Disaster Recovery Using VMware Replication and vCenter SRM is an In depth book which walks you through the different scenarios possible with Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and VMware vSphere Replication (VR). I was nicely surprised by the quality of the book and the details, including screenshots.
The author of the book, Abhilash GB (VMware vExpert, VCAP4-DCA,VCAP5-DCA) shows first the overall architecture, requirements, deployment options, and also the detailed how-to steps.
Array based replication orchestrated by SRM as well as vSphere based replication orchestrated by SRM are detailed. Both solutions are used to protect an entire site from disaster where array based replication needs to have array replication capability with propper license. That's why a couple VR + SRM might be better choice for SMBs which can architect DR solution which costs less, because hypervisor based replication can use any kind of storage (even DAS).
The book has 5 chapters in total and as I said in the beginning, it's very very detailed so if you haven't worked with SRM or VR, you can use it as a detailed guide to design and implement DR in your organization.
The Chapters:
- Installing and Configuring vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.5
- Creating Protection Groups and Recovery Plans
- Testing and Performing a Failover and Failback
- Deploying vSphere Replication 5.5
- Configuring and Using vSphere Replication 5.5
Wrap-up:
I'm working with an SMB customers, so vSphere replication (VR) is mostly very welcomed solution for DR sites. However enterprise market is driven by high specs and best-in-class hardware solution which provide replication at the hardware layer (datastore replication).
The author did a very good job by giving up-to-date details with step-by-step tutorials which focuses on the current version of vSphere Replication and SRM.
It's a good read, with all necessary details and many many screenshots of good quality! The book has been published under Packt Publishing Enterprise and it has 162 pages.
