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ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 10.3

Protect using host cluster protection

Contributors netapp-jani
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ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere manages the protection of host clusters. All the datastores belonging to the selected SVM and mounted on one or more hosts of the cluster are protected under a host cluster.

Before you begin

Ensure the following prerequisites are met:

  • The host cluster has datastores only from one SVM.

  • Datastore mounted on the host cluster should not be mounted on any host outside of the cluster.

  • All Datastores mounted on the host cluster must be VMFS datastores with iSCSI/FC protocol. vVols, NFS, or VMFS datastores with NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP protocols are not supported.

  • FlexVol/LUN forming datastores mounted on the host cluster should not be part of any existing consistency group (CG).

  • FlexVol/LUN forming datastores mounted on the host cluster should not be part of any existing SnapMirror relationship.

  • The host cluster should have at least one datastore.

Steps

  1. Log in to the vSphere client using https://<vcenterip>/<ui>

  2. Right-click a host cluster and select NetApp ONTAP tools > Protect Cluster.

  3. In the protect cluster window, the datastore type and source storage virtual machine (VM) details are auto populated. Select the datastores link to view the protected datastores.

  4. Enter the consistency group name.

  5. Select Add Relationship.

  6. In the Add SnapMirror Relationship window, select the Target storage VM and the Policy type.

    The policy type can be Asynchronous or AutomatedFailOverDuplex.

    When you add the SnapMirror relationship as an AutomatedFailOverDuplex type policy, you must add the target storage VM as storage backend to the same vCenter where ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere is deployed.

    In the AutomatedFailOverDuplex policy type, there are uniform and non-uniform host configurations. When you select the uniform host configuration toggle button, the host initiator group configuration is implicitly replicated on the target site. For details, refer to Key concepts and terms.

  7. If you choose to have a non-uniform host configuration, select the host access (source/target) for each host inside that cluster.

  8. Select Add.

  9. In the Protect cluster window, you cannot edit the protected cluster during the create operation. You can delete and add protection again. During the Modify host cluster protection operation, the edit option is available. You can edit or delete the relationships using the ellipsis menu options.

  10. Select the Protect button.

    A vCenter task is created with job ID details, and its progress is shown in the recent tasks panel. This is an asynchronous task; the user interface shows only the request submission status and does not wait for the task to be completed.

  11. To view the protected host clusters, navigate to NetApp ONTAP tools > Protection > Host cluster relationships.