The design considers the components of the Site Protection and Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation validated solution. It includes numbered design decisions, and the justification and implications of each decision.

Architecture

You use Site Recovery Manager in conjunction with vSphere Replication and their constructs to implement disaster recovery between two VMware Cloud Foundation instances for the management domain in the SDDC.

Figure 1. Disaster Recovery Architecture
Site Recovery Manager is configured to replicate the cross-instance Workspace ONE Access, VMware Aria Automation, VMware Aria Operations, and VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle virtual machines. VMware Aria Operations for Logs, VMware Aria Operations Cloud Proxies in each VMware Cloud Foundation instance are not replicated.

Disaster recovery that is based on Site Recovery Manager has the following main elements:

Dual VMware Cloud Foundation instance configuration

In a typical Site Recovery Manager installation, the protected VMware Cloud Foundation instance provides business-critical data center services. The recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instance is an alternative infrastructure where Site Recovery Manager can relocate these services.

NSX Federation

You provide continuous operation of the following components across the two VMware Cloud Foundation instances upon a disaster recovery case:

  • VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle

  • Workspace ONE Access

  • VMware Aria Operations

  • VMware Aria Automation

By using NSX Global Manager, you connect the cross-instance overlay-backed NSX segment between the two VMware Cloud Foundation instances to a newly created cross-instance Tier-1 gateway. The cross-instance NSX segment is created when you deploy the Application Virtual Networks (AVNs) for the VMware Aria Suite products.

The cross-instance Tier-1 gateway is connected to the Tier-0 gateway, previously imported from the primary site into the NSX Global Manager.

Replication of virtual machine data

You configure replication of virtual machines using the integration of vSphere Replication with Site Recovery Manager.

You can configure vSphere Replication to use the multiple-point-in-time snapshot feature providing more flexibility for data recovery of protected virtual machines on the recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

Protection groups

A protection group is a group of virtual machines that fail over together at the recovery VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

Recovery plans

A recovery plan specifies how Site Recovery Manager recovers virtual machines in the protection groups.