Dell PowerVault MD3260i - Manual (Page 5)

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Data Recovery Using VMware And Dell MD
Storage Arrays
In an effort to consolidate and more efficiently use server resources, many applications formerly run in a dedicated
physical server environment are being migrated to virtual machines (VMs) or virtual servers operating in a VMware ESX-
based virtual infrastructure. Benefits of this migration away from single, dedicated server platforms, especially for
production environments requiring high-performance, block-level storage, are:
• Higher availability
• Increased flexibility
• Scalability
VMware’s vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) offers a disaster recovery solution (DRS) using the Remote Replication
feature of the Dell PowerVault MD storage array to provide automated failover of servers and VMs, as well as the
underlying storage and datastores they use. This automated recovery solution is designed to both:
1. Provide lower-costs for tier-2 and tier-3 applications.
2. Introduce DRS to smaller businesses that generally do not require enterprise-class storage and services.
SRM Overview
NOTE:
This document is applicable to MD3200i/3220i, MD3600i/3620i, MD3600f/3620f, and MD3260i, MD3660i series of Dell
PowerVault MD storage arrays.
The Dell PowerVault SRA can be used on MD Storage Arrays based on both Fibre Channel and iSCSI
configurations.
SRM is a recovery workflow product that automates setup, failover or failback, reprotect and testing of recovery plans.
SRM leverages the Dell MD storage array's block-based Remote Replication feature by using an MD-specific Storage
Replication Adapter (SRAs), which is a set of hardware applications vendor to control replication of data from the
primary site to the recovery site. The figure below shows that the hierarchical relationship of the database, operating
system, VMware applications and storage array in the SRM architecture.
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