Reference Architecture

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

for MEDITECH Enabled by EMC RecoverPoint
and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Abstract
The document describes the reference architecture of a MEDITECH environment
protected by an EMC RecoverPoint solution and VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager.
January 2014

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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[VMware and/or Brocade may have substituted components of the original
environment in this document with hardware of a similar (or higher)
specification to the original equipment used in the EMC Proven Solution. The
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Part Number h12764

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Table of contents
Reference architecture overview ........................................................................................................... 4
Document purpose .......................................................................................................................... 4
Solution purpose ............................................................................................................................. 4
Business challenge .......................................................................................................................... 4
Technology solution ......................................................................................................................... 4
Solution Architecture ........................................................................................................................... 6
Architecture diagram........................................................................................................................ 6
Hardware resources ......................................................................................................................... 7
Software resources ......................................................................................................................... 8
Key components ................................................................................................................................... 9
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 9
EMC RecoverPoint ............................................................................................................................ 9
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager ........................................................................................... 9
Brocade Ethernet/Fibre Channel technology .................................................................................... 9
Configuring EMC RecoverPoint ........................................................................................................... 11
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 11
Configuring RecoverPoint consistency groups ................................................................................ 11
RecoverPoint consistency group considerations ........................................................................ 12
Configuring the consistency group for management by SRM .......................................................... 12
Configuring site recovery with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager............................................. 13
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 13
Prerequisites.................................................................................................................................. 13
Installing and configuring SRM....................................................................................................... 13
Configuring Advanced SRM ............................................................................................................ 15
EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC RecoverPoint Management ...................................................... 17
Additional recommendations ......................................................................................................... 17
Testing the MEDITECH recovery plan .................................................................................................. 18
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Testing the recovery plan ............................................................................................................... 18
Recovery test report ....................................................................................................................... 20
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 21
References.......................................................................................................................................... 22
EMC documentation ....................................................................................................................... 22
VMware documentation ................................................................................................................. 22

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference architecture overview

Document purpose The document describes the reference architecture of a MEDITECH environment
protected by EMC RecoverPoint solution and VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager, which was tested and validated by the EMC E-Lab Verticals Solutions
Group.
Solution purpose

This reference architecture validates the functionality of the EMC RecoverPoint

solution and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and provides guidelines
to build similar solutions.

Business
challenge

Companies that have deployed the MEDITECH EMR Suite depend heavily on the
information, processes, and availability of their deployed application environments.
In the event of an outage, either planned (testing, upgrades and updates, repairs) or
unplanned disasters, the complexity and distributed nature of these applications
make implementation and maintenance of traditional disaster recovery solutions
lengthy, expensive, and complicated.
Traditional recoveries follow a written playbook, full of technical details on Internet IP
address changing, zoning, storage masking, the order of servers to bring up at
another site, and much more. Each step must be done manually and flawlessly.
Typically, experts in IP protocol, storage management and design, VMware, MS
Windows, (to name some of the key technologies involved in a recovery), are required
to be onsite. But, what are the chances that all these people will be on site to help
immediately if a flood or earthquake strikes in the middle of the night?
To compound these challenges, community hospitals and smaller health delivery
sites are even less likely to have all the expertise on staff, let alone on site 7X24
immediately following disaster, or even a planned outage.
EMC RecoverPoint and VMware virtualization technology helps healthcare delivery
organizations gain key advantages:

Technology
solution

Maintains rapid access to patient data by restoring your environment quickly.

Avoids loss by expediting failover and recovery from a major service
disruption.
Accelerates disaster recovery, minimizing its inherent risks and downtime by
eliminating manual recovery steps.
Delivers advanced capabilities for disaster recovery management, nondisruptive testing, and automated failover, especially with long-distance
replication.
Enables automated failover across geographically dispersed locations.
Requires minimal administration and minimal additional hardware.

The Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH, enabled by EMC
RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) solution, focuses on
disaster recovery between two VNX7500 arrays enabled by RecoverPoint continuous
remote replication (CRR).
The virtualization platform for the solution is enabled by SRM and VMware vSphere.
Integration of RecoverPoint CRR and VMware SRM enables automated failover of a

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

MEDITECH environment from the production site to the recovery site and ensures that
data replicated to the recovery site is available to the recovery site servers.
This solution incorporates the following components:

EMC RecoverPoint Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vCenter Site
Recovery Manager (SRM)

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC RecoverPoint Management

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Solution Architecture
Architecture
diagram

This solution was designed to reflect a multisite virtualized MEDITECH environment

protected by EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM).
Figure 1 depicts the overall physical architecture of the solution.

VMware ESXi 5.1

SRM Server

Recoverpoint

Brocade
DS6510
SAN

Protected Site

VMware Client
with Vmware
SRM & EMC
VSI

Figure 1.

Brocade
VDX6720
LAN

SRM Server

Recoverpoint

VMware ESXi 5.1

Brocade
DS6510
SAN

Recovery Site

VMware Client
with Vmware
SRM & EMC
VSI

Solution architecture

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Hardware
resources

Table 1 lists the hardware used in this solution.

Table 1.
Hardware
EMC VNX7500

Solution hardware
Quantity
2

Configuration

Notes

DAEs configured with:

VNX shared storage providing

block storage

78 600 GB 10k rpm SAS disks

16 200 GB Flash drives
EMC RecoverPoint

Gen 5 hardware

1 RPA cluster per site with 3 RPAs

per cluster.

Brocade 6510
SAN switch

8 GB/s FC switches

2 switches per site, dual FC fabric

configuration

Brocade VDX6720

10 or 1 Gigabit Ethernet
switches

Infrastructure Ethernet switch

4 octo-core Intel Xeon E7-4830

Family

Rackmount systems

Network Switch
Intel server

128 GB RAM
Converged network adapter

MEDITECH File
Servers (FS) VM

30

2 vCPU
4 GB Memory
40 GB VMDK

3 servers per vSphere cluster. Two

clusters, each hosting MEDITECH
environment and Infrastructure
virtual machines (VMware vCenter,
VMware SRM, DNS, DHCP, Active
Directory, MS SQL Server,)
Windows 2008 Enterprise virtual
machines.
Generic File Server configuration
representing MEDITECH FS
application server. Windows 2008
R2 SP1 installed.

200 GB RDM (physical mode)

vCenter Server
Appliance VM

2 vCPU
8 GB Memory
25 GB VMDK

SUSE Linux appliance for managing

vSphere clusters and SRM
operations.

100 GB VMDK
vCenter Site
Recovery Manager
Server VM

SQL Server VM

2 vCPU
8 GB Memory

vCenter Site Recovery Manager

application host

40 GB VMDK
2 vCPU
8 GB RAM

Database server to house SRM

database.

75 GB VMDK

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Table 2 lists the software used in this solution.

Software
resources

Table 2.

Solution software

Software

Configuration

Notes

EMC VNX7500

Release 32

Operating environment for the block

EMC RecoverPoint

Release 4.0 SP1

Operating environment for each RPA

VMware vSphere ESX

5.5.0

Server hypervisor

VMware vCenter

5.5.0

vCenter server appliance

VMware vCenter Site Recovery

Manager (SRM)

5.5.0

vCenter SRM application

EMC RecoverPoint Storage

Replication Adapter (SRA) for
VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager

2.2.0

Facilitates SRM functions with EMC

RecoverPoint

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere:

EMC RecoverPoint Management

5.6.0

VSI plugin for vCenter to manage RecoverPoint

point-in-time backups for SRM operations.

EMC PowerPath Virtual Edition

5.9

Multipathing and load balancing for block

access.

Microsoft SQL Server

2008

Database that hosts the tables for VMware

SRM.

Microsoft Windows 2008

R2

Operating system for the server environment

VNX OE for block

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Key components
Introduction

This section briefly describes the key components used in this solution, including:

EMC RecoverPoint

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

Brocade Ethernet/Fiber Channel Technology

EMC RecoverPoint

EMC RecoverPoint is an advanced enterprise-class disaster recovery solution

supporting heterogeneous storage and server environments. RecoverPoint provides
bi-directional local and remote data replication across any distance and utilizes
continuous data protection technologies to provide consistent point-in-time recovery.

VMware vCenter
Site Recovery
Manager

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is the market-leading disaster recovery
management product. It ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection
for all virtualized applications. SRM leverages cost-efficient vSphere Replication and
supports a broad set of high-performance storage-replication products to replicate
virtual machines to a secondary site. SRM provides a simple interface for setting up
recovery plans that are coordinated across all infrastructure layers, replacing
traditional, error-prone run books. Recovery plans can be tested non-disruptively as
frequently as required to ensure that they meet business objectives. At the time of a
site failover or migration, SRM automates the failover and failback processes,
ensuring fast and highly predictable recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery
time objectives (RTOs).

Brocade
Ethernet/Fibre
Channel
technology

The Brocade VDX 6720 Switch is a high-performance, ultra-low latency wire-speed 10

Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) fixed configuration switch. It is specifically designed to
improve network utilization, maximize application availability, increase scalability,
and dramatically simplify network architecture in virtualized data centers.
Brocade VDX switches feature Brocade VCS Fabric technology that enables
organizations to build high-performance, cloud-optimized data centers while
preserving existing network designs and cabling, and gaining active-active server
connections. For scale-out fabric architectures, Brocade VCS Fabric technology allows
organizations to flatten network designs, provides Virtual Machine (VM) mobility
without network reconfiguration, and manages the entire fabric more efficiently.
The Brocade VDX 6720 Switch offers:

High performance and low latency: Provides high performance with 10 GbE
ports and ultra-low latency through wire-speed ports with 600 nanosecond
port-to-port latency and automated hardware-based Inter-Switch Link (ISL)
trunking.

Simplified architecture: Simplifies network architectures and enables cloud

computing with Brocade VCS Fabric technology.

Easy configuration: Enables organizations to manage an entire VCS fabric as a

single switch with Brocade VCS Logical Chassis.

Maximizes network utilization: Allows efficient, load-balanced multipathing at

Layers 1, 2, and 3, with multiple Layer 3 gateways.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Advanced storage connectivity: Provides Ethernet storage connectivity for

FCoE, iSCSI, and NAS.

Optimizes virtualization: Offers the automation needed to support highlyvirtualized server and storage environments while enabling the transition to
cloud computing.

The Brocade 6510 Switch meets the demands of hyper-scale, private cloud storage
environments by delivering market-leading Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology and
capabilities that support highly-virtualized environments. Designed to enable
maximum flexibility and reliability, the Brocade 6510 is configurable in 24, 36, or 48
ports and supports 2, 4, 8, 10, or 16 Gbps speeds in an efficiently designed 1U
package.
A simplified deployment process and a point-and-click user interface make the
Brocade 6510 both powerful and easy to use. The Brocade 6510 offers low-cost
access to industry-leading Storage Area Network (SAN) technology while providing
"pay-as-you-grow" scalability to meet the needs of an evolving storage environment.
Additional highlights include:

Provides exceptional price/performance value, combining flexibility,

simplicity, and enterprise-class functionality in a 48-port switch for virtualized
data centers and private cloud architectures

Enables fast, easy, and cost-effective scaling from 24 to 48 ports using Ports
on Demand (PoD) capabilities

Simplifies management through Brocade FabricVision technology, reducing

operational costs and improving application performance

Simplifies deployment and supports high-performance fabrics by using

Brocade ClearLink Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports) to identify optic and cable
issues

Helps maximize application uptime and performance while reducing overall

operational expenses with ClearLink Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports)

Simplifies and accelerates deployment with the Brocade EZSwitchSetup

wizard

Maximizes availability with redundant, hot-pluggable components and nondisruptive software upgrades

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Configuring EMC RecoverPoint

Introduction

EMC RecoverPoint sits below the VMware infrastructure and is responsible for
replicating all changes from the production LUNs to the remote replica LUNs at the
disaster recovery site.
For this solution, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) leverages
RecoverPoint continuous remote replication (CRR) to provide external replication
between protected and recovery sites.

Configuring
RecoverPoint
consistency
groups

Once RecoverPoint is installed and replication sites established, the next step in
setting up and testing a disaster recovery plan using SRM with RecoverPoint is to
configure RecoverPoint consistency groups for the VMware volumes that are to be
protected and managed by SRM.
The general procedure is as follows:
1. Create consistency groups.
2. Configure copies.
3. Add journals.
4. Add replication sets.
5. Enable group.
6. Start replication.
This process is described in detail in the EMC RecoverPoint administrators guide,
located at http://support.emc.com.
Figure 2 shows the consistency groups in the RecoverPoint Management console.

Figure 2.

Consistency Groups in the RecoverPoint Management console

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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For this solution, three consistency groups were created with 10 MEDITECH FS servers
assigned to each group. For MEDITECH implementations using RecoverPoint, there
can be more or less numbers of consistency groups configured; it depends on the
RPO requirement the site is requiring.
RecoverPoint consistency group considerations
When creating RecoverPoint consistency groups for SRM management, the
RecoverPoint consistency group has to contain the protected VMs boot drive and any
data volume associated with it. The boot volume and data volume can be on different
VMware datastores but cannot be in separate RecoverPoint consistency groups
because when creating protection groups in SRM, SRM computes the set of virtual
machines into a datastore group based on the RecoverPoint consistency group. SRM
checks the datastore group to ensure it contains all the files of a protected virtual
machine. If a volume is not present in the datastore group, the VM will not be
protected by SRM.
Configuring the
consistency group
for management
by SRM

After the consistency group has been created and SRM has been installed, the
consistency group needs to be configured to be managed by SRM. This is done in the
RecoverPoint management console. Select the consistency group that is to be
protected by SRM and go to the Group Policy tab to adjust the settings.
Figure 3 shows the external management of the consistency group to SRM in the
RecoverPoint Management console.

Figure 3.

External Management for Medi_CG1 set for SRM management

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Configuring site recovery with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Introduction

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a plug-in to VMware vCenter, so

disaster recovery tasks can be executed from the same centralized interface that is
used to manage other virtual machine administrative tasks such as creation,
migration, and deletion.
However, SRM is not a built-in component of vCenter; it is a separate server process
with its own separate database. The server processes for SRM and vCenter can coexist on the same server or reside on different servers. Similarly, both SRM and
vCenter data repositories can be created in a single database or in separate
databases.

Prerequisites

Installing and
configuring SRM

SRM has several requirements that need to be met in order to have a successful
installation.

Each site must include a vCenter server containing at least one vSphere data
center.

The recovery site must support array-based replication with the protected
(production) site, and must have hardware and network resources that can
support the same virtual machines and workloads as the protected site.

At least one virtual machine must be located on a datastore that is replicated

by RecoverPoint at the protected site.

The protected and recovery sites must be connected by a reliable IP network.

Storage arrays may have additional network requirements.

The recovery site must have access to the same public and private networks
as the protected site, though not necessarily the same range of network
addresses.

VMware tools must be installed on all virtual machines.

Installing and configuring SRM with RecoverPoint includes the following tasks:
1. Configure SRM databases at both sites.
2. Install the SRM server at both sites.
3. Pair the Protected and Recovery site.
4. Set up Inventory Mappings.
5. Install EMC RecoverPoint Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware
vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM).
6. Configure protection groups.
7. Create the recovery plan.
8. Install EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC RecoverPoint Management.
Details of the installation process can be referenced from the Site Recovery Manager
Installation and Configuration Guide and the VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC
RecoverPoint Management 5.6 Product Guide.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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For this solution, a single protection group was created to failover the thirty
MEDITECH servers. Multiple protection groups could be created as long as the
protection groups match the number of RecoverPoint consistency groups that are
managed by SRM. Explanation about array-based replication and protection groups
can be found in the Site Recovery Manager Administration Guide, located on the
VMware website.
Figure 4 shows the protection group created.

Figure 4.

Protection group

A single MEDITECH recovery plan was used in the solution. The recovery plan
specifies how SRM recovers the virtual machines in the protection group. Just like the
protection group, it is possible to have multiple recovery plans to recover mission
critical, business critical, or business important systems independently. When using
multiple recovery plans, SRM will execute one recovery plan at a time.
Within the MEDITECH recovery plan the FS servers were divided into several priority
groups. This allows granularity on which VMs go down first and come up first in a
recovery scenarios. Within a priority group, dependencies can be created so that
certain VMs in that priority group come up in a certain order. Figure 5 shows priority of
the FS servers that are to start up during a recovery. FS002 has a dependency to
FS001 so it will not power up until FS001 is up.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Figure 5.

Configuring
Advanced SRM

Recovery Plan with priority groups and dependencies defined

Using the Advanced Settings, you can view or change many custom settings for the
SRM service. Advanced Settings provide a way for a user with adequate privileges to
change default values that affect the operation of various SRM features.
SRM applies the advanced settings to the virtual machines that you protect on a
given site, and not to recovery plans. SRM applies advanced settings to a virtual
machine at the moment that you configure protection on that virtual machine. If you
change any of the advanced settings after you have configured the protection of a
virtual machine, the new settings do not apply to that virtual machine. Modifications
to advanced settings apply only to virtual machines that you protect after you
changed the settings. This is by design, because if SRM were to apply changed
advanced settings to virtual machines on which you have already configured
protection, it could lead to unwanted changes in the protection of those virtual
machines.
For this solution, a few of the advanced settings were modified to improve the
recovery process. Settings were applied on both the protected site and recovery site.
These suggested values can be changed to meet the site needs.

Recovery > Recovery.powerOffTimeout value changed from 300 to 600 sec.

The Recovery.powerOffTimeout setting is used during recovery on the
protected site to monitor the power state of the VM. If the VM does
not shut down gracefully during this timeout period, vSphere will
power the VM down forcefully. See Figure 6 for the setting.

Recovery > Recovery.powerOnTimeout value changed from 300 to 600 sec.

The Recovery.powerOn.Timeout setting is used during recovery on the
recovery site to monitor the power state of the VM based on VMtools
heartbeat. If the heartbeat does not respond during this timeout, the
VM will be flagged as failed in the recovery plan and user intervention
will be needed to troubleshoot. See Figure 6 for the setting.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Figure 6.

Advanced settings for recovery timeouts on protected site

storageProvider > storageProvider.fixRecoveredDatastoreNames check on.

This setting was more for aesthetics in the viclient for when the
datastores are on the recovery site. During a recovery, the replicated
datastores are prefixed with a snap-xxx to identify that the replica
datastore is being used. With the check mark selected, vCenter will
rename the datastore without a prefix. See Figure 7 for the setting.

Figure 7.

Advanced settings for storageProvider on protected site.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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EMC VSI for

VMware vSphere:
EMC RecoverPoint
Management

EMC RecoverPoint Management is a plugin of the EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
framework for VMware vSphere. EMC RecoverPoint Management VSI is designed to
assist the SRM administrator in designating a specific point-in-time (PiT) copy to use
for data protection and execution of a recovery plan when using SRM. During a
recovery operation, if a point-in-time is selected using the VSI, VMs will be restored to
that specific backup. If a PiT is not chosen, then SRM uses the latest PiT that it is
aware of.
Figure 8 shows the PiT available for VM FS001 in the EMC RecoverPoint Management
VSI. MEDITECH_MBF_Backup PiT is selected for recovery.

Figure 8.

Additional
recommendations

List of PiT copies for FS001 from the RecoverPoint Management VSI

Based on testing in the Vertical Solutions lab, other recommendations are as follows:

Install the Site Recovery Manager database as close to the Site Recovery
Manager server as possible. This reduces the round trip time (RTT) between
them. The impact of round trips to the database server on recovery time
performance is also reduced.

A vSphere alarm should be created to announce the creation of new VMs on

the datastore so that protection can be configured to include the new VM in
the RecoverPoint consistency group and SRM protection group.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Testing the MEDITECH recovery plan

Overview

An SRM recovery plan can be tested at any time without disrupting replication or
ongoing operations at the protected site.
The non-disruptive test is carried out in an isolated environment at the recovery site,
using a temporary copy of the replicated data. It runs all the steps in the recovery
plan except powering down of the virtual machines at the protected site and
assumption of control of replicated data by devices at the recovery site.
This facility allows the recovery plan to be tested for disaster recovery compliance
confirming timings and reliability. Another use case is having a temporary test/
development environment to troubleshoot issues or host/application patching
validation.

Testing the
recovery plan

This section describes a test recovery of the MEDITECH recovery plan.

Initiate the test required by selecting the MEDITECH Recovery Plan and clicking Test.
Figure 9 shows the initiating of the recovery of the MEDITECH Recovery Plan.

Figure 9.

Initiating a test recovery

When running a test plan, SRM creates an isolated network on the recovery site and
enables image access on the RecoverPoint consistency groups. The test VMs will be
powered up and any customizations that need to be done to them will be applied.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Figure 10 shows the recovery steps performed during the MEDITECH Recovery Plan
test.

Figure 10.

Recovery steps for test plan

At this point, the environment is available on the recovery site and administrators can
verify application functionality in the secure environment. Once the environment has
been validated, click Cleanup to return the recovery plan back to a ready state. The
cleanup will power down the VMs, unmount the storage, and disable image access on
RecoverPoint.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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Recovery test
report

After every recovery/reprotect or test recovery/cleanup operation, a recovery plan

history report is generated. The history contains information about the result and the
start and end times for the whole plan and for each step in the plan. The reports can
be used to demonstrate timings of the recovery plan as VMs are protected or
unprotected or for auditing purposes to meet compliance.
Figure 11 shows a recovery plan history for the MEDITECH Recovery Plan.

Figure 11.

MEDITECH Recovery plan test recovery history report

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

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Conclusion
This document, using the example of a multi-tier MEDITECH application deployed on
VMware virtual infrastructure, demonstrates how VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager (SRM) with EMC RecoverPoint software enables the design of an effective
and automated disaster recovery point-in-time solution.
Traditional disaster recovery solutions are slow and prone to failures because they
involve many manual and complex steps that are difficult to test and require
expensive duplication of the production data center infrastructure to ensure reliable
recovery.
SRM is specifically designed to leverage the capabilities of vSphere, to simplify and
automate the disaster recovery process so that you can reliably recover from data
center outages in hours rather than days. SRM integrates tightly with vCenter Server
to simplify disaster recovery management by automating the testing and
orchestration of centralized recovery plans. MEDITECH users can replace traditional,
manual runbooks with centralized recovery plans, reducing the time required for set
up from weeks to minutes.
When deployed in conjunction with EMC RecoverPoint continuous remote replication
(CRR) in a virtualized MEDITECH environment, users can leverage the EMC VSI
RecoverPoint management plugin to allow administrators to recover to any point in
time across the virtualized MEDITECH universe during a failover.
Using SRM and RecoverPoint for this solution lets you:

Accelerate recovery for the virtual environment through automation.

Recover to specific points in time, either the latest replicated crash consistent
copy or from a MEDITECH Integrated Disaster Recovery (IDR) backup.

Ensure reliable recovery by enabling non-disruptive testing. Test as frequently

as you like.

Simplify recovery by eliminating complex manual recovery steps and

centralizing management of recovery plans.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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References
EMC
documentation

VMware
documentation

The following documents, located on the EMC online support website, provide
additional and relevant information. Access to these documents depends on your
login credentials. If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC
representative:

RecoverPoint Installation and Deployment Guide

EMC RecoverPoint 4.0 Administrators Guide

RecoverPoint Deploying with VNX/CLARiiON Arrays and Splitter Technical

Notes

RecoverPoint Replicating VMware Technical Notes

VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC RecoverPoint Management 5.6 Product Guide

VSI for VMware vSphere: EMC RecoverPoint Management 5.6 Release Notes

The following VMware documents, located on the VMware website, also provide
useful information:

Site Recovery Manager Installation and Configuration

Site Recovery Manager Administration

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for MEDITECH Enabled by

EMC RecoverPoint and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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