6.7 Configuring Support for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

You might use PlateSpin Protect to protect your workloads locally and then use some additional method to replicate those workloads to a remote location, such as a SAN. For example, you might choose to use VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to replicate an entire datastore of replicated target VMs to a remote site. In this case, specific configuration steps are needed to ensure that the target VMs can be replicated and behave correctly when powered on at the remote site.

Workloads replicated by PlateSpin Protect and managed on VMware vCenter SRM can behave seamlessly if you configure PlateSpin Protect to support SRM by making the following adjustments:

  • Configure a setting to keep the PlateSpin Protect ISO and floppies on the same datastore as the VMware .vmx and .vmdk files.

  • Prepare the PlateSpin Protect environment to copy VMware Tools to the failover target. This involves some manual file creation and copying in addition to making some configuration settings that expedite the VMware Tools installation process.

6.7.1 Setting Up Workload Files on the Same Datastore

To ensure that the workload files are kept on the same datastore:

  1. From any web browser, open https://Your_PlateSpin_Server/platespinconfiguration/to display the configuration web page.

  2. On the configuration web page, locate the CreatePSFilesInVmDatastore server parameter and change its value to true.

    NOTE:The person configuring the replication contract is responsible to ensure that the same datastore is specified for all target VM disk files.

  3. Save your settings and exit the page.

6.7.2 Setting Up VMware Tools for Failover Targets

VMware Tools setup packages can be copied to the failover target during replication so that they can be installed by the configuration service when the VM is booted. This happens automatically when the failover target is able to contact the PlateSpin Server. In cases where this cannot happen, you need to prepare your environment prior to replication.

To prepare your environment:

  1. Retrieve the VMware Tools packages from an ESX host:

    1. Secure copy (scp) the windows.iso image from the /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages directory on an accessible VMware host to a local temporary folder.

    2. Open the ISO and extract its setup packages, saving them to an accessible location:

      • VMware 5.x and later: The setup packages are setup.exe and setup64.exe.

      • VMware 4.x: The setup packages are VMware Tools.msi and VMware Tools64.msi.

  2. Create OFX packages from the setup packages you extracted:

    1. Zip the package you want, making sure that the setup installer file is at the root of the .zip archive.

    2. Rename the .zip archive to 1.package so that it can be used as an OFX package.

      NOTE:If you want to create an OFX package for more than one of the setup packages, remember that each setup package must have its own unique .zip archive.

      Because each package must have the same name (1.package), if you want to save multiple .zip archives as OFX packages, you need to save each in its own unique subdirectory.

  3. Copy the appropriate OFX package (1.package) to the %ProgramFiles(x86)%\PlateSpin\Packages\%GUID% directory on the PlateSpin Server.

    The value of %GUID% depends on the version of your VMware Server and its VMware Tools architecture, as shown in Table 6-4. Use the appropriate GUID value to copy the package to the correct directory.

    Table 6-4 GUIDs for the VMware Tools Directory Names

    VMware Server Version

    VMware Tools Architecture

    GUID

    6.5

    x86

    D61C0FCA-058B-42C3-9F02-898F568A3071

    6.5

    x64

    5D3947B7-BE73-4A00-A549-B15E84B98803

    6.0

    x86

    311E672E-05BA-4CAF-A948-B26DF0C6C5A6

    6.0

    x64

    D7F55AED-DA64-423F-BBBE-F1215529AD03

    5.5

    x86

    660C345A-7A91-458b-BC47-6A3914723EF7

    5.5

    x64

    8546D4EF-8CA5-4a51-A3A3-6240171BE278

    5.1

    x86

    34DD2CBE-183E-492f-9B36-7A8326080755

    5.1

    x64

    AD4FDE1D-DE86-4d05-B147-071F4E1D0326

    5.0

    x86

    AD4FDE1D-DE86-4d05-B147-071F4E1D0326

    5.0

    x64

    F7C9BC91-7733-4790-B7AF-62E074B73882

    4.1

    x86

    F2957064-65D7-4bda-A52B-3F5859624602

    4.1

    x64

    80B1C53C-6B43-4843-9D63-E9911E9A15D5

    4.0

    x86

    D052CBAC-0A98-4880-8BCC-FE0608F0930F

    4.0

    x64

    80B50267-B30C-4001-ABDF-EA288D1FD09C

6.7.3 Expediting the Configuration Process

After the failover target boots, the configuration service launches to prepare the VM for use, but sits inactive for several minutes, waiting for data from the PlateSpin Server or looking for VMware Tools on the CD ROM.

To shorten this wait time:

  1. On the configuration web page, locate the ConfigurationServiceValues configuration setting, and then change the value of its WaitForFloppyTimeoutInSecs subsetting to zero (0).

  2. On the configuration web page, locate the ForceInstallVMToolsCustomPackage and change the value to true.

With these settings in place, the configuration process takes less than 15 minutes: the target machine reboots (up to two times), the VMware tools are installed, and SRM accesses the tools to help it configure networking at the remote site.