Protecting Workloads with Global Network Backing Using Site Recovery Manager

Many thanks to Dimitri Desmidt from VMware, NSBU for providing the Design details of Multi-Location and Federation.

Preface

Starting NSX-T version 3.0.2 workloads with NSX-T global network backing (L2 stretched segment) can be protected and recovered using Site Recovery Manager (SRM). More details on Multi-Locations with Federation are available here.

Note: This post does not contain the installation and configuration details of NSX-T federation, vSphere Replication and Site Recovery Manager. Hence, it is necessary to meet the following pre-requisite to achieve the goal of protecting workloads with global segments using SRM.

Pre-requisite

• Understanding of NSX-T Federation and its configuration is necessary.
• Understanding the installation and configuration of vSphere Replication and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is necessary.

Limitations

SRM is not currently supported with Federation with VM Tags, Segment Ports, or Segment Ports Tags. As mentioned in the Design Guide for Multi-Locations here:

• Currently recovered VMs via SRM does not recover their NSX VM Tags.
• Recovered VMs will receive new Segment Ports on the new LM.
• If the Federation Security is based on VM Tags, Segment Ports or Segment Ports Tags then the recovered compute VMs in another location (London in our example here) do not have their Continue reading

vSAN Stretched Cluster Using an NSX-T Backed L3 Network

VMware vSAN and NSX-T Compatibility 

There are lot of discussions that talk about VMware NSX and VMware vSAN, most of them around compatibility.

vSAN and NSX are compatible with each other, however, vSAN traffic is not supported on NSX overlay network. But, the way VDS Portgroups can be used to configure vSAN vmkernel adapters, NSX-T VLAN backed logical switches can also be used to configure vSAN vmkernel adapters. Apart from this, NSX-T logical routers can be used as gateways to route the vSAN traffic, of course the backing for such configuration must be with NSX-T VLAN logical switches.

In this blog post I cover how NSX-T can be used to setup configuration for vSAN stretched cluster.

Deep Dive of vSAN Stretched Cluster Using an NSX-T Backed L3 Network

One of the configurations for vSAN stretched cluster can be achieved with L3 networking between Data Nodes and the Witness Host. In such deployment, the Data Nodes and Witness Host may reside in different networks. Hence, the vSAN vmkernel adapters need to point to their gateways to talk to each other. Following is the high-level network view of such topology for vSAN stretched cluster where hosts use VDS Portgroups to configure the Continue reading