• This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated June 10, 2016 by Conor M.

Upgrading VMs – Zerto failback plan – use Pause?

  • Conor M
    June 10, 2016 02:42:14 PM

    Hi there,

    We are using Zerto 3.5 u4 to replicate VMs between two sites.

    We are upgrading our VMs and need to come up with a failback plan using Zerto. The upgrade of the Virtual machines will take between 8 and 24 hours and we would like to be able to use Zerto to restore the VMs to a point before the upgrade work began.

    At the moment the VPGs have a journal history setting of 4 hours. Our SAN is a bit tight for space so I am worried about increasing the Journal history to 24 hours.

    Instead I was thinking we could Pause the VPGs while the upgrade work is being carried out and when it is complete un-Pause. Is this the correct way to use the Pause function. If a VPG has a journal history of 4 hours and we pause it for 24 hours can we restore to a point 24 hours ago?

    Alternatively I have been  looking into the Offsite Backup feature. I have successfully added a backup repository however when I try to add the Backup properties to the VPG, I cannot choose the Repository, None is the only option. Is this a licensing limitation?

    Thanks

     

    Joshua S
    June 10, 2016 03:01:39 PM

    Hey!

    In an ideal world I’d recommend either extending your journal to cover the time frame required, or take an offsite clone (not offsite backup) of the VMs so you have a gold copy to restore to no matter what, but if all goes well the replication is up to date from the app upgrades.

    However, due to your space constraints then I think your use of the pause feature is a good solution. If you pause a VPG will maintain the last checkpoint until it is un-paused. So as long as you don’t unpause before you are sure the upgrade was successful then this is a good solution.

    As for the offsite backup this is not licensed separately so there must be something wrong with the config. Make sure the repository is configured on the target site ZVM, as the backup is taken from the replica data. Thanks,

    Joshua

     

     

    Conor M
    June 10, 2016 03:12:10 PM

    Many thanks for the quick reply Joshua. I’ll look in to the clone option and see about getting that offsite backup working.

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