In last post of this series we had a look at various dashboards from where we can monitor zerto. Also we learned how to create custom dashboards as per requirement to view very specific details.

In this post we will learn about some advance configuration settings that we can do with zerto. These advance settings are skipped while performing an express install.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

5: Performing Test Failover

6: Move VPG from Protection Site to Recovery Site

7: Performing Live Failover

8: Checkpoint Tagging

9: Monitoring VPG

Lets get started.

1: To configure advance settings, login to ZVM interface and from top right corner select “Site Settings”

2: Cloud Settings: If you have a vCloud Director based cloud in your on-prem or if you have a vcloud based cloud subscription, then you can configure the settings here so that you can use zerto to replicate your workloads on a vCD based cloud.… Read More

In last post of this series, we learnt how to use tags for manually created checkpoint. In this post we will explore zerto dashboards to see ow a VPG can be monitored.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

5: Performing Test Failover

6: Move VPG from Protection Site to Recovery Site

7: Performing Live Failover

8: Checkpoint Tagging

Being a zerto administrator, we should be familiar with various screens/dashboards that are available in zerto for monitoring stuffs perioidically or when something went wrong. Lets explore the various screens of zerto and checkout what info is available where.

1: Home dashboard: This is the very first screen which comes up when you login to ZVM interface.… Read More

While working with Zerto in my lab, I noticed one weird thing that Zrto plugin was not automatically integrated with vSphere Web Client. Same plugin was visible in vSphere thick client though. That’s why I said its a bit weird as VMware wants to get rid of C# client and not much development is being done for it.

All new features of VMware is not only available in Web Client and now I am used of it. So I was looking for if there is any way to enable the plugin in Web Client and then I came across this article by virtubytes. Although the article is written for vSphere 6.5, but the solution worked in vSphere 6.0 as well.

Here are the steps for enabling zerto plugin in Web Client.

1: SSH to vCenter in question and enable bash shell.

… Read More

In last post of this series, we discussed about scenarios where we can perform live failover and then we actually tested the same in lab. In this post we will learn about tagging checkpoints.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

5: Performing Test Failover

6: Move VPG from Protection Site to Recovery Site

7: Performing Live Failover

We discussed a little bit about checkpoints in previous posts of this series and we saw zerto automatically creates checkpoints based on your RPO settings. Checkpoints allows a VM to be restored/recovered to a specific time. Any changes beyond the selected checkpoint will not be included in the recovered VM’s. These checkpoints are crash consistent and written to the journals by ZVM.… Read More

In last post of this series, we learnt how to move VPG from protected site to recovery site in the event of when some maintenance activity needs to be prformed on protected site. In this post we will learn to live failover VM’s to recovery site. 

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

5: Performing Test Failover

6: Move VPG from Protection Site to Recovery Site

Before performing live failover in lab, lets understand some of the basics first.

Live failover is performed in the event of either disaster has occurred on your protected site or you want to simulate the disaster so that you can test the reliability of the DR solution you are using.… Read More

In last post of this series we learnt how to test failover a VM from protected site to recovery site. We also had a look on series of events that are triggered when a test failover is initiated. At last we learnt how to stop (test cleanup) a failover.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

5: Performing Test Failover

In this post we will learn about how to move a VPG from one site to another. But before doing this lets understands what happens when a move VPG operation is performed. The series of events which takes place can be summarized as:

1: VMs contained in a VPG are moved from protection site to recovery site.… Read More

In last post of this series, we learned about role of VPG.  Also we created a test VPG and saw initial data synch happening between the protected and recovery site. In this post we will learn how to perform test failover.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

4: Creating Virtual Protection Group

In a DR environment its always considered as a best practice to periodically perform test failovers to ensure that VM’s are replicating fine and are recoverable at the recovery site. 

Failover Test is completely non-disruptive and there is no impact on production workloads as part of testing. When test failover is performed, VMDK are provisioned using journal history. 

Typically this is the workflow for test failover.… Read More

In last post of this series, we deployed VRA’s on each Esxi host and paired the protected and recovery site. In this post we will learn about Zerto Virtual Protection Group (VPG).

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

3: Installing Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

What is Zerto Virtual Protection Group?

Virtual Protection Group enables virtual machines to be grouped together in same consistency group. Meaning, you can group together those virtual machines which you want to recover together in case of disaster or during test failover. 

For example if you have a 3-tier VM which comprises of a DB server, An application server and a web server, then you might need to recover all 3 of them at the same time at the protected site. … Read More

In last post of this series we deployed ZVM. In this post we will deploy the VRA appliance and will see how to pair protected and recovery sites.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Zerto Architecture and Components

2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

VRA is a debian based VM and it is the replication engine that manages the changed blocks for replication and the compression of the data. VRA mirrors protected VMs I/O operations to the recovery site. The OVF template for VRA is embedded into ZVM and VRA’s can only be deployed from within ZVM interface.

Lets dive into lab now and deploy few VRA’s.

1: Login to ZVM portal and navigate to SETUP tab and click on NEW VRA.

2: Select the host on which you want to deploy VRA.… Read More

In last post of this series, we discussed about architecture and components of Zerto and we talked about few roles and responsibilities that zerto virtual manager (ZVM) is accountable for. In this post we will learn how to deploy and do basic configuration of ZVM.

Before we move ahead, lets quickly recap what exactly ZVM is responsible for. The main function of ZVM are:

• It  manages everything required for replication between the protected and recovery site. The actual replication of data is done by VRA though.
• It interacts with vCenter Server or SCVMM to get the inventory of VM’s, disk size, network settings and host details etc.
• It monitors changes in VMware environment and responds to that changes, for example, when a protected VM is migrated from one host to another, ZVM intercepts this change and updates this info in the ZVM portal.

Lab Design

Below diagram (not a great one) shows high level overview of components used in my lab.… Read More