VMware Site Recovery Manager consists of several different pieces that all have to fit together, let alone the fact that you are working with two different physical locations.
The following components will all need to be configured for a successful SRM implementation:
- 2 or more sites
- 2 or more Single Sign On Servers
- 2 or more vCenter Servers
- 2 or more SRM Servers
- Storage – Either storage arrays with replication, or 2 or more Virtual Replication Appliances
- Networks
It’s worth noting that SSO, vCenter, and SRM could all be installed on the same machine, but you’ll need this many instances of these components.
As of VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.5 you can do a traditional Protected to Recovery Site implementation like the one shown below. This can be a unidirectional setup with a warm site ready for a failover to occur, or it can be bi-directional where both sites are in use and a failure at either site could be failed over to the opposite site.
Each site will require their own vCenter Server and SRM Server, as well as a method of replication such as a storage array.
Along with a 1 to 1 setup, SRM 5.5 can manage a many to one failover scenario where multiple sites could fail over to a single site. This would require an SRM instance for each of the protected sites as seen in the diagram below.
The configuration that is not available at the moment is a single site to multiple failover sites. *as of SRM 5.5
Single Sign-On
After vSphere 5.1 was released, Single Sign-On needs to be a consideration. If you’re taking disaster recovery into consideration, it is important to keep SSO available at both sites.
The most logical choice is to install an SSO server at each site. This requires Active Directory sites to be setup correctly with multiple subnets and multiple replication sites. This ensures that one copy of the database is being housed across the entire environment, but either SSO server can operate if the other fails.
For more information I urge you to visit: http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/02/linked-mode-with-sso-for-srm.html
