VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR is the most recent addition to the VMware Cloud Provider Platform portfolio. It was originally introduced in May 2018, and it delighted service providers that have long desired a VMware native Cloud to Cloud DR solution for vCloud Director-based clouds.
What is vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR (vCAV-C2C)?
VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud is a solution for disaster recovery between two instances of vCloud Director. The concept of cloud-to-cloud DR is not new, however, VMware did not have any solutions for vCloud-based clouds. vCAV-C2C bridges this gap and enables VMware Cloud Providers to use their current vCloud Director installations to deliver disaster recovery services, such as replication and failover capabilities for workloads at both the VM and vApp levels.
The following are the main capabilities of the vCAV-C2C solution:
1: Replicate and recover vApps/VMs between two vCD instances for migration, DR, and planned migration use cases.
2: A unified HTML5 portal that tenants can use for managing replication, migration, and failover for vApps and VMs.
3: A simplified architecture that supports vCloud Director 8.20, 9.0, and 9.1, along with support for vSphere 6.0U3 and 6.5U1.
4: Symmetrical replication flow that can be started from either the source or the recovery vCloud Director site. Each site can act as both a source and a destination for replication.
This article lists all the capabilities offered by vCAV-C2C
vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR Architecture and Components.
The below diagram from VMware provides a holistic view of vCAV-C2C architecture.
In each site, the following appliances are deployed, and they operate together to support replication, secure communication, and the storage of the replicated data.
- vCloud Availability Replicator.
- vCloud Availability Replication Manager.
- vCloud Availability Replication Service/Manager.
With vCAv-C2C, everything is packaged into a single OVA (photon-based appliance) with a full GUI-driven installation.
- For lab and POC deployments, you can use vCAV-C2C in combined mode, where all roles are configured in one appliance.
- For production deployment, you can spread the roles by deploying multiple instances of Ova and only selecting a specific role.
vCAV-C2C Deployment modes
The below diagram, taken from Daniel Paluszek’s blog, shows the 2 deployment models for the production environment and lab/POC environments, respectively.
vCAV-C2C DR Production Deployment Architecture
vCAV-C2C DR POC Deployment Architecture
And that’s it for this post. In the next post of this series, I will cover the POC deployment steps of the vCAV-C2C appliance.
Related Links:
vCAV-C2C DR Installation Guide
vCAV-C2C DR Network Port Configuration
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