بررسی VMware SRM 6.1

As you all know VMworld US 2015 is in a full swing right now and more and more news comes out every day. Yesterday VMware published a whitepaper with technical overview of the new features in VMware SRM 6.1 so let’s have a quick look!

Storage Profile Based Protection

Site Recovery Manager 6.1 adds a new type of protection group – the storage policy-based protection groups. Storage policy-based protection groups use vSphere storage profiles to identify protected datastores and virtual machines. They automate the process of protecting and unprotecting virtual machines and adding and removing datastores from protection groups. Storage profile-based protection groups enable deep integration with virtual machine provisioning tools like VMware vRealize Automation. This combination makes it easier than ever to deploy and protect virtual machines.

Stretched Storage and Orchestrated vMotion

Prior to Site Recovery Manager 6.1 you had to make a choice between using Site Recovery Manager or vSphere Metro Storage Clusters/Stretched Storage to provide a multi-site solution that was optimized for either site mobility or disaster recovery without being able to attain the benefits of both solutions simultaneously. Site Recovery Manager 6.1 now supports using cross-vCenter vMotion in combination with stretched storage, thereby combining the benefits of Site Recovery Manager with the advantages of stretched storage. The integration of stretched storage with Site Recovery Manager 6.1 allows customers to achieve what was previously only possible with vSphere Metro Storage Clusters:

• Planned maintenance downtime avoidance – Orchestrated cross-site vMotion and recovery plans allow for workload migration transparent to app owners or end users
• Zero-downtime disaster avoidance – Utilizing the ability to live migrate workloads using cross-site vMotion and the planned migration workflow in Site Recovery Manager 6.1, customers can avoid downtime instead of recovering from it.

Enhanced integration with VMware NSX

NSX 6.2 has a number of new features which enhance Site Recovery Manager. This means that organizations can now use NSX and Site Recovery Manager to simplify the creation, testing and execution of recovery plans as well as accelerate recovery times. NSX 6.2 supports creating “Universal Logical Switches”, which allow for the creation of layer-2 networks that span vCenter boundaries. This means that when utilizing Universal Logical Switches with NSX there will be a virtual port group at both the protected and recovery site that connect to the same layer-2 network.

When virtual machines are connected to port groups that are backed by Universal Logical Switches, Site Recovery Manager 6.1 will automatically recognize this and not require manual network mapping between the protected and recovery locations. Site Recovery Manager intelligently understands that it is logically the same network on both sites and thereby automatically links the protected and recovery networks.

Nice new features if you ask me! Now we have to wait for the software to be released and take VMware SRM 6.1 for a spin!