if vcenter db needs to be wiped -- what happens to SRM?

[TedH256]

So I'm just trying to plan for contingencies. There is some evidence that a vcenter 5.0 system has DB issues - it may perhaps require that we "start from scratch" to repair the db (things are not that bad right now, but there are a couple odd things that I don't know how to fix, so I just want to plan ahead "in case" support tells me somewhere down the line, that I need to do this).

Is it possible to "delete and re-create" the vcenter DB and then just "reconnect" SRM to it, without losing all the SRM config and having to re-install it also from scratch?

If it is possible - how?

[mvalkanov]

Hi,

Managed object id values - of datastores, VM folders, virtual machines and others - will change, if vCenter Server is re-installed from scratch.

SRM stores references to these vCenter Server objects in its DB using the managed object id value. vSphere Replication also stores managed object id values from vCenter Server.

Regards,

Martin

[TedH256]

so ... that means SRM would need to be completely re-installed? Or can SRM just be "reconnected" to the new vcenter (and then of course the recovery plan would have to be re-created)?

Is there a procedure to "export" a configuration - or - really its just simple enough to re-install? I hate the idea of losing ip customizations and etc ....

p

[mal_michael]

Hi,

You will need to run SRM installer in repair mode to re-connect it to the vCenter.

Then you will need to re-build all the stuff (mappings, PGs, RPs) since the objects' identifiers will change.

Michael.

[t_downing]

As previously stated, the installer will have to be run again and the relationships will have to be rebuilt within SRM (mapping, etc.). Unfortunately just went through that a bit ago but SRM is easy enough to setup in our environment so it wasn't too bad.

[admin]

You will just have to do a Modify installation of SRM. The Repair install only replaces the binaries. The Modify will re-register SRM as a Solution inside vCenter Server. Obviously being that the VC database is gone all of the UID's are gone as well so you will need to reconfigure all the Mappings, Prot Groups and Rec Plans as well due to the underlying ID change for them.

In the event that something worse has happened you can still do a real failover if the DR site is still running, after the protected site database contents have gone away either from VC or SRM.

Corey