While in Previous posts i was talking about VMware Based Cloud to Cloud DR which means on One of the VMware Cloud Provider data center is having your VM running and you need to disaster recovery to another data center of the same provider thats where vCAv-C-to-C helps. but what about Customers who are having lots of VMs inside their own data center and wanted to move to VMware Cloud Provider data center or want to have DR as a Service on VMware Provider Datacenter. This is where VMware vCloud Availability helps.
vCloud Availability is a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and Migration Service solution that provides simple and secure asynchronous replication and failover and fail back for vSphere managed workloads. it supports vSphere version 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 and 6.7 environments. but only vSphere version 6.x provides replication in both directions.
Features:-
- Multi-tenant support for Provider Environment
- Self-service portal for Migration,Protection Failover and Fail back per VM basis.
- Initial Data seeding can be done using disk shipping to the provider and tenant.
- RPO from 15 Minutes to 24 Hours .( if you have latest version of vSphere it supports 5 Minute RPO also).
- Build in support for encryption of replication traffic.
- Simple to deploy , manager and support compare to using other solutions and getting in to integration and support issues.
- Supports up to 24 previous restore points.
- efficient , robust and proven as it uses existing vSphere Replication engine.
Architecture & Components:-
The architecture of the vCAv relies on the service provider environment that will be considered as the replication target and the customer/tenant environment that deploys vSphere Replication to move the data to the service provider considers as source. In the service provider environment, multiple components operate together to support replication, secure communication, and storage of the replicated data. Each service provider can support recovery for multiple customer environments that can scale to handle increasing loads for each tenant, and for multiple tenants.
Cloud/Service provider environment runs multiple components listed as below together to support replication, secure communication with compute and storage. Provider must running production grade vCD environment to successfully run vCloud availability. i am not here listing down vCD components as i assume vCD is deployed and configured successfully. i will be covering only vCAv components only..
| vCAv Components | Components Use |
| Cloud Proxy |
Cloud Proxy creates a public listening TCP port to which vCloud Tunneling Agents connect and communicate using secure web sockets. Multiple instances can be deployed behind a load balancer to support scaling. |
| vCloud Tunnelling Agent |
It communicates with the Cloud Proxy and is responsible for orchestrating tunnel creation for both to-the-cloud and from-the-cloud tunnels. |
| Cassandra |
An open source distributed database that stores metadata related to the configured replications. |
| RabbitMQ |
An open source Message Queue Service. All requests to the Cloud Service are routed through the messaging service. |
| vSphere Replication Cloud Services |
Rest API Entry Point for Replication Operations , interacts with vCloud director for Multi-tenancy and placement. |
| vSphere Replication Manager |
Existing component of Sphere Replication , Manager and Monitors Replication. |
| vSpher
e Replication Server |
Existing Component of vSphere Replication, handles replication of each protected VM. |
| vCloud Availability Portal |
Tenet UI portal to manage replication on Cloud. |
Above is the vCAv Diagram in conjunction with vCD and its components for your reference, thats cover the basic information about vCAv. below is the list of Service Provider Components needs to be deployed for successful DRaaS from your Cloud.
| vCAv Components | No of Nodes to be Installed |
| Cassandra | 03 Nodes |
| RabbitMQ | 02 Nodes |
| Cloud Proxy | 02 Nodes |
| vSphere Replication Cloud Services | 02 Nodes |
| vCloud Availability Administration Portal | 01 Nodes |
| vSphere Replication Manager | 01 Node |
| vSphere Replication Server | 02 Nodes |
| vCloud Availability Portal | 01 Node |
in next few days i will be installing in my Lab based on above table and posting here in series of posts. In the mean time please refer documentation on installation and configuration on VMware website and get ready for installation and configuration.
VMTECHIE 