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VMware Site Recovery Manager ( SRM 6.1 ) – Part 7 – Configuring Placeholder DataStore

If you create Array – Based replication or vSphere replication protection group, Site Recovery Manager creates a placeholder Virtual Machine at the recovery site for each virtual machine in the protection group. A placeholder virtual machine is a subset of Virtual Machine files and do not represent full copies for the protected virtual machine. Site Recovery Manager use these file to register protected virtual machine in recovery site.The placeholder virtual machine does not have any disks attached to it. The placeholder virtual machine reserves compute resources on the recovery site.

When you test or run a recovery plan, Site Recovery Manager replaces the placeholder with the recovered virtual machine and powers it on according to the settings of the recovery plan. After a recovery plan test finishes, Site Recovery Manager restores the placeholders and powers off the recovered virtual machines as part of the clean-up process.

If you use array-based or vSphere replication, you must identify a datastore on recovery site in which Site Recovery Manager can store the placeholder virutal machine files.  To enable planned migration and reprotect, you must select placeholder datastores on both sites. All the hosts in the selected compute resource must have access to at least one placeholder datastore.

Placeholder datastores must meet certain criteria.

  • For clusters, the placeholder datastores must be visible to all of the hosts in the cluster.
  • You cannot select as placeholder datastores any datastores that are replicated / used by using array-based replication or vSphere Replication.

In the vSphere Web Client, click Site Recovery > Sites, and select a site.

Click “Configure placeholder datastore”

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In case of bi-directional protection of sites, select the datastore to be used in both the sites.

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In this article, we configure SRM placeholder datastore in both the site to perform bidirectional recovery. In the upcoming posts, we will be creating VMware SRM protection groups. I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for Reading!!!. Be social and share it in social media, if you feel worth sharing it.