaster recovery offerings.
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U.S. Corporate Headquarters

3PAR Inc.
4209 Technology Drive
Fremont, CA 94538
Phone: 510-413-5999
Fax: 510-413-5699

Email: [email protected]

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