What additonal questions do you need to ask to qualify an SRM opportunity?

[kappyninewood]

I know the obvIous ones and I was able to get the answers below.

1) Do you have two sites prod & dr (YES)

2) Do you have two vSphere environment including vcenter servers at both sites?  (YES)

3) Do you have licences Aat both sites (YES)

4) What type of SAN do you have?  (NetApp 3240 / 3140)

5) Is SAN Replication setup? (SNAP MIRROR)

6)  What is the connection speed between the two sites?     (100 MB)

7) Have you purchased the SRM licenses?    (VC-SRM-25VM-C   VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (1) - License - 25)

What else do I need to ask to make sure they have everything in place for an SRM deployment?

[mal_michael]

Hi,

first of all dig into two following documents:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/srm_storage_partners.pdf - to verify that your storage arrays have all the prerequisities (ONTAP version, etc).

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/srm_compat_matrix_4_x.pdf - to verify your have supported edition (from licensing perspective) of vSphere, your ESX / ESXi hosts don't need to be updated, DB requirements, etc.

Also,

check SRA documentation, it may require specific configuration of storage array.

vCenter versions must be the same at both sites.

If you have firewall between the two sites, check the ports needed by SRM.

The most important is to explain the customer that SRM is only used when some major failure occurs at the primary site, it is not clustering solution and is not supposed to failover single VM.

Michael.

[kappyninewood]

Thanks.

HOW  I can determine if the Netapp 3240 & 3140 are on the list?

[mal_michael · Accepted solution]

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/srm_storage_partners.pdf

go to the NetApp section and find the table with appropriate SRM version, protocol and check if your storage is listed.

I have no knowledge in NetApp arrays, but I see entries for V31xx and FAS31xx arrays. So it looks like your arrays are supported. Make sure you are running supported ONTAP version.

Michael.

[admin]

I tend to ask, how important is your business data - as in how long can your business survive without no IT Infrastructure?  If you had total IT outage, how much will this cost you per min, hour, day... would SRM and the business continuity it offers be out weigh this cost - plus additional cost of tape recovery, storage, HR time ...etc....

DR is dead... long live Business Continuity