Snapmirror HCI to ONTAP with Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

[Simone_Anastasio]

Hello, i have a DR solution with 2 ONTAP FAS in two site that using snapmirror and SRM to protect all the VM from primary to secondary site.

now i have a new HCI system on primary site and have succesfully created a snapmirror replica for some datastore volumes between the HCI system and the FAS at secondary site.

I would like to integrate this with the SRM server but both the ONTAP and ElementOS Storage Replication Adapter can discover the snapmirror relationship only on same systems.

The ONTAP SRA discover only relationship between ONTAP FAS

The ElementOS SRA require to communicate with two ElementOS systems (I have only the HCI system)

Can you help me to understand how i can manage the snapmirror relationship between ONTAP and ElementOS with SRM?

I think that both the SRAs agent should be upgraded to discover this kind of relationship also, not only between omogeneus systems.....

Thank you

[elementx]

That is currently not achievable with VMware SRM (Element and ONTAP plugins can't coordinate with SRM).

The closest workaround that doesn't require crazy skills is PowerShell-drive manual failover and failback.

Element OS PowerShell integration is excellent and ONTAP is getting better, so with these two and PowerCLI, you may be able to make something that you can run manually when you need to. Both ONTAP and Element have a VM version which is a low cost to have a close-to-identical (as far as automation goes) Dev/Test environment that doesn't cost much. You're welcome to learn more about PowerShell and automation at https://netapp.io/ (there's a community Slack, too) and check out https://github.com/solidfire/PowerShell for Element PS Tools and some examples.

Or maybe take a look at www.cleondris.com/en/hci-control-center.xhtml

[Simone_Anastasio]

Thank you for your reply,

unfortunately it was just what I imagined and feared!
Making a solution using powershell unfortunately now becomes my plan A.
I agree that PowerShell is a great and powerful tool (I use it for many tricks), but any script created would not be a certified solution and this can create problems in production (or DR) environments.

I hope that as soon as possible the SRA agents will be updated in order to support this type of solution as well, because in a "Data Fabric" world, today, it would be the minimum ...

Thank you

[elementx]

I think it's a VMware SRM thing - I believe both sites/sides must use the same SRA, but maybe someone from HCI product team may be able to confirm or correct this.

[Piyushag]

Cleondris Solution is an elegant solution for DR - supports failover and Failback. Let me know if you would like to look at the Cleondris HCC solution for HCI www.cleondris.com/en/hci-control-center.xhtml.

Happy to work with you to find a solution for your situation. 

[amayacitta]

It is indeed a SRM thing, you would need a NetApp plug-in that can understand how to differentiate between ONTAP and Elements and call either. That's gonna be a bit of a challenge when doing re-protects between two different storage architectures.

Obviously doing it through vSphere replication would work fine as it's not array dependant, but of course your then not doing array replication. It would work for you in your situation though and save having to become a Powershell Ninja 😉