Recover Point For VMs - APPLICATION CONSISTENCY WITH KVSS

RecoverPoint for VMs protects a crucial database VM which requires application consistent point-in-time every day as part of SLA compliance.  We are going to see how to leverage the KVSS to create application consistent bookmarks.
Log into vSphere web client and navigate to Hosts and Clusters.
We have replicated Windows Web DB VM beforehand, and we locate it under the name Windows_FE.
Open the Console Window. Login to Windows_FE server. 
KVSS - KVSS is free utility which is bundled with every RP4VMs release, it allows to create application consistent bookmarks for Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange. As part of the KVSS installation, a VSS provider is installed which allows KVSS to quiesce the DB and send a bookmark creation request to RP4VMs.
Execute the KVSS_DB_Bookmark.bat script by double clicking on it. The script would create an application consistent bookmark called proddb_app_consistent for the MSSQL installed on this VM.
As you can see, KVSS ended successfully and an application consistent bookmark was created successfully as well.  Press any key at the command prompt and return to the vCenter Web Client.

Now, let's perform a test to see the IP configuration is changing on the replica VM. For that purpose, Click on the Test Copy button.

Select NY_Local under copy.  Leave the option to Power on copy VMs during testing enabled as we want the replica VM to power on automatically.
Click Next.

Select An image from the image list and click Next.
Scroll down until you see an application consistent bookmark and select it.  Click Next to continue.

Keep the default of Automatically create an isolated network for each consistency group per ESX.  Click Next to continue.

Click on Yes to enable image access. 
Once the Image Access Progress reaches 100% and the storage status is Logged Access, Image access has been enabled.  Also see that the accessed bookmark is indeed the application consistent bookmark we created using KVSS earlier.
Click Stop Testing to finish testing or Hide to close the wizard and checkout the DB status on the replica VM.

Click Yes to stop testing.
We successfully leveraged KVSS (a RP4VMs utility) to create an application-consistent bookmark of our MSSQL DB.
Creating application-consistent bookmarks:

KVSS bookmarks are created using the kvss.exe bookmark command.
The working folder for running KVSS commands is %SystemDriver%/EMCRecoverPointVSSProvider/

When using KVSS to apply bookmarks:

• Surround parameter values with quotation marks.
• You can use the vssadmin list writers command to obtain a list of registered writers on the host virtual machine.
• You can use the kvss.exe list command to display the components of each of the writers found using the vssadmin list writers command.
• You can run the kvss.exe set_credentials command once per Windows user to define the ip, user, and password. After doing so, you will not need to type these values again.
• If they are separated by a space, you can type multiple writers and groups simultaneously.
• Only the application on which KVSS is run is application consistent, and only when run on the same virtual machine. Best practice is to name the bookmark to contain both the name of the application and the virtual machine.
• Upgrade the vRPA clusters before upgrading KVSS. An older version of KVSS works with a vRPA cluster running a newer version of RecoverPoint for VMs. A newer version of KVSS does not work with a vRPA cluster running an older version of RecoverPoint for VMs.

The syntax is as follows:
kvss.exe bookmark
bookmark=bookmark_name
  writers=writer_name writer_name
  [groups=group_name group_name]
  [consolidation_policy=never|survive_daily|survive_weekly|
survive_monthly|always]
  [type=[FULL|COPY]]
[ip=RecoverPoint_cluster_management_ip_address]
  [user=RecoverPoint_username]
  [password=RecoverPoint password]
KVSS_DB_Bookmark.Bat:
C:\EMCRecoverPointVssProvider\kvss.exe bookmark bookmark=”YOUR_BOOKMARK_NAME” writers=”SqlServerWriter”
pause;
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CONCLUSION:
RecoverPoint for VMs offers the ultimate Virtual Machine protection using a completely virtualized solution that's storage agnostic and is managed using the RecoverPoint for VMs plugin for vCenter vSphere Web Client. RecoverPoint for VMs offers many supported topologies to meet various business requirements and allow users to protect VMs locally and/or remotely from within the vSphere client.

Recover Point for VMs–Enhanced Network Orchestration

In this post we will discuss Enhanced Network Orchestration for RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines.
It is essential to test your recovered VMs with a new IP configuration, to make sure there is full applicative flexibility to run with different IP settings on their DR site.  We are going to see how easy it is to configure RecoverPoint for VMs to automatically set the user-configured IP configuration on a replica VM.
Log into vSphere web client and navigate to Hosts and Clusters.
We have replicated Windows Web FrontEnd VM beforehand, checkout its IP configuration: 192.168.1.25 and DNS name: Win-FE.  Navigate to Configure and then RecoverPoint for VMs to see the current protection status

As you can see, the state is Protected and the transfer status is Active. This VM is being replicated by New-York vRPA cluster and the Consistency Group is Win_FE.  Win_FE is a super-important VM, therefore it is protected both locally in NY and remotely to Paris.

To configure the IP configuration of the replica VM, for that, navigate to the RecoverPoint for VMs plugin by clicking on the vCenter home button and then click on RecoverPoint for VMs.
Navigate to the Protection tab > Consistency Groups sub tab.
Expand the Win_FE Consistency Group and click on the replica copy Paris_Remote.  Then, click on the Edit VM Network Configurations button.

In the Copy Network Configuration screen, we are going to configure the IP settings of the replica VM.
For that purpose, expand Network Adapter 1 and click on Get Values From Production near the Network Adapter and Host Name fields in order to retrieve the IP configuration of the production VM.
Alternatively, scroll all the way to the bottom and click on Get All Values From Production to retrieve all different fields from the production VM.

For the test purpose, we will configure the IP address on the replica VM to be 192.168.1.125 and the hostname to be WIN-FE-REP.  To accomplish that, fill-in Win-FE-REP under Host Name and 192.168.1.125 under IP Address and when done, Click OK

Now, let's perform a test to see the IP configuration is changing on the replica VM. For that purpose, Click on the Test Copy button
The replica copy to test on is automatically selected, Click Next.

Keep the default selection of the latest image and click Next.

In order to test in a dedicated test network, we would like to leverage the VM Network. Select Use my dedicated network and then select VM Network from the drop down list.  Click Next to continue.

Click Yes to enable image access.  Click Continue.
Once the Image Access Progress reaches 100% and the storage status is Logged Access, Image access has been enabled.  Click Hide to close the wizard.

Now, let's see the IP configuration of the replica VM. For that purpose, navigate to Hosts and Clusters.

To check that the configured IP settings were applied to the replica VM, Navigate to Windows_FE.copy (replica VM) in Paris ESX cluster, click on the Summary tab and see that the new name is WIN-FE-REP and that the new IP address is 192.168.1.125 as configured in previous steps.
To check that there is proper connectivity to the replica VM, click on Start and then Run.
Type ping 192.168.1.125 and Click OK.

Finish Testing by Clicking Finish Testing Copy.

Click OK.  Click Continue.
This concludes the testing of Enhanced Network Orchestration for RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines.