Can I protect VCENTER VM with RP for vm?

Hi there,

As of today, Image access cannot be performed in RP4VMs while there isn't at least 1 operational vCenter.

What I can recommend currently is to enable Image access and bring up the replica VM in isolated network and then change the network assignment through the vSphere client to a individual ESX. This should take care of any planned outage.

The recommendation is always to architect the VI topology in a way that will enable VI management even if the production site goes down. vCenter, unless properly protected, is indeed a management point-of-failure.

We are planning to release a White Paper that would cover this use case and any improvement in that field.

As a side note, traditional RP fully supports this use case as it can replicate the datastore where vCenter resides, enable Image Access and bring up the vCenter VM using the ESX client.

Hope that helps,

Idan Kentor

RecoverPoint Corporate Systems Engineering

idan.kentor@emc.com

Hi Idan, Thanks for your feedback, As you say, Vcenter is the management point of failure, If the situation really happen, can I start vms of VNX2 by stop/uninstall all ESXi splitter to save my data?

I think when VNX1 LOST, all vms in VNX2 datastore will finally be updated to latest image sooner or later, because VRPA still working and it will continue to distribute JOURNAL to VMDK in background, even we cannot monitor and manage it from Vcenter plugin. So if we wait for a long time, and then I stop splitter or uninstall splitter of each ESXi host, the vms in esxi should be read/write enabled, and can be used normally. Am I right?

Hi there,

There is a manual procedure with a workaround that we've recently developed to perform the image access and bring up the vCenter replica VM. it involves the CLI, and manually shutting down the shadow VM, deregister and register + startup of the replica VM.

We would elaborate on the process in a white paper, if you have questions until then, feel free to email me.

Regards,

Idan Kentor

RecoverPoint Corporate Systems Engineering

idan.kentor@emc.com

Thanks Idan, I will search the procedure in the Solve tools.

It will not be as part of the Solve Desktop procedures but in a white paper. I'll post it once done.

Thanks,

Idan

Hi Idan,

Do you have post the white paper you had talk about ?

thanks

Benoit

It's a work in progress Benoit, I should be done next week.

All,

The WP is now live on online support. Here's a direct link:

https://support.emc.com/docu96561_RecoverPoint_for_Virtual_Machines_%E2%80%93_vCenter_Protection_and_Recovery.pdf?language=en_US

Hope that helps,

Idan