VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 Enhancements

With SRM 6.1 VMware announced the RPO of 5 minutes if you are using the VSAN datastores
Enhancements in SRM 6.1:-
There are alot of enhancements in SRM 6.1, now lets start with the briefing on these enhancements and in the later part of this post i will discuss them in more detail:-
1. Storage Policies based Protection Group
2. Streched Storage Support & Orchestrated vMotion
3. Enhanced Integration with NSX
4. SRM Air 

Storage Policies based Protection Group
Storage policy-based protection groups utilize vSphere tags in combination with vSphere storage policy based management to enable automated policy based protection for virtual machines. Storage policy-based management enables vSphere administrators to automate the provisioning and management of virtual machines storage to meet requirements like performance, availability and protection. vSphere tags allow for the ability to attach metadata to vSphere inventory, in this case datastores, which makes these objects more sortable, searchable and possible to associate with storage policies. 

 Here is how tags and storage-policy based management are used together with storage policy-based protection groups: 

• A tag is created and associated with all the datastores in each desired protection group 
• A tag based storage policy is created for each protection group utilizing the tag 
• A storage policy-based protection group is created and associated with the storage policy 

When any virtual machine, new or existing, is associated with that policy and placed on the replicated datastore, Site Recovery Manager protection is automatic. If a virtual machine is disassociated from that policy and/or moved off the datastore it is automatically unprotected. The same happens for datastores and the virtual machines on them. Leveraging storage profiles to identify protected resources saves time and reduces cost and complexity by eliminating the previously manual operations required to protect and unprotect VMs, and to add and remove datastores from protection groups.

Streched Storage Support & Orchestrated vMotion
Prior to Site Recovery Manager 6.1 customers had to make a choice between using Site Recovery Manager or vSphere Metro Storage Clusters/Stretched Storage to provide a multisite solution that was optimized for either site mobility or disaster recovery without being able to attain the benefits of both solutions simultaneously. Site Recovery Manager 6.1 now supports using cross-vCenter vMotion in combination with stretched storage, thereby combining the benefits of Site Recovery Manager with the advantages of stretched storage.

Graphic thanks to VMware

The integration of stretched storage with Site Recovery Manager 6.1 allows customers to achieve what was previously only possible with vSphere Metro Storage Clusters: 
• Planned maintenance downtime avoidance – Orchestrated cross-site vMotion and recovery plans allow for workload migration transparent to app owners or end users 
• Zero-downtime disaster avoidance – Utilizing the ability to live migrate workloads using cross-site vMotion and the planned migration workflow in Site Recovery Manager 6.1, customers can avoid downtime instead of recovering from it

Enhanced Integration with NSX

Graphic thanks to VMware

Networking is typically one of the more complex and cumbersome aspects of a disaster recovery plan. Ensuring that the proper networks, firewall rules and routing are configured correctly and available can quite challenging. Making an isolated test network with all the same capabilities can be even more so. Additionally, solutions like cross-vCenter vMotion require a stretched layer-2 network which can create even more difficulty. NSX 6.2 has a number of new features which enhance Site Recovery Manager. This means that organizations can now use NSX and Site Recovery Manager to simplify the creation, testing and execution of recovery plans as well as accelerate recovery times. NSX 6.2 supports creating “Universal Logical Switches”, which allow for the creation of layer-2 networks that span vCenter boundaries. This means that when utilizing Universal Logical Switches with NSX there will be a virtual port group at both the protected and recovery site that connect to the same layer-2 network. 

SRM Air
SRM Air is a software-as-a-service offering from VMware, which brings the management and automation benefits of Site Recovery Manager to VMware vCloud Air. SRM Air is fully integrated with vCloud Air Disaster Recovery to provide self-service protection and centralized recovery plans for orchestrated migration, failover, and fail-back between on-premises data centers and vCloud Air. 

Graphic thanks to VMware

For More Info:-
https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2015/09/02/introduction-to-vmware-site-recovery-manager-air/
https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/SRM/vmware-site-recovery-manager-whats-new.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEK5LfS-waE