Creating a Protected Group for FusionCompute VMs

Prerequisites

• At least one production site has been created.
• Resource mappings have been created.
• In host-based replication DR scenarios, FusionSphere components and virtual replication gateways (VRGs) have been added to UltraVR of both the production center and DR center.
• In storage array-based replication DR scenarios, FusionSphere components and storage devices have been added to UltraVR of both the production center and DR center. Besides, the status of replication between storage devices is normal.

Precautions

• Only remote replication pairs can exist between the primary and secondary LUNs.
• For VMs that are protected, the boot mode cannot be set to Specify Device Boot Sequence, and do not select such VMs when you create a protected group.

Context

After a protected group is created, it may change due to increase or decrease of VMs or VM capacity. After the change, previous DR requirements cannot be met and adjustments must be made.

After adding or removing disks for a protected VM, refresh the information about the VM and manually enable DR for the protected group where the VM resides in time. For details, see 5.1.2.1 Executing a Protected Group.

Table 1 describes the protection status of a VM after its protected group changes.

In UltraVR_V100R003C10SPC810 and later versions, check whether consistency groups, remote replication pairs, and secondary volume exist on Huawei Distributed Block Storage. If yes, see OceanStor Pacific Series xxx Feature Guide to delete them in sequence.

When a shared volume is protected, the shared volume can only be mounted to VMs in the protected group.

Procedure

1. On the menu bar, choose Protection.
2. Click Create.
3. Select a protected object.
   1. Select Production Site, FusionSphere Component, Protection Type.

      Select a Protection Type based on the used DR technologies.

      • When datastores where the VMs managed by FusionCompute or FusionManager reside use the synchronous replication (SAN), asynchronous replication (SAN) DR technology, select Array-Based Replication.

        Employ remote replication of storage devices to implement protection.

      • When datastores where the VMs managed by FusionCompute or FusionManager reside use the host-based replication (SAN) DR technology, select Host-Based Replication.

        Employ the host-based I/O replication function to replicate VM data from the production center to the DR center.

   2. If Protection Type is set to Array-Based Replication, select the datastore group where the VMs to be protected reside(The system automatically protects all VMs in the selected datastore group).
      

      A datastore group is the minimum independent unit for failure switchover or failure test. It corresponds to a remote replication pair or consistency group on the storage array. Every datastore in a datastore group must contain at least one VM.

   3. In UltraVR_V100R003C10SPC810 and later versions, Huawei Distributed Block Storage is supported. Select Protected Object Type based on the storage type.
      • Select VM (Only VMs that use Huawei Distributed Block Storage resources are supported.) when Huawei Distributed Block Storage is used. In addition, move VMs which need to be protected from the Available VMs list to the Selected VMs list.
      • When using other storage, you need to select Data Store.
   4. If Protection Type is set to Host-Based Replication, move VM to be protected from the Available VMs to the Selected VMs list.
      

      A datastore group is the minimum independent unit for failure switchover or failure test. It corresponds to a remote replication pair or consistency group on the storage array. Every datastore in a datastore group must contain at least one VM.

4. Click Next.
5. Set a protection policy.
   1. On the Protection Policy page, the system automatically matches supported protection policies. Select a policy based on your data protection solution.
      • When the synchronous replication (SAN) DR technology is used, select Array-Based Replication (Asynchronous):Active-Passive DR solution.
      • When the synchronous replication (SAN) DR technology is used, select Array-Based Replication (Synchronous):Active-Passive DR solution.
      • When the host-based replication DR technology is used, select Host-Based Replication:Active-Passive DR solution.
        

        • If there are matched protection policies, you can select a protection policy based on your data protection solution and modify the time policy of the protection policy.
        • If there are no matched protection policies, check whether the storage devices used by protected objects have been configured as planned. If the storage devices have not been configured, configure them as planned. After configuration, perform the following operations: On the menu bar, click Resources, select a node under the management server. In the site node, click Storage, in the line where the storage device resides, click Refresh to refresh the storage device information under the site. Refresh the FusionCompute or FusionManager information too and recreate a protected group.
   2. In UltraVR_V100R003C10SPC810 and later versions, when you set Protected Object Type to VM (Only VMs that use Huawei Distributed Block Storage resources are supported.), set DR Storage. Click Set.

      On the Set DR Storage page, select DR site and DR Storage, and set DR Storage Pool for each Production Storage Pool.

      

      Set only one DR storage pool for each production storage pool.

   3. Click Set to set the protection policy for the protected group.
      • For the Array-Based Replication (Asynchronous):Active-Passive DR solution protection policy,
        1. Click the Scheduling Policy tab. In the Time Policy area, set the time policy for the protected group. Table 2 lists related parameters.

           

           Table 2 Time policies

           Time Policy	Description
           On-demand scheduling	Manually starts protection tasks.
           Period-based scheduling	Automatically starts protection tasks based on a period set by the system. NOTE: To ensure data consistency, the execution timetable for a protected group policy template must be set. You are advised to set the execution time to off-peak hours. Tasks can be executed at multiple time points of a day, a week, or a month. Alternatively, at a specific time segment of a day, a week, or a month with a fixed frequency. It is recommended that the starting time of the validate period is set to a time later than the completion of the initial synchronization. If daylight saving time (DST) is enabled on the UltraVR management server, a DR protection task whose trigger time point falls within the DST shift period cannot be executed at the scheduled time. Details are as follows:(UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (United States and Canada) is used as an example. The DST starts at 2016-03-12 02:00:00, and ends at 2016-11-06 02:00:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls within the first hour (2016-03-12 02:00:00 to 03:00:00) after the DST starts, for example, 2016-03-12 02:30:00, the protection group will be automatically executed with a delay of one hour, that is 2016-03-12 03:30:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls with the last hour (2016-11-06 01:00:00 to 02:00:00) before the DST ends, for example, 2016-11-06 01:30:00, the protection group will be executed after the DST ends for half an hour.

        2. When the Scheduling Policy is set to Period-based scheduling, in the Expected RPO area, if you select Enable PRO Requirement Satisfaction Check, the actual RPO is check against the configured RPO. If the actual RPO exceeds the expected RPO, the system generates an alarm, indicating that the RPO requirement is not satisfied.

           

           Expected RPO can be set to 0-31 days, 0-23 hours, and 5-59 minutes.

           

           If days and hours are not set, the Expected RPO is 15 minutes by default.

        3. Click Replication Policy tab to set the remote replicate rate between storage arrays. Table 3 lists related parameters.

           

           Table 3 Replication policies

           Replication Policy	Description
           Default configuration	The remote replication rate is the default one set on the storage array.
           Manual configuration	Users can set the remote replication rate for each time segment. Configure the automatic remote replication rate of the storage based on the pre-set replication rate of time period. Select Manual configuration. Click a time color block to modify the replication rate during a time segment.

        4. Click OK.
      • For the Host-Based Replication:Active-Passive DR solution protection policy,
        1. Click the Scheduling Policy tab. In the Time Policy area, set the time policy for the protected group. Table 4 describes related parameters.

           Table 4 Time policies

           Time Policy	Description
           On-demand scheduling	Manually starts protection tasks.
           Period-based scheduling	Automatically starts protection tasks based on a period set by the system. NOTE: To ensure data consistency, the execution timetable for a protected group policy template must be set. You are advised to set the execution time to off-peak hours. Tasks can be executed at multiple time points of a day, a week, or a month. Alternatively, at a specific time segment of a day, a week, or a month with a fixed frequency. When executing the protection policy for a protected group, consistency snapshots must be taken for the DR VM, which affects the VM performance. Therefore, you are advised to set the execution time to a time when the VM is idle or to increase the RPO to reduce the impact of snapshots on VM performance.
           Compress Setting	Specifies whether to compress data transferred between VRGs.
           Encryption Setting	Specifies whether to encrypt data transferred between VRGs.
           Replication Rate	Specifies the rate at which the host transfers data to VRGs.

           

           For FusionCompute V100R005C10 and later versions, you can also set the number of recovery points.

        2. Click OK.

6. Click Next.
7. Set Name and Description of the protected group.
   • Name: contains 4 to 32 characters, including letters, digits, underscores (_), and hyphens (-), but cannot start with a hyphen (-).
   • Description: contains 0 to 255 characters.

8. If you do not want to manually create a recovery plan for the protected group, select Automatically create a recovery plan after creating protected groups at the lower left corner.

   For the Host-Based Replication:Active-Passive DR solution protection policy, if you select Start baseline synchronization immediately, the protected group starts data synchronization instantly. If you do not select Start baseline synchronization immediately, you need to manually start data synchronization for protected objects and select baseline synchronization.

9. Click Finish.
10. Click OK.

    After the protected group is created, in the details area, choose Protection Object > Volume Management to view the information. For details, see Volume Management.

Related Operations

• If the protected objects of a protected group or their used storage devices change. On the menu bar, select Resources. And refresh resources or storage devices where the protected objects reside. Then go to the protected group page and refresh protected objects of the protected group by clicking More > Refresh. After the command for refreshing information is sent, you can view details about the command execution in Background Task.
  

  If a recovery plan has been created for a protected group, you can refresh protected objects only when the recovery plan status is Ready, Clear completed, Rollback completed, or Reprotection completed.

• To ensure that information about protected groups is refreshed successfully, you must refresh information about storage devices and hosts at both the production site and DR site.
• When Huawei Distributed Block Storage is used, the protected group refresh function is unavailable. For details, see 5.1.2.4 Refreshing Resource Information.

Follow-up Procedure

When the host-based replication DR is used, after creating a protected group, in the details area, click the Protected Object tab and start the selected VMs. The three methods to start VMs are as follows:

• Baseline synchronization: VMs are specified as DR VMs. Select this operation when data is not fully synchronized between the DR site and production site. Execute baseline synchronization to copy all data from the disks in the production site to those in the DR site.
• Consistency verification: If an unexpected power failure or process interruption occurs during the data synchronization process, the data records that are to be sent in the production site will be lost. Data will be inconsistent after data is synchronized between the production site and DR site again. After the exception is resolved, select this operation to verify data consistency between the production site and DR site and synchronize the differential data to the DR site.
• Incremental replication: The data volume is large upon initial synchronization of VMs. However, the available bandwidth cannot meet data transfer requirements. The incremental data replication solution is provided to resolve the problem. After exporting a template from the production site, import the template to VMs in the DR site. Then start incremental replication. Only the incremental data is replicated.

When creating a protected group, you need to create a DR volume on the DR site and create a remote replication relationship between the production volume and the DR volume at the production end.