SRM Installation Prerequisites

Database Prerequisites

Before you are able to install SRM, you’ll need a database to store configuration files.  Create a database on your SQL Server to house the configuration information.  Note: You’ll need a database server in both the protected site and recovery site; one for each SRM Server.

• Pre-create the SQL Database and assign your SRM Service account AT LEAST the ADMINISTER BULK OPERATIONS, CONNECT, AND CREATE TABLE permissions.
• Ensure the SRM database schema has the same name as the database user account.
• The SRM database service account should be the database owner of the SRM database
• The SRM database schema should be the default schema of the SRM database user.
• On your SRM Servers, install the SQL Server native client for your version of SQL Server.

Create an ODBC connection to the SRM database on your SRM Servers.  Select the SQL Native Client appropriate for your database server.

Give it a name, and point the ODBC connection to the server.

Enter login information.

Enter the SRM database

Installer Prerequisites

VMware Site Recovery Manager installation is relatively simple.  Grab the installer from http://vmware.com/downloads and run the installer on your SRM Server.   There are a couple of notes to be aware of when installing though.

• Right click the installer and run as Administrator if you are leaving UAC on.  This makes re-installation easier in the future.
• The installation should be done by a user who will be running the SRM Service.  The logged in installer by default is the service account that is used.
• The logged in user should have administrative access to the server it’s being installed on.
• Consistent use of SSL Certificates need to be used
  • If any vCenter is using custom SSL Certificates then the SRM Services must also use SSL certificates from a Certificate Authority
  • If the protected site vCenter uses SSL Certificates then the recovery site vCenter Server should also use SSL certificates from a Certificate Authority
  • If you need to use custom SSL certificates from a certificate authority instead of the default VMware certificates, the CN for both SRM servers should be identical
  • I recommend reviewing this post from Sam McGeown if you need to use SSL Certificates

Install

Run the installer as an administrator.  Click Next on the welcome screen.

You can view additional prerequisite tasks from the next screen.  I’ve covered many of them already in this post.

Choose the location for the install files.

Enter the location of the vCenter server associated with the SRM Server, as well as some credentials to register the service with vCenter.

Give the site a name and enter an email address and select the Host IP Address and ports to be used.

If you’re using the same SRM Server for multiple sites, select the Custom SRM Option and enter the information, otherwise just use the default if it’s a 1 to 1 relationship with another SRM Server.

If you’re using the default SSL Certificates then click the “Automatically generate a certificate and then enter some certificate information to generate a cert.

If you’re using custom SSL Certificates, then you’ll load your SSL Certificate during this phase.

Next, select your Data Source that you created prior to the installation.  (If you forgot to do this, there is a button to do it during setup)

Select the connection counts for the database.

Enter the password for the service account for the Site Recovery Manager Server.  The user will be the logged in user.

Once all the information has been entered, click the Install button.

Watch as the installer progresses.

Summary

There are quite a few things that need to be done before the install process happens, but it will make your life simpler to have these done beforehand.  Now that you’ve installed SRM on one of your sites, repeat the process for the second site.