Replication and vmware Storage Policies

[bhagen]

Let's say that vm1 on production cluster 1 has a vmware storage policy called "1".

Let's also say that dr cluster 1, in a different geo location, is identical in all ways to production cluster 1...hardware, software, policies, etc.

If I use VBR to replicate vm1 to dr cluster 1, what storage policy will be applied?

If the answer is "1", then is there a way to automatically change the storage policy when vm1 is replicated to dr cluster 1?

So:
prod cluster 1, vm1, prod cluster storage policy 1 >>replicated to>> dr cluster 1, vm1, dr cluster storage policy 2

?

[HannesK]

Hello,
storage policies cannot be set in the replication job. We show storage policies in the datastore selection of the replication job, but they cannot be selected there.

The assignment of storage policies is done on the VMware side.

Best regards,
Hannes

[bhagen]

Ok; so this is a vmware behavior, nothing to do with Veeam. Good to know; I'll open a ticket with them.

FWIW, and just in case others end up here because of a search, what I'm generally seeing is that when the prod vm has "prod cluster storage policy 1" set for the entire vm (not per disk), the replica has "configure per disk" set, the "vm home" object policy is set to "dr cluster storage policy 1" as expected, but "hard disk 1 / 2 / etc." are all set as "dr datastore default policy" (which is different than the policy that's set on the prod vm).

What brought it up is that we recently had a "component utilization 100%" issue on our DR cluster. But we had 50TB free on the 225TB vsan datastore! The problem was that the storage policies on the replica vms (on the DR cluster) were different than the policies of the prod vms. The fix was two-fold: first, I found a ridiculously large replica on the DR cluster (450TB instead of the 23TB that it should have been!). I deleted it directly from the datastore, and that still didn't fix the issue. Then I changed the storage policy of several of the largest replicas on the DR stack, and that brought the component usage down.

Again, this sounds like a vmware issue, so I'll work with them on a solution. For now, i've configured the "default datastore" storage policy on the DR cluster to be the same as the "prod cluster policy 1" used on the majority of our prod vms.

[bhagen]

Actually, this *is* specified in the Veeam job!

Create a new replication job or CDP policy. In the "Destination" step, the last field is Datastore. I literally never clicked "choose" because it always populated the correct vsan datastore. Well, if I click "choose", I can choose the storage policy that I want the replica to use.

This is not mentioned in the user guide. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

But now that I see it in practice, it's pretty obvious...it shows "DrVsanDatastore (vSAN Default Storage Policy)" (wish I could upload a screenshot).

[HannesK]

oh thanks - I somehow missed that. Sorry for that.

I add screenshots with snipboard.io and the img tag (full editor of the forum)

[bhagen]

That would be great; thanks @hannesk...and thanks for the snipboard.io tip!

BTW, I just created Case # 05315954, because now that I've found this option and set it, the resulting replicas don't get the storage policy that I set in the job! In fact, there doesn't seem to be any pattern to what storage policy the resulting replica vms end up with. Some have the "configure per disk" option checked, some don't. Some get the "vSAN Default Storage Policy"; some get one of the other available policies. The one constant is that *none* of the replicas get the policy that is set in the job.

I first talked to vmware about it, but they think it's a Veeam issue, so we'll see what the Veeam engineers have to say.

[HannesK]

Hello,
the user guide is correct. If you chose the storage policy, then the OK button is greyed out. QA confirmed that this is correct behavior when I asked about adopting the user guide.



So my initial answer was correct. There is no setting on our side to define the storage policy. That needs to be done on the VMware side.

Best regards,
Hannes

[bhagen]

Did you click on the "dropdown" arrow? I can choose any of the storage policies in the destination cluster, and it does in fact show in () what storage policy I choose:



But no matter what policy I choose, the policy on the resulting replica vm is different than what I chose.

Again, support is working on it.

(Thanks for the snipboard.io suggestion!)

[HannesK]

you selected the datastore - not the policy The storage policy cannot be selected.

The policies shown there is just grouping things together. In the end it's a selection of datastores and not storage policies.

it does not matter whether one selects the datastore from a named storage policy section or from the default storage policy for example

[bhagen]

Hmm. Ok, then to be clear: even though the policy name in () changes when you choose a different policy, that doesn't determine what policy the replicated vm will get.





I guess it's back to vmware support to try and figure out what determines what policy the replica gets.