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Corbeau

Member

Registered: 2021-02-07

Posts: 25

replica DR

Hi,

Very simple, I want to document the emergency proceedure should our main production server fail.
Is the following correct - mainly I am confused about the _XSIREP vm.
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xsibackup-DC is being used to create replicas of the production server on a second esxi server.

If the production server fails the second server has a number of replicas ready to go.

1)If esxi is still working on production server remove the cronjob:
remove cronjob from [xsi-dir]/var/spool/cron/root-crontab
run xsibackup --update-cron
2)Make sure broken production vm is off.

3)Connect to ESXi GUI on second server.
Browse datastore, find the relivent replica's .vmx, right click and register VM.
Then boot this VM.
Unregister the _XSIREP vm that was created for sandbox purposes.
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Thanks

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,055

Re: replica DR

It is simpler than that.

When you use the --options=R argument you can indeed register the VM _XSIREP. That VM runs on top of a snapshot called donotdeleteme. We believe this is a fair enough description on what should never happen to that snapshot

The reason to not delete the snapshot is to allow the syncronization between the primary VM and the one at the hot site to go on seamlessly. If for some reason you would delete that snapshot, the (c)XSIBackup client would detect it and trigger a full sync again and then create the donotdeleteme snapshot again.

If you ever need to make the hot site production. Just switch off the VMs at the former production site and turn on the VMs at the hot site. That's all.

At this point when you are sure that the former VMs are not the production ones any more you can detele the donotdeleteme snapshot and use the replica VMs normally.

Whether you rename them or not is up to you. It seems reasonable to remove the tail _XSIREP though.

Off course, anything regarding disabling the old cron jobs and making sure that nothing in the previous setup does anything that you don't want to happen is also mandatory, nonetheless designing the procedure is up to you. Depending on your environments you may need to do things one way or another.

Corbeau

Member

Registered: 2021-02-07

Posts: 25

Re: replica DR

Thanks for that.

point 3 becomes:

3) Connect to ESXi GUI on second server.
Start VMNAME_XSIREP
This VM is now production.
At leisure delete the snapshot VMNAME_XSIREP > xsirep_donotdelete as this was only used for backup purposes.

Last edited by Corbeau (2022-04-22 15:21:59)

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,055

Re: replica DR

Right!
Anything regarding the old VMs is also something to be done, namely: turn them off and unregister them and in special removing the old cron jobs, as they could overwrite your new production VM with old data from the old VMs.