This part of the lab is presented as a Hands-on Labs Interactive Simulation. This will allow you to experience steps which are too time-consuming or resource intensive to do live in the lab environment. In this simulation, you can use the software interface as if you are interacting with a live environment.

The orange boxes show where to click, and the left and right arrow keys can also be used to move through the simulation in either direction.

Setup Disaster Recovery Protection for a VM

1. Click on HCX plugin on the vSphere Web Client at Site A.
2. Click on the dropdown arrow under Site Pairings.

Before we do a VM protection, we want to make sure we have site pairing between the source and destination sites.

1. Click on Network Extension.
2. Click on Port group VM Network, you will see the Status "Extension complete" stating that we have successfully extended the L2 Network stretch from Module 1. 

Hosts and Clusters

1. Click on Home.
2. Click on Hosts and Clusters.
3. Click on Actions to perform action on the VM core A.
4. Click on Protect to the Cloud under Hybridity Actions.

VM Replication Details

1. Click on "(Specify Destination Container)".
2. Click and select destination container as RegionB01-Comp01.
3. Click on "Select Destination".
4. Click on "(Mandatory:Storage)"
5. Click and select RegionB01-ISCSI01-COMP01.
6. Click on Select.
7. Click on RPO.
8. Click and select 15 minutes. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident. You can set the range between 5mins - 1 day.
9. Click and select Snapshots interval.
10. Click and select 1 hour.
11. Click on network mapping for VM Network.
12. Click and select L2E_VM_Network-0-d322b019--1922760822.
13. Click on Next. Verify the details.
14. Click on Finish.

Go to HCX Plugin

1. Click on Home.
2. Click on HCX.

Go to Disaster Recovery

1. Click on Disaster Recovery tab in the HCX configuration pane.
2. Notice the information displayed on this panel. Local VMs show the following:
   1. Total number of VMs that are bring protected out of the total number of VMs in the local site.
   2. The number of protected VMs that have been tested so far.
3. Remote VMs show the following:
   1. The number of VMs that the local site is protecting for the remote site.
   2. The number of these protected VMs that have been tested so far.
   3. Progress shows how many VMs are in the following state:
      1. Configuring
      2. Syncing
      3. Recovering
      4. Testing
      5. Cleaning

Observe the Detailed Status showing the configuration status. This process takes a few minutes.

DR Protection is complete

1. When the status is “Completed protect” the protection is complete.
2. VM is now in Active state- DR Protection is active for this particular VM. This is represented by the green shield.
3. The yellow triangle means that this active VM has not been tested.
4. Green circle represents a powered-on VM.
5. Direction of the arrow shows the direction of protection. In this case the VM is protected on the remote site.

Verify DR protection at Site 

1. Click on Home.
2. Click on Tasks. Verify "Enable replication of virtual machine" is completed.

Let's look at Site B

1. Click on the tab for vSphere Web Client for Site B.
2. Click on Home.
3. Click on Tasks. Verify the task "Create virtual disk" is complete.

Congratulations! You have enabled Disaster Recovery Protection for the VM. In the next exercise we will test this protection. 

Testing the Disaster Recovery Protection for the Protected VM

In this lesson, we will learn how to run the Test recovery and Test cleanup for the protected VM.

1. Click on the tab for VMware HCX.
2. Under the Disaster Recovery tab you will see information regarding local and remote VMs.
3. Local VMs here mean the VMs that are local to the Remote site.
4. Remote VMs are the VMs that are remote to the Remote site (on-premises).
5. The arrow shows DR protection that is incoming to the Remote site.

VM Disaster Recovery options

1. Click on the 3 dots next to the protected VM, this will show the operations. The operations available to you are:
   1. Recover VM (To recover a VM immediately)
   2. Test Recover VM (Testing the protected VM on the recovery site to ensure its integrity/state)
   3. Test Recover Cleanup (Removes the test VM)
   4. Reverse (Change direction of replication)
   5. Pause (in the event there is a planned event such as a maintenance window, this option helps avoiding conflicts of replicating at that point of time)
   6. Resume (resume the protection)
   7. Remove (remove the protection plan)
   8. Sync Now (force replication to trigger now)
   9. Run a Test Recovery 
2. Click on "Test Recover VM".   Configure Test Recovery

Review the settings

1. Click and expand the list for Target network.
2. Click on the VM Network.
3. Click on Test.

Test Recovery in Progress

In the Detailed Status you will see "Testing: Recovery in Progress"

DR Test Recovery Complete

Detailed Status of the VM shows "Completed testRecover". Number of tested VMs under Remote VMs has changed. It now shows 1 of 1 VM tested. Instead of the yellow triangle, there now is a certificate icon.

VM Replication Details

1. Click on the VM, expanding on gives you more information on the Replication Status, Sites, History, Snapshots etc.

Verify Test Recovery on Site B

1. Click on the browser tab for vSphere Web Client for site B.
2. Click on Tasks.
3. Click the refresh button at the top. Verify Register virtual machine task is completed.
4. Click on Hosts and Clusters tab.
5. Click on the VM "Core A" verify it's registered and powered on.

Start DR Test Cleanup

1. Click on the browser tab for HCX manager.
2. Click on the 3 dots next to the VM.
3. Click on "Test Recover Cleanup".
4. Click on Cleanup.

DR Test Cleanup in progress

The Status reads Test Cleaning and then Status changes to Completed testCleanup.

Verify VM is unregistered at Site B

1. Click the tab for vSphere Web Client for Site B.     

Verify DR Test Cleanup Task is completed on Site B

1. Click on the Home icon.
2. Click on Tasks.

Verify the Unregister and Power off tasks for VM core-A at Site B is Completed.

Congratulations, you have successfully tested an actively DR Protected VM.

 Simulate, Recover and Reverse Replicate from a Disaster for the Protected VM

1. Click on the browser tab for vSphere Web Client for Site A.
2. Click on "Hosts and Clusters"
3. Click on the vcsa-01a,.ocrp.local
4. Click on the VM core-A.
5. Click on Actions.
6. Click on Power drop down.
7. Click on Power off.
8. Click on Yes to confirm the Power Off.

Configure Recovery of VM from HCX Cloud Portal

1. Click on the browser tab for HCX Manager.
2. Click on the 3 dots.
3. Click on the Recover VM.
4. Click on the Recover.

Recovery in Progress

Detailed Status shows Recovering: Recovery in Progress. Recovery is Complete on the Remote Site

The VM has successfully Completed Recover. This is denoted by the dark grey shield icon.

Confirm core-A VM is running at Site B

1. Click on the second browser tab for the Site B vSphere Web Client.
2. Click on Hosts and Clusters.
3. Click on the VM core-A, verify core-A is running.

Congratulations, you have successfully recovered the VM on the remote site after a disaster!

Go back to the HCX Plugin at Site A

1. Click on the first tab for Site A vSphere Web Client.
2. Click on Home.
3. Click on HCX.

View replication status. You will notice the replication status as Completed Recover.

Start Reverse Replication of VM

1. Click on Disaster Recovery.
2. Click on the 3 dots next to the VM, to get the options for the VM.
3. Click on Reverse...

Configure Reverse Replication

1. Click on Reverse.

Reverse Replication is scheduled

 In the Detailed Status notice the reverse replication is in "Reverse Protecting mode".

It will take a few minutes for the reverse replication to complete. At the end of the configuration the Detailed status is "Completed reverse". The arrow represents reverse replication.

Congratulations! You have successfully simulated a disaster, recovered and reverse replicated protection on a VM with HCX!

To return to the lab, click the link in the top right corner or close this browser tab.