VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1 FAQ Explanation

Was asked by few customers confused on Site Recovery Manager (SRM) compatibility with vSphere Essential Plus.  And I thought I do make a explanation to clear this confusion which I was able to find the documents stating it.  Also refer to my previous post on vCenter Editions to understand the different editions of vCenter.

First and foremost,  the current release of SRM at the time of writing is 5.1.1.  SRM must work with same version of vCenter.  So if your vCenter is 5.0, you can only run SRM 5.0.  In order to run SRM 5.1, you need to upgrade only your vCenter to 5.1 while vSphere can remain any version that is supported by vCenter 5.1.  In this case, vSphere 4.x and above.  You can check out the interoperability using the site here.  Here is an example:

Next, we know that SRM 5.1 support vSphere Essential Plus.  That is true however if you are using a lower version of SRM, vSphere Essential Plus is not supported.  ONLY SRM 5.1 supports vSphere Essential Plus.  Read the SRM FAQ guide on page 3 and page 5.

To find out the vSphere edition supported, you can refer to this site.  Below is an example:

With the vSphere supported, there is the question that goes to vCenter edition.  As we know there are 3 favours of vCenter, Essential (from Essential or Essential Plus kit), Foundation (limited to 3 hosts) and Standard (no limitation).  SRM 5.1 will support all 3 editions of vCenter but any version of SRM prior to 5.1, will only support vCenter Foundation and Standard Edition ONLY.  This is due to the support form SRM 5.1 on vSphere Essential Plus for that vCenter Essential is supported.

If you are run Essential Plus at both Protected and Recovery site, this is supported on SRM 5.1 with vCenter 5.1.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi

We have a question

SRM requires 2 vcenter servers, in both sites

¿If we have 1 VMware Essentials Plus license, we can install vcenter essentials 2 times, in both sites?

Or we need 2 licenses of VMware Essentials Plus

Thanks
Wee Kiong Tan said…
To use vSphere Essential Plus, make sure you are running vCenter 5.1 as only SRM 5.1 support vSphere Essentail Plus. To setup SRM, you would need one set of vSphere with SRM at both sites. Including your infrastructure servers e.g. DC, etc.

Popular posts from this blog

Why VMware or Why Not after Broadcom?

VMware by Broadcom, A New Chapter Forward

VMware vExpert 2024 Application is Now Open!