Rehearse operations for Hyper-V virtual machines - array-based replication
The requirements for rehearse operations for Hyper-V virtual machines depend on the replication type.
Rehearse operations with EMC SRDF-based replication
Rehearse operations with Hyper-V Replica
When the rehearse operation is initiated, Resiliency Platform creates point-in-time snapshots, since rehearsal cannot work with existing snapshots. These snapshots are created using the underlying snapshot technology and varies according to the replication configuration. The required snapshot LUNs have to be pre-configured and also mapped to the appropriate Hyper-V servers.
For EMC SRDF replication configured using Device Groups, Resiliency Platform supports TimeFinder Snap and TimeFinder Mirror as snapshot technologies. The appropriate LUNs for snapshot have to be associated with the device group.
For example: For Snap, VDEV devices and for Mirror, BCV devices have to be associated with the device group in order to perform rehearsal. If the device group is replicated in Asynchronous mode, then only TimeFinder Mirror technology is supported.
For EMC SRDF replication configured using Storage Groups and Composite Groups, Resiliency Platform supports TimeFinder Snapvx as snapshot technology.
For rehearsal of SRDF Storage Groups, you have to create an additional Storage Group containing the TGT devices for linking the snapvx snapshot. The name of this Storage Group has to follow a simple convention: it should be similar to the replicated Storage Group name, with a suffix '_vrpsnap' appended to it. E.g. if the replicated Storage Group's name is 'finance_sg', then you need to create a Storage Group with name 'finance_sg_vrpsnap', containing the TGT devices.
The TGT devices have to be exact same in number and size as the RDF devices.
During rehearsal, the Resiliency Platform takes a new snapshot using the configured snapshot technology on the associated snapshot LUNs.
The datastores on the snapshot LUNs are mounted on the hosts in disaster recovery site.
Resiliency Platform registers the virtual machines in the disaster recovery data center for rehearsal. They have identical configuration to the production virtual machines, except these virtual machines consume storage from the datastore mounted using the snapshot volumes and have and have a suffix '-vrprehearsal' in their names. These virtual machines are disconnected from the network and are unregistered during cleanup.
When the rehearse operation is initiated, the DR virtual machines are cloned and Resiliency Platform starts the virtual machines.
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