If you use VMware Live Site Recovery to test or recover a large number of virtual machines, you might need to modify the default VMware Live Site Recovery settings to achieve the best possible recovery times in your environment or to avoid timeouts.

In large environments, VMware Live Site Recovery might simultaneously power on or power off large numbers of virtual machines. Simultaneously powering on or powering off large numbers of virtual machines can create a heavy load on the virtual infrastructure, which might lead to timeouts. You can modify certain VMware Live Site Recovery settings to avoid timeouts, either by limiting the number of power on or power off operations that VMware Live Site Recovery performs concurrently, or by increasing the timeout periods.

The limits that you set on power on or power off operations depend on how many concurrent power on or power off operations your infrastructure can handle.

You modify certain options in the Advanced Settings menus in the vSphere Client or in the VMware Live Site Recovery client plug-in. To modify other settings, you edit the vmware-dr.xml configuration file on the VMware Live Site Recovery Server or on the VMware Live Site Recovery Virtual Appliance. Always modify settings by using the client menus when such option exists. If you modify settings, you must make the same modifications on the VMware Live Site Recovery and the vCenter Server instances on both the protected and recovery sites.

For descriptions of the settings that you can change, see Settings for Large VMware Live Site Recovery Environments.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, select a cluster.
  2. On the Configure tab, select Services > vSphere DRS.
  3. Click Edit.
  4. In Advanced Options, set the srmMaxBootShutdownOps setting.
    Option Description
    Option text box Enter srmMaxBootShutdownOps.
    Value text box Enter the maximum number of concurrent startup and shutdown operations. If you set the value to 32, for example, this means that VMs 1 to 32 start up or shut down together, and that VM 33 starts up or shuts down as soon as one of the first-batch VMs has finished. VM 34 starts up when the second VM of the first batch has finished, and so on.
  5. To save your changes, click OK.
  6. Log in to the VMware Live Site Recovery Server host.
  7. Open the vmware-dr.xml file in a text editor.
    The vmware-dr.xml file is located in the /opt/vmware/srm/conf/ directory.
  8. Change the defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster and defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost settings in the vmware-dr.xml file: 
    <config>
...
   <defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>24</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster>
   <defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>4</defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerHost>
...
</config>

    If these elements do not already exist in the vmware-dr.xml file, you can add them anywhere in the <config> section.

    If you set the <defaultMaxBootAndShutdownOpsPerCluster> value to 24, the next guest starts up or shuts down as soon as one of the first batch of 24 has finished. This means that VMs 1 to 24 all start together, then VM 25 starts once one of the first-batch VMs has finished. VM 26 starts when the second VM of the first batch has finished, and so on.

  9. To apply the new settings, restart VMware Live Site Recovery Server.
  10. In the vSphere Client, click Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
  11. On the Live Site Recovery home tab, select a site pair, and click View Details.
  12. In the left pane, click Configure > Advanced Settings > vSphere Replication and increase the vrReplication.synchronizationTimeout and vrReplication.reverseReplicationTimeout settings.
    The default value is 7200 and corresponds to a working synchronization timeout period of 14400 seconds.
  13. Select Advanced Settings > Storage, select a site, and increase the storage.commandTimeout setting.
    The default value is 300 seconds.
  14. To save your changes, click OK.