EMC Clariion Configuration for SRM

EMC CLARiiON Setup Guide for VMware SRM

EMC CLARiiON Setup Guide

forVMware® vCenter

Site Recovery Manager

Cormac HoganVMware Global Support Services

October 2009Rev B

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Introduction ........................................................................... 3 Disclaimer .............................................................................. 3 Step 1 – Setup MirrorView on a Primary LUN ............................... 4 Step 2 – Create a Secondary Image LUN. .................................. 5 Step 3 – Add the Secondary Image to the Mirror .......................... 6 Step 4 – Create a Consistency Group ......................................... 8 Step 5 – Put Replicated LUN into a Storage Group ...................... 10 Step 6 – Create a Snapshot for Test Failovers ............................ 11 Step 7 – Add Snapshot to Storage Group. ................................. 13 Step 8 – Making sure SRM can Discover the LUN ........................ 14 Step 9 – Test SRM Functionality ............................................... 15 Step 10 – Setup an SRM Connection between the Sites ............... 15 Step 11 – Configure the Array Manager .................................... 16 Step 12 – Create a new Protection Group. ................................. 18 Step 13 – Create a new Recovery Plan ...................................... 20 Step 14 – Test the Recovery Plan. ............................................ 22 Trademarks ......................................................................... 25 Summary ............................................................................. 25 About the Author ................................................................... 25

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Introduction

This document makes a number of assumptions.

1. It assumes that physical cabling of the arrays has already been completed and that Navisphere Manager already manages both array.

2. The document also assumes that the reader is well versed in using the EMC Navisphere product for managing the CLARiiON storage array.

3. The document also assumes that the virtual infrastructure, including vCenter server, ESX servers, the SRM application & EMC MirrorView SRA are already installed and does not detail these steps.

4. Finally the document assumes that EMC’s Solution Enabler product has been deployed.

It should also be noted that this document was written for vCenter v2.5 & SRM v1.0. If you are using vSphere 4.0 and a later version of SRM, than you might find that some of the screenshots are different.

DisclaimerThis guide is by no means comprehensive. It is literally a step-by-step guide to get the EMC CLARiiON to a point where it can be used with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager for POC, demonstrations and training purposes. For production deployments, you are urged to refer to the detailed documentation provided by both EMC and VMware. This is particularly relevant when new Storage Replication Adapters (SRAs) are released by EMC. This may include additional caveats, or lift some previous caveats. You use this proven practice at your discretion. VMware and the author do not guarantee any results from the use of this proven practice. This proven practice is provided on an as-is basis and is for demonstration purposes only.

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Step 1 – Setup MirrorView on a Primary LUN

This document details how to setup MirrorView/S – synchronous replication. Login to your Navisphere GUI, select the LUN that you wish to replicate, select MirrorView and Create a Remote Mirror. This will bring up the following window. Note that the mirror type is set to Synchronous. Note also that details of the LUN that you wish to mirror appear in the lower part of the window. In this case, I will be mirroring LUN ID 5, which is a fibre channel (FC) disk.

Click on the Apply button, and the following pop-up window will appear. This basically tells you that what you have right now is a one-side mirror. In other words, the LUN is not protected until a secondary mirror image (i.e. LUN from the remote array) is added to the mirror. Click Yes.

A final pop-up indicates that the mirror was successfully created.

This is currently a one-sided mirror, for want of a better description. We must now go ahead and add a secondary image and allow MirrorView to sync the LUNs.

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Step 2 – Create a Secondary Image LUN.

The next step is to create a LUN of the same size on the secondary array to mirror. This is done by again right clicking on the LUN, selecting MirrorView, and selecting the option to Create Secondary Image LUN.

This will present you with a list of candidate RAID Groups in which you can create the secondary image. This is created on the remote/secondary CLARiiON storage array. Choose a candidate LUN and click OK.

A confirmation pop-up will appear. Double check your choice before clicking Yes.

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Step 3 – Add the Secondary Image to the Mirror

Now that the secondary image is created on the remote site, you can add this secondary image to the mirror. Select the Mirror in Navisphere, right click and select Add Secondary Image:

Expand the Storage Processors view, and select the LUN that you created in the previous step. In this example, the LUN is on SPB.

As this is the first time we are mirroring the LUN, an initial sync is required. Click OK, which will pop-up the following confirmation window:

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Click Yes, and observe that the secondary image was successfully added.

The mirror should now be visible on both arrays. Ensure that it is synchronizing before proceeding to the next step.

The ‘T’ icon indicates that the Mirrors & LUNs are in transition state.

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Step 4 – Create a Consistency Group

Note: Earlier versions of the MirrorView Storage Replication Adapter for EMC CLARiiON required a Consistency Group to be created for replicated LUNs. This ensures that writes are consistent across multiple LUNs. However the SRA requires that a consistency group is created for all mirrors, even if it only contains a single LUN. In later versions of the SRA, a consistency group is no longer required. Please check the release notes of the SRA version to see if a CG is required or not.

For completeness purposes, I am including the steps to create the CG in this document.

In Navisphere, right click on Consistency Groups and select Create Group:

This launches the following window with just the Available Remote Arrays visible.

Give the Consistency Group a name, and select the available remote array:

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The following confirmation pop-up will appear. Verify the details and click Yes:

Expand the Consistency Group icon in Navisphere, and you should see that the CG contains the mirrored LUN, as shown below:

The consistency group should be visible on both arrays.

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Step 5 – Put Replicated LUN into a Storage Group

For a CLARiiON LUN to be ‘visible’ to the outside world, i.e. hosts, it must be placed into a storage group. Therefore, in order for the recovery site ESX servers to see the replicated LUN, it must be placed in a storage group that is accessible by the recovery site ESX servers. Add the replicated LUN at the recovery side into the storage group of the recovery ESX server. The picture below shows my recovery group containing my replicated LUN, LUN ID 5.

Verify that the presented LUN can be seen by the Recovery site ESX server by Rescan’ing the SAN from the ESX server. This will list visible devices:

Our CLARiiON LUN (internal ID 5) has a presentation/host ID of 0.

.

The LUN is visible – we can proceed with the rest of the setup steps.

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Step 6 – Create a Snapshot for Test Failovers

SnapView is the local replication functionality of the CLARiiON Navisphere software stack that gives you the ability to create the snapshots leveraged to carry out test recovery plans.

It allows you to create point in time copy on first write snapshots and full volume clones of production volumes.

In order to successfully run 'test plans' on both the protected site (following a full failover to the recovery site in the event that you then want to test your configuration prior to failing back) and recovery site, you need snaps configured with the default VMWARE_SRM_SNAP segment in the snap name mapped to the ESX hosts (i.e. in the same storage group as the production volumes with the relevant ESX hosts)

The SnapView snapshot must be created on the remote array. It is used for presenting the replicated VMFS datastore and virtual machines at the recovery side during a test failover. To create the snapshot, click on the replicated LUN in the storage group, right click on the LUN, select SnapView followed by Create Snapshot as shown below:

This launches the following Create Snapshot window.

Note the naming convention of the snapshot. The snapshot must contain ‘VMWARE_SRM_SNAP’ in its name of the SRA will fail to discover it during a test failover. Click OK.

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Click Yes at the confirmation screen for create snapshot:

To verify that the snapshot was created, expand the SnapView icon, Snapshots view, Snapshot Names, and you should see the snapshot listed:

Warning: When configuring CLARiiON SnapView (which takes copy on first write point in time snapshots of the production volume), EMC’s best practice is to allocate between 20-30% of the production LUN for the Reserved LUN Pool area LUN.

So in the case of a 300GB volume, then you should provision at least a 30GB Reserved LUN Pool LUN, if not a 60GB LUN in your Reserved LUN Pool area. You may also need more than one - i.e. if you have a consistent snapshot that includes several LUNs, it will add to the space required.

If there is not enough space in the Reserved LUN Pool, snapshots will not stay active.

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Step 7 – Add Snapshot to Storage Group.

Add this snapshot to the same storage group as the replicated LUN on the recovery side storage group as shown here:

So now the storage group at the recovery site contains the replicated LUN as well as the SnapView snapshot.

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Step 8 – Making sure SRM can Discover the LUN

When Site Recovery Manager does a discover LUN task, it will only find a replicated LUN that is used as Raw Device Mapping (RDM), or are used as a VMFS-3 file system with a virtual machine residing on it. In this example we will ensure that the replicated LUN has a VMFS-3 file system and a VM registered on it.

To create a VMFS-3 file system on a LUN, use the Add Storage wizard from the VI client. Now you can select the CLARiiON LUN from the list of available LUNs.

Once the file system is created, deploy a Virtual Machine onto it. You can see from this VI client view that I have a VM on my VMFS:

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Step 9 – Test SRM FunctionalitySo we now believe that replication is working between our two CLARiiONs, and our protected site array has the replicated LUN presented, and we have built a VMFS-3 file system on this LUN, and deployed a VM to it.

The next steps involve configuring Site Recovery Manager. The steps are:

• Deploy SRM at both the protected and recovery sites.• Install the SRA on the same server as SRM on both the protected and

recovery sites.• Install the SRM plugin on the protected and recovery vCenter servers.• Setup connections between the protected and recovery sites.• Configure the Array Manager so that SRM knows about the storage arrays.• Create a Protection Group which contains the replicated LUN and

associated VMs.• Create a Recovery Plan which is associated with a Protection Group, so

that in the event of a failover, the recovery site knows the relationship between VMs and the failed over storage.

• Run a test failover to verify functionality.

The steps to deploy SRM and the SRA are not detailed as they are simply point & click. Refer to VMware & storage vendor documentation for additional details.

Step 10 – Setup an SRM Connection between the Sites

These steps are not detailed as they are beyond the scope of this document. Refer to the SRM documentation step for details on how to achieve this.

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Step 11 – Configure the Array Manager

In this example, the protected and recovery have already been added but I will show some screen shots so you can see what is involved.

Click on the configure link next to Array Managers in the Protection Setup window.

Add information regarding the Protection Side Array:

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Add information regarding the Recovery Side Array:

See if the new LUN is visible in the Review Replicated Datastores screen. If it does not appear, click on the Rescan Arrays button in the bottom right hand corned or the window. You may have to do this more than once for the new replicated datastore to appear:

At this point, array discovery and LUN discovery tasks of the SRA are functioning and the replication and consistency group setups are verified on the array.

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Step 12 – Create a new Protection Group.

This is done at the protected/source array side. Click on Create Protection Group:

Add a Protection Group Name:

Select a Datastore Group to ‘associate’ with this Protection Group. The Datastore group will contain one or more replicated LUNs. The virtual machines which reside on the LUNs will be displayed at the lower half of the window:

Any datastores already in a protection group are not available for selection.

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Choose a datastore on the recovery site array on which to create you shadow VMs. These are placeholder VMs, which are used to bring up the VMs on the recovery site in the event of a failover.

Ideally this will be a datastore that is shared amongst multiple ESX servers on the recovery site, but it could also be a stand-alone datastore that is only visible to a single ESX. Click Finish when the placeholder datastore is selected.

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Step 13 – Create a new Recovery Plan

This is done at the recovery/destination array side. Click on Create Recovery Plan.

Give the Recovery Plan a name:

Select a Protection Group to associate with a Recovery Plan:

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Set desired timeout values for heartbeats and response. Leave this at the defaults for the purposes of this test.

Determine which networks to bring the VM up on for test failovers and site failovers. Leave this at Auto for the purposes of this test.

Decide if you want to suspend any virtual machines in the event of a site failover, then click Finish. For the purposes of our test, do not suspend any VMs.

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Step 14 – Test the Recovery Plan.

Testing the recovery plan will tell us if the snapshot associated with the recovery side replicated LUN is functioning and is able to be made visible to the recovery ESX. Select the Recovery Plan, then select the Recovery Steps tab to see what happens during a test failover from an SRM perspective:

It is also beneficial to understand what is happening on the storage array during a test failover. Here is a view of the CLARiiON configuration before test failover start:

Things to note are the fact the VMWARE_SRM_SNAP_LUN5 snapshot is Inactive & that there are no SnapView sessions. Also note the serial numbers of the array which contains the primary copy of the mirror and the serial number of the array which contains the secondary image of the mirror.

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If we click on the test button in SRM, and allow a test failover to run, lets now take a look at the CLARiiON configuration after test failover start:

Things to notice with the test failover:

• Snapshot session established• Snapshot VMWARE_SRM_SNAP_LUN5 is active. This means that it is now

visible to the recovery side ESX.• There is no change to which mirror is primary – it is still at the recovery

side since we did not do a real failover.

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If we check back on the VI client, and examine the state of the test failover, we should see something similar to the following output:

Note that the Prepare Storage phase, which is responsible for the snapshot activity and LUN presentation on the CLARiiON, passed successfully, and we able to bring our shadow VM online on the recovery site.

The test failover start has completed successfully. It is now awaiting input to run a test failover stop. If you use your VI client to examine the inventory of the ESX on the recovery site, you should observe that the shadow VM is indeed online, and that the networking is a bubble network (due to the Auto setting) and that its storage is residing on a snapshot LUN which we now present from the CLARiiON.

The protected VM is now visible on the recovery side array. Notice that it’s underlying datastore is a snapshot. That completes the setup instructions for Mirrorview and SRM. To finish testing, click on the Continue button back in the Recovery Steps tab of SRM.

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Trademarks © 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Protected by one or more U.S. Patent Nos. 6,397,242, 6,496,847, 6,704,925, 6,711,672, 6,725,289, 6,735,601, 6,785,886, 6,789,156, 6,795,966, 6,880,022, 6,944,699, 6,961,806, 6,961,941, 7,069,413, 7,082,598, 7,089,377, 7,111,086, 7,111,145, 7,117,481, 7,149,843, 7,155,558, 7,222,221, 7,260,815, 7,260,820, 7,269,683, 7,275,136, 7,277,998, 7,277,999, 7,278,030, 7,281,102, 7,290,253, 7,356,679, 7,409,487, 7,412,492, 7,412,702, 7,424,710, 7,428,636, 7,433,951, 7,434,002, and 7,447,854; patents pending.

VMware, the VMware “boxes” logo and design, Virtual SMP, and VMotion are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

EMC2, EMC, Celerra, CLARiiON, Navisphere, Powerlink, are registered trademarks and Celerra Replicator, SnapSure are trademarks of EMC Corporation.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Summary

As stated in the introduction, the point of this proven practice is to take the reader through the steps of deploying replication between some EMC Celerra simulators, and then configure VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager so that a test failover can be initiated.

The main purpose of this document is to assist in setting up such a configuration for demo and training purposes, or Proof-Of-Concept purposes. While it may be of some assistance with deploying a production environment, further reading is essential to determine best practices.

About the Author

Cormac Hogan is a Staff Technical Course Developer for VMware Global Support Services (GSS) based out of Cork, Ireland. He develops and delivers training for the GSS Technical Support Engineers within VMware, primarily on storage and storage related topics.

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Documents

EMC Clariion Configuration for SRM