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Setting up the Shared Recovery Site feature in VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0

Purpose

This article walks you through the process of installing VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager with the Shared Recovery Site feature.

Resolution

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 4.0 is a disaster recovery product which uses array replication technologies to failover from one site to another. Shared Recovery Site (also called N-to-1) is a new feature of SRM 4.0. This feature allows the management of multiple SRM environments by a single vCenter 4.0 instance on the recovery side. Each environment is identified by a custom plug-in named extension.

Note: Shared Recovery Site is not supported on the protected site. It is only supported on the recovery site.

To enable the Shared Recovery Site feature during the SRM installation, the command line option CUSTOM_SETUP=1 must be passed as an argument to the installer when deploying SRM. This option opens additional windows during the installation which allow a user to create a custom SRM plug-in identifier. These windows are not visible during a standard SRM install. This identifier must be created on both the protected SRM site and the recovery SRM site. The custom SRM plug-in identifier must be identical on the source and the target side.

Here is an example of the command line to install SRM with the Shared Recovery Site feature:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Software\SRM\VMware-srm-4.0.0-175235.exe" /V"CUSTOM_SETUP=1"

For step-by-step instructions to deploy SRM with the Shared Recovery Site feature, watch this video:

*If you find the video does not play, try updating your flash player.

**To watch the video in full-screen, choose the full-screen option at the bottom right of the player.

Additional Information

For each shared recovery site customer, you must install SRM once at the production/protected site and again at the recovery site using the same custom extension at both sites. Each shared recovery site SRM server installation must have a dedicated windows server (virtual or physical machine). You cannot install multiple instances of the SRM server on a single host.

Installing SRM with a custom extension does not preclude you from creating an additional installation, extending the same instance of vCenter that uses the default extension. Similarly, installing SRM with the default extension does not preclude you from creating an additional installation, extending the same instance of vCenter that uses a custom extension. You can run SRM with custom extensions only; the default extension is not a requirement.

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