Troubleshooting NonVMwareDevice Filtering in VMware SRM using Dell EMC SRDF SRA.

    Troubleshooting NonVMwareDevice Filtering in VMware SRM using Dell EMC SRDF SRA.

Problem description: While running device discovery in VMware SRM while using DELL EMC SRDF SRA, it shows all the replicated devices not just the VMware devices.

   

In this post, I will like to highlight about my experience which I had faced while configuring VMware SRM with DELL EMC SRDF SRA.

 

For those who are not aware what these products are, I will like to take some time in giving a brief indroduction about the same.

 

VMware SRM:VMware provides the VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) as part of its vSphere suite, which lets you automate backups and orchestrate the recovery of entire data centers from a disaster recovery site. SRM can be used both on-premises and as a Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

 

Dell EMC SRDF SRA:

 

SRDF:The Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) is a family of software products that facilitates the data replication from one Symmetrix storage array to another through a storage area network or Internet Protocol (IP) network.

 

SRA:If you are using array-based replication, you must install a Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) specific to each storage array that you use with Site Recovery Manager. An SRA is a program that an array vendor provides that enables Site Recovery Manager to work with a specific kind of array.

You must install an appropriate SRA on the Site Recovery Manager Server hosts at the protected and recovery sites. If you use more than one type of storage array, you must install the SRA for each type of array on both of the Site Recovery Manager Server hosts.

 

So after configuring my SRM server with Dell EMC SRDF SRA I found that whenever I’m executing my device discovery I can see all the replicated devices in my Array Based Replication, device discovery section, as highlighted in attached screen capture.

I remember that as per the DELL EMC SRDF SRA tech guide the nonVMwareDevice Filtering is enabled by default in the global options XML FIle locatied at path :

%programdata%\EMC\EmcSrdfSra\Config\EmcSrdfSraGlobalOptions.xml

Example:

<FilterNonVmwareDevices>YES<FilterNonVmwareDevices>

 

So I went and checked the SRDF SRA Logs to check what exactly is failing and why my NonVMwareDevice Filtering is not working.

SRDF SRA Log location:

%programdata%\VMWARE\VMWARE VCENTER SITE RECOVERY MANAGER\lLogs\SRAs\EMC Symmetrix\EmcSrdfSra_yyyymmdd.log

 

Below are the entries I found:

DiscoverDevicesCommand::FetchDynamicRDFDevices] [Commence]Fetching Dynamic RDF devices from array 00xxxxxxxxxxx.
DiscoverDevicesCommand::FetchDynamicRDFDevices] [Complete]Fetching Dynamic RDF devices from array 000297700276. Found 54x devices
DiscoverDevicesCommand::FilterNonVMwareDevices] Filtering out devices which are not presented to ESX servers
VirtualInfraClient::VirtualInfraClient] Creating new viclient
VirtualInfraClient::connect     ] Connecting to virtual center
[WARNING]: ViClient Security Exception is Enabled.
Connect to Virtual Client fails. Reason: No records were found in the authorization database.
DiscoverDevicesCommand::FilterNonVMwareDevices] [WARNING]: Failed to connect to virtual center. Please check if you have provided valid vcenter credential in symmetrix authorization DB.
DiscoverDevicesCommand::FilterNonVMwareDevices] [WARNING]: SRA will continue without filtering NON VMWare devices.

 

Above log entries, especially highlighted one clearly state the error, that there was some Authorization issue between SRA and the vcenter server because of which device filtering was getting skipped. So if such issue is faced we need to provide the Authorization to vcenter server with the admin access on both the Protection site SRM servr and Recover Site SRM server where the SRA solution enabler is installed.

 

The permission can be authorized with below commnad:

symcfg add authorization -host <vcenter FQDN> -username -password -vmware -namespace "vmware/vc"

 

Please make a note:

To enable the NonVmwareDevice Filtering, admin must grant vCenter access to Solutions Enabler install local to the SRM server. It must be done on the local installation of Solution enabler on both protected and recovery sites of the SRM server.

 

Once the Authorization is provided using the above command just re-ran the device discovery and NonVMwareDevices will be filtered out and only VMware Replicated Device will be seen in Array Pair Screen.

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