November 27, 2008
Many people asked me how to get the Netapp simulator. This is because the Netapp simulator is not free avaialable to everyone but only to Netapp customers and partners.
So I decided to try another setup with a free to everyone availabe virtual storage appliance. I’ve found this one with the Falconstor virtual storage appliance. (60 day trial version) In the couple of days I will start to write a similair pdf on how to build a SRM Demo in a box with this appliance. So be patient 
On this screenshot you can see the arrays connected.
The first part can be found here:
http://tendam.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/srm-in-a-box-final-release-the-complete-setup/
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Site recovery manager, Storage | 
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Posted by tendam
November 18, 2008
Finally I’ve just finished the complete pdf on “Building a VMware Site Recovery Manager demo with the Netapp simulator” This document will guide you trough the setup of Site Recovery Manager with the Netapp simulator, just on 1 host. I changed a few things since the preview document so ctrl_del the preview document and download the latest one here.
If you have any comments to improve this document please feel free to contact me at tomas@tendam.info.
19-11-08 Update1: Arne from ict-freak.nl asked me: why did you choose for a solaris LUN and not for a Vmware lun at page 29. I made a mistake here, you should use a VMware lun. Updating the document right now
19-11-08 Update2:Updated the document showing a VMware lun at page 29
Update3:A new pdf with another virtual appliance is comming soon click here
18-12-2008 Update 4: John Balsillie, a VCI from australia emailed me about 2 things in the PDF which he found strange. The first thing is about page 37. On this page i am writing: Create instead of 10 gb an 8 gb data store because you might need the storage for the replication I forgot to delete this before publishing, so you can ignore this. Just create 8gb. This was before i did the whole configuration.
The scond thing was on page 23. John found out that the commands where not correct.
To set up snapmirror correctly use these instead:
on NetApp01 – enter “options snapmirror.access host=natapp02”
and
on NetApp02 – enter “options snapmirror.access host=natapp01”
John, thanks very much for noticing these mistakes! I will update the document later.
Download the document here:
However this wil guide you to setup Site Recovery Manager in a box, this is not an indepth guide into SRM. For an indepth guide i have to point you to http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/ Mike Laverick just released his book “Administering VMware’s Site Recovery Manager”
20 Comments | 
Netapp, Site recovery manager, Vmware | 
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Posted by tendam
November 12, 2008
Because i am preparing for my mcse upgrade to 2008 the next few days, i do not have the time to complete the whole manual in a couple of days. While People keep asking me where to find the document, i decided to publish a preview of the complete walk trough.
This preview describes the setup of the netapp simulators, storage replication between the simulators, the esx servers and SQL server. It will keep you going for a couple of hours/days.
After the exam i will hope to find the time to finish the document. However the hardest part is to create the replicated storage and this is just done in this document.
If you have any coments please contact me at tomas@tendam.info
Download the document below:
18-11-08 An updated version can be found here
However this wil guide you to setup Site Recovery Manager in a box, this is not an indepth guide into SRM. For an indepth guide i have to point you to http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/ Mike Laverick just released his book “Administering VMware’s Site Recovery Manager”
2 Comments | 
Netapp, Site recovery manager, Vmware | 
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Posted by tendam
November 9, 2008
A colleague showed me a tool for offline updating windows clients and servers. It’s called the c’t offline update tool. Just start the tool and download the patches for your platform en create a iso file with the tool. Move this iso file to your vmware iso datastore and connect your vm’s and run the tool to update the vm’s. This is a very quick method to update your vm’s when you have not installed updates for a long time.
Download the tool here:
http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/offlineupdate/download_uk.shtml
1 Comment | Vmware | Permalink
Posted by tendam
November 9, 2008
After a few difficulties i have managed to set up a SRM (site recovery manager) in a Box configuration with the free Netapp Simulator. The problem i had in the previous post, was because i had no data in the volume that has to be snapmirrored. So i created a vm and did an snapmirror update and voila, the LUN was shown in the array configuration. Now i have to create a few vm snaps before i am going to run the protection plan. Here is a first picture. I will discribe the steps i did in a document as soon as i can.
Update: A complete howto is available now: Get it here
SRM workstation overview
4 Comments | Netapp, Site recovery manager, Vmware | Tagged: Site recovery manager | Permalink
Posted by tendam
November 8, 2008
Currently i am trying to setup a “SRM in a Box” configuration.However it is not working right now.
This is what i use:
1 hp proliant dl 110 g5 with 6 gb ram and a 500 gb hd with Vista buisiness installed.
On this server i’ve installed workstation 6.5.
In Workstation i created 2 folders names site 1 and site 2. In this folders i created 3 vm’s each.
in site 1:
1 vm with windows 2003 as a domain controller and Virtual center server with 768 mb ram
1 vm with Ubuntu desktop with the Netapp simulator serving 20 gb of iscsi storage with 512 mb ram
1 vm with a working ESX 3.5 update 2 with 1024 mb ram
in site 2:
1 vm with windows 2003 as a second domain controller and Virtal center server with 768 mb ram
1 vm with Ubuntu desktop with the Netapp simulator serving 20 gb of mirrored storage with 512 mb ram
1 vm with a working ESX 3.5 update 2 install with 1024 mb ram
At this time i have managed to setup SRM to see both storage sites, but i was unable to see a mirrord lun in the SRM storage configuration. Even if i do a rescan in the SRM dialog box it won’t display a mirrord lun. I am sure that i setup the snapmirror in a good condition.
Maybe the unsupported update 2 configuration is messing up things, or the simulator is failing on this one. Soon i wil post a detailed step by step guide if i manage to setup a complete working configuration.
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Posted by tendam
