Deployment Specification for Site Protection and Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation

Deployment Model

You consider the deployment model according to the design objectives for management components availability in the event of planned migration or disaster recovery.

A Site Recovery Manager instance is required in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance for the protection and recovery of management components in the event of a disaster. You deploy the Site Recovery Manager virtual appliance in the management domain.

Table 1. Design Decisions on Site Recovery Manager Deployment
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
SPR-SRM-CFG-001	Deploy Site Recovery Manager as a virtual appliance.	Allows you to orchestrate the recovery of the VMware Cloud Foundation management components in another VMware Cloud Foundation instance.	None.
SPR-SRM-CFG-002	Deploy each Site Recovery Manager instance in the management domain.	Provides a consistent deployment model for all management applications.	None.

Sizing Compute and Storage Resources for Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager scales to support the orchestrated failover of the VMware Cloud Foundation management components according to the objectives of this design.

Table 2. Site Recovery Manager Scale Requirements
Appliance Size	Deployment Requirements	Maximum Number of Protected VMs
Light	A single virtual appliance with embedded vPostgreSQL database: 2 vCPU 8 GB of memory 1 vNIC port 33 GB (thin provisioned) VMware Photon OS	1000
Standard	A single virtual appliance with embedded vPostgreSQL database: 4 vCPU 12 GB of memory 1 vNIC port 33 GB (thin provisioned) VMware Photon OS	5000

This design uses the following management component configuration to size the Site Recovery Manager appliances. The calculations are based on the management components in a single VMware Cloud Foundation instance. The design then mirrors the calculations for the second VMware Cloud Foundation instance. The total number of protected virtual machines is 10, distributed in three protection groups. The design uses vSphere Replication as the replication solution between the Site Recovery Manager sites.

Table 3. Management Components with Failover Support
Management Component	Node Type	Number of Nodes
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle	VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle Appliance	1
Clustered Workspace ONE Access	Workspace ONE Access Appliance	3
VMware Aria Automation	VMware Aria Automation Appliance	3
VMware Aria Operations	VMware Aria Operations Analytics Node Appliance	3

Table 4. Design Decisions on Site Recovery Manager Sizing
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
SPR-SRM-CFG-003	Deploy the Site Recovery Manager virtual appliance using the Light deployment type.	Provides highest level of availability by protecting the management components. This size further accommodates the following setup: The number of protected management virtual machines as defined in Management workloads with failover support Three protection groups Three recovery plans	None

Replication Technology

Site Recovery Manager can use array-based replication where one or more storage arrays at the protected site replicate data to peer arrays at the recovery site.

Storage replication adapters (SRA) are not part of a Site Recovery Manager release. Your array vendor develops and supports them. You must install the SRA specific to each array that you use with Site Recovery Manager on the Site Recovery Manager Server host. Site Recovery Manager supports the use of multiple SRAs.

Site Recovery Manager can also use vSphere Replication to replicate data to servers at the recovery site. You deploy the vSphere Replication appliance and configure vSphere Replication on virtual machines independently of Site Recovery Manager. You can configure vSphere Replication to regularly create and retain snapshots of protected virtual machines on the recovery site. Taking multiple point-in-time (PIT) snapshots of virtual machines allows you to retain more than one replica of a virtual machine on the recovery site. Each snapshot reflects the state of the virtual machine at a certain point in time. You can select which snapshot to recover when you use vSphere Replication to perform a recovery.

This design uses vSphere Replication as the replication technology when using Site Recovery Manager.

Table 5. Design Decisions on Replication Technology
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
SPR-SRM-CFG-004	Use vSphere Replication in Site Recovery Manager as the protection method for virtual machine replication.	Allows for flexibility in storage usage and vendor selection between the two disaster recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instances. Minimizes administrative overhead required to maintain Storage Replication Adapter compatibility between two VMware Cloud Foundation instances of disaster recovery.	All management components must be in the same cluster. The total number of virtual machines configured for protection using vSphere Replication is reduced compared with the use of storage-based replication.

Placeholder Virtual Machines

When protecting virtual machines, Site Recovery Manager creates a placeholder virtual machine on the recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instance. A placeholder virtual machine is a subset of virtual machine files. Site Recovery Manager uses that subset of files to register a virtual machine with vCenter Server on the recovery site. The files of the placeholder virtual machines are small, and do not represent full copies of the protected virtual machines. The placeholder virtual machine does not have any disks attached to it. The placeholder virtual machine reserves compute resources on the recovery site, and provides the location in the vCenter Server inventory to which the protected virtual machine recovers when you run recovery.

When you recover a protected virtual machine by testing or running a recovery plan, Site Recovery Manager replaces the placeholder with the recovered virtual machine and powers it on according to the settings of the recovery plan. After a recovery plan test finishes, Site Recovery Manager restores the placeholders and powers off the recovered virtual machines as part of the cleanup process.

Snapshot Space During Failover Tests

To perform failover tests, you must provide additional storage for the snapshots of the replicated virtual machines. This storage is minimal in the beginning, but expands as test virtual machines write to their disks. Replication from the protected VMware Cloud Foundation instance to the recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instance continues during this time. The snapshots that are created during testing are deleted after the failover test is complete.

Sizing Compute and Storage Resources for vSphere Replication

vSphere Replication is distributed as a 64-bit virtual appliance packaged in the .ovf format. It is configured to use a dual-core or quad-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM. Additional vSphere Replication servers require 1 GB of RAM.

This design bases the calculations for the size and number of vSphere Replication nodes on the management component configuration in a single VMware Cloud Foundation instance. The design then mirrors the calculations for the second VMware Cloud Foundation instance. The total number of protected virtual machines is 10, distributed in three protection groups. The maximum number of protected virtual machines that a single vSphere Replication appliance can support is 300. For additional information on vSphere Replication sizing, see Operational Limits of vSphere Replication.

Select a size for the vSphere Replication nodes to facilitate virtual machine replication of the SDDC management components according to the objectives of this design.

Table 6. Compute and Storage Resources for vSphere Replication
Attribute	Specification
Number of vCPUs	4
Memory	8 GB
Disk Capacity	33 GB

Table 7. Design Decisions on vSphere Replication Deployment and Sizing
Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
SPR-VR-CFG-001	Deploy each vSphere Replication appliance in the vCenter Server it will be registered with.	vSphere Replication must be deployed in the vCenter Server it is registered with as it discovers the certificate thumbprint during the OVF deployment via the OVF environment.	None
SPR-VR-CFG-002	Deploy each vSphere Replication appliance using the 4 vCPU size.	Accommodates the replication of the expected number of virtual machines that are a part of the following components: VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle Workspace ONE Access VMware Aria Automation VMware Aria Operations	None.