In last post of this series we paired the two vCloud based cloud instances. Now its turn to test the DR capabilities offered by vCAV-C2C.
If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:
1: Introduction to vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR
3: Site Pairing
To start testing DR operations, connect to https://VCAV-FQDN:8443 and login with tenant credentials (uname@orgname) and navigate to Paired Clouds.
By default your Site-B will show as unauthenticated. Click on the gear button to enter credentials.
Enter Org name of Site-B and the Org User credentials. Click on Authenticate.
Now both sites will show as authenticated.
Perform the same operation by connecting to VCAV appliance of Site-B and adding Org/User details of Site B and make sure both sites are showing as authenticated.
Once both sites are authenticated, navigate to DR-Workloads tab and click on Discovery
Select source site from where replication will be initiated. You can select any site from here as source. No need to login to Site B appliance to use it as source.
Hit next post source site selection.
Select vApp/VM’s which you want to replicate and hit next.
Select destination site and hit Next.
Select the RPO and other settings for replication and click on Protect.
Protection setup task will be triggered. Wait for it to complete.
You will see a message about VM protection started.
And finally vm status will reflect as protected.
From Actions tab, you can perform various operations like Failover, Test and Pause replication etc.
Following events will be triggered in vCenter of both sites.
Replicated VM is created as shell VM in destination vCenter and is not visible in destination vCloud Director.
Perform Test Failover
To perform test failover, select Test from Actions tab and select if you want to sync the deltas to destination site before VM can be test failed over. You can also choose to Power -on VM as destination site so that you can check integrity of the OS/App when VM boots up.
Click on Start button to start the test failover.
Wait for couple of minutes for process to complete.
Once test is completed, you will see message “Failover Test Ready”
At this moment replicated VM will be registered as regular vm in vCenter (not as shell vm) and also in vCloud Director.
Perform Test Cleanup
To perform the test cleanup, select Cleanup option from Actions tab and hit Ok on the popup window.
All changes made during test failover will be discarded and vm will be again registered as disk shell vm in vCenter.
Performing Failover
To perform permanent failover of VM from source site, select failover option from Action tab. You can choose to consolidate vm disks (if PIT is enabled) and resync (to sync all deltas).
Hit Start button to initiate failover.
Wait for sometime while VM is failing over.
When this process completes, VM status will change to Failed Over.
Under home page you can see the details of replication.
Perform Reverse Replication
If you have permanently failed over a replicated vm from source to destination site, you can reverse the direction of replication for that vm from Destination <– Source
From Actions tab select Reverse.
Click Ok to start reverse protection.
Wait for some time for reverse protection process to complete.
VM replication status will now read as Reversed.
In source site VM will now show as empty shell in vCloud Director.
And that’s it for this post.
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