SRM with Platform Services Controller High Availability (PSC HA)

[martinco-cae]

Hi,

I am looking to understand if SRM 6.5.x supports Platform Services Controller High Availability (PSC HA)? (VMware Knowledge Base)

I am deploying vCenter Server High Availability (VCHA) clusters with PSC HA using F5 LTM Load Balancers, but I am not 100% sure if SRM supports it?

I have attached a block diagram of my proposed final setup. There will be two VCHA clusters and two PSC's per SSO site, with 2 sites in the SSO domain. All vCenter Servers will be federated using Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM). Only 1 VCHA cluster in each SSO site will be using SRM to protect/recover it's workloads.

All vCenters & PSC's will be running version 6.5 update 1.

The PSC's will been deployed in sequence 1->2->3->4 and a final manual PSC replication agreement will be created between PSC 4 and PSC 1, to create a ring topology.

If I cannot use PSC HA with SRM:

1. can I still use it for the workload VCHA cluster?
2. which PSC's should I directly configure SRM to use?

Any advice or gotchas you can point out will be appreciated.

Cheers,

M

[martinco-cae]

I had rather hoped that someone would have commented by now!.

Does anyone from VMware actually contribute to this community?

#frustrated

Martin

[Cato Grace]

SRM 6.5 works with vCenter HA. It is not supported with PSC HA.

[martinco-cae]

Thank you @gs_khalsa

I appreciate you probably cannot reveal roadmap or timeframes, but are we likely to have a future release of SRM that will support PSC HA?

Cheers,

Martin

[Cato Grace]

The best I can say is that it is something we are working on and it is a feature we'd like to provide. I can't comment on when or if it will actually be available.

[martinco-cae]

Hello again...

With the launch of vSphere 6.7 and SRM 8.1, has there been any additional support for external PSCHA with SRM?

Should those of us using external PSCHA with load balancers, consider a re-architecture back to using embedded PSC's (now that they allow ELM in vSphere 6.7) and use vCenter HA to obtain a better level of PSCHA with SRM?

The lack of support for PSCHA on SRM needs to be resolved one way or the other. I can have a highly available vCenter configuration but my 1-to-1 relationship between SRM and a single external PSC remains a single point of failure.

Thanks

M

[simtr]

I was looking to apply same design in our environment, PSC HA (load balancer) , VC HA when I came across this thread. I logged a call with VMware support and they advised that PSC HA is supported with SRM. Our VC's and PSC's are at 6.5 u2 and SRM version 6.5.1.1.

They pointed me to these two KB's and advised to make sure ports are opened.

Reference :
Supported and deprecated topologies for VMware vSphere 6.5 https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147672
Network ports for Site Recovery Manager 6.5  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147112

[Cato Grace]

As far as I know, GSS is mistaken. The first KB is talking about topologies for vSphere, not SRM. SRM is supported with VC HA not with PSC HA/LB.

[shainsha]

Hi gs_khalsa,

What will happen if I install SRM6.5 and pointing to PSC-HA-VIP platform service controller? Please let me know the impact because I have already installed vSphere 6.5U1 with PSC-HA-VIP and srm6.5 also.

Thanks & Regards,

Shahul

[Cato Grace]

As far as I know SRM isn't supported working with PSC behind a load-balancer. It may work as long as it is talking to the same PSC but if it switches to the other one it won't.