EMC Failback Plugin for Celerra Replicator

One of the pains around VMware SRM that has existed for quite a while now is the lack of failback functionality.  SRM does a great job of failing us over to another site in an automated fashion.  But what happens after disaster is over?  What if you were just testing your DR facility and now you want to failback?  Luckily, EMC has taken the initiative to provide a solution for many of their replication products.  I’ve personally implemented EMC Failback Plugins for Celerra Replicator and Recoverpoint. In this post I’m covering the failback plugin for Celerra Replicator. 

Setting up the plugin is a snap if you know the requirements.  I blindly jumped in to the install and missed one very important thing… The plugin only supports 32-bit editions of Windows.  I was running vSphere 4.1 on 64bit vcenter when first tried to install the pluing on the vcenter server. The plugin menu immediately started showing errors and there was no way to actually enable the plugin.

Next step was to install on a 32-bit server and point to the vcenter server that I wanted to utilize the plugin on.  Again I started seeing immediate results in the plugin window, however, this time no errors! The configuration was quick and painless.  I had to enter login creds to the celerra and vcenter server of both the protected site and the failover site.  You are then given the option to scan for any failed over datastores.  You get a few granular failback options as well.  Mainly the ability to pick and choose which datastores you want to failback and whether or not to power on the vm again after failback.  I’m including a few screenshots below.