Well here it is, finally.What we all have been dreaming of, what the competitors have been noodling about…Site Recovery Manager 4.0.

Why so much hype, why so much talk? Two words, NFS support..now certainly there are plenty of other features and functionality that are worth mentioning (below), but if any one item could be targeted it would be this.

Why? Well I cant speak for any other NAS array other than the Celerra, but SRM and Celerra Replicator (via iSCSI) were as painful as being smacked in the face with a bag of rocks. 2.5 times (FS for iSCSI LUN) capacity of your production iSCSI LUNs were essentially needed to accomplish this replication..this alone made people angry…hey it is what it is..but it wasn’t pretty.

So where do we stand…for now NFS support has been alienated to NetApp and EMC NAS arrays..

• NS‐120, NS‐480, NS‐960, NS350, NS500, NS700, NX4, NS20, NS40, NS80, NSX
• 5.3.36 or later
• NetApp Arrays? Oh who really cares…

Note: you will have to upgrade your SRA to an SRA that supports NFS.

How good does it get? This dramatically decreases the upfront cost to integrate SRM and Celerra Replicator, while allowing full SRM failback, two features that will, together, continue to drive the proverbial stake into the hearts of Mr. Softee and Simon Crosby’s crew..

Ok what else, how about this as noted here..

• Full compatibility with vCenter 4.
• Full support for NFS-based arrays.<—Did I mention NetApp and EMC Only
• Support for shared recovery sites <—very interesting, enter Public Cloud Service Providers
  Enables many-to-one pairings of protected sites with a recovery site. For more information, see the technical note Installing, Configuring, and Using Shared Recovery Site Support, which is available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.
• Resilience in the face of vCenter unavailability during a test recovery.
  Placeholder virtual machines can be quickly repaired after the protected site vCenter becomes available again.
• New repair-mode installation features.
  You can run the SRM installer in repair mode if you need to change configuration parameters such as vCenter credentials, database connection information or credentials, and certificate details.
• Graphical interface to advanced settings.
  Eliminates most requirements to edit the XML configuration file
• Support for DB2 as an SRM database server.
• New licensing options.
• Improved scalability.
  A single protection group can now include up to 1000 virtual machines.
• Full Compatibility With DPM (Distributed Power Management)
  SRM recovery plans can now power-on or power-off a host that is in standby mode.
• New Option to dr-ip-customizer Utility
  The dr-ip-customizer utility now logs less verbose diagnostic output by default. To force dr-ip-customizer to log the same level of diagnostic output that it produced in earlier releases, use the -verbose option.
• Change in Certificate Validation
  When you select certificate authentication, the SRM installation validates the certificate you supply before continuing. Certificates signed with an MD5 key are no longer allowed.
• Support for Protecting Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines.
  SRM can now protect virtual machines that have been configured for fault-tolerant operation. When recovered, these virtual machines lose their fault tolerance, and must be manually reconfigured after recovery to restore fault tolerance.
• Improved context-sensitive Help.
• PDF documents available on release media
  Current versions of the PDF documents for this release are available in the docs folder at the root of the SRM 4.0 CD. Updated versions of these documents may be available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.

Nice to see the boys @Uptime sparking it up again, it seems they have been busy…read up will yah?

http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2009/10/a-quick-tour-of-srm-40.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2009/10/srm-40-is-here-the-wait-for-vsphere-and-nfs-support-is-over.html

Other useful links here…

http://www.vmware.com/download/srm/

http://www.vmware.com/products/srm/resource.html

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html