SRM 8.5

SRM 8.5 was released a couple days ago now (10.5.21) and offers some interesting additions. At the top I'll note that our SRDF SRA 9.2.x is compatible with SRM 8.5. For many point releases, VMware does not significantly alter how SRM works and thus simply brings certification forward from the previous release. Since we support...

Partial VM Replication in SRM

I've been working with SRM a long time, but here's a situation I honestly have never been asked about: Can you replicate only some vmdks of a VM? Why yes you can, and it has nothing to do with changing parameters in the SRDF SRA (which I am sure is a relief). This is a...

vRO Plug-in for PowerMax 1.2.2 – vRO 8.4

The latest release of the vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Plug-in for PowerMax 1.2.2 is now available for download here. No new features in this one, but we added support for vRO 8.4. I know I've had my share of queries from customers and internal sales about vRO 8.4 support so here it is.

PiTs with SRM and the SRDF SRA

I wanted to revisit this post on using point-in-time (PiTs) with SRM and the SRDF SRA having just demonstrated SRM with virtual and physical infrastructure. A dual purpose environment was the original impetus for adding the parameter IgnoreActivatedSnapshots so many years ago now, and as it has been four years since the post I thought...

Combine physical and virtual infrastructure with SRM

Although less common than it used to be, some of our customers still have their physical and virtual environments tightly bound together. For the sake of argument (and my example), let's say the database runs on a Solaris or AIX box, but the applications accessing that database are on VMware. Such configurations typically run a...

The Dell EMC PowerMax Veeam Plug-in

Today the Dell EMC PowerMax Veeam Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication went GA and is available for download from their website here under the Storage Plug-ins tab.  The plug-in has been a high priority ask from our customers for a while because taking advantage of our local replication technology provides the same type of...

Oracle RAC vVol test failover without SRM (import snapshot)

Our vVol 2.0/VASA 3.0 implementation which includes SRDF replication, is best implemented with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM). We do not recommend using PowerCLI as there are manual processes involved and there are known issues. There's really little comparison between the two. SRM handles all the orchestration for you and is the superior solution for...

vVols, Oracle RAC, and VMware SRM

Recently I've been working on a project covering Oracle RAC running on vVols. We have more customers taking a good look at vVols, particularly now as we offer both HA (embedded VASA containers) and replication, and Oracle comes up frequently as an application they might want to run. It's fair to say we also see...

ESA 6.2

Dell EMC Enterprise Storage Analytics, the plugin to vRealize Operations, is now out with version 6.2. I haven't posted on ESA since 6.0 because 6.1 did not make any changes for PowerMax. This release, however, has a couple new features. The major features are: FC-NVMe tolerance vVol replication support (vROps 8.4 support - OK this...

Oracle RAC on VMFS – SnapVX restore for testing

I've had some questions from customers running Oracle RAC on VMFS who would like to use TimeFinder/SnapVX to test, rather than Oracle tools like RMAN. This is a sensible course given that for large databases RMAN takes a long time to restore, and SnapVX is basically instantaneous. But why use either solution when I can...