Disaster recovery for virtual machines

Disaster Recovery of virtual machines involves creating regular backups, maintaining up-to-date replicas, and implementing robust failover mechanisms. Implementing failover mechanisms ensures high availability and minimizes potential data loss, reducing downtime, and ensuring long-term resilience against disasters.

1. Set up Metro-DR configuration between two clusters.
   For the procedure to set up, see Configuring Metro-DR set up.
2. Enable disaster recovery protection for the virtual machine.
   For the procedure to enable or enroll virtual machines for disaster protection, see Enabling and disabling applications for Metro-DR. After the application is enrolled for disaster recovery, go the virtual machine Overview tab page and check whether the Metro status is synchronized in the Disaster recovery section. Go to the Replicated applications page to see the virtual machine with details of the primary and partner cluster.
3. From the IBM Fusion HCI System user interface of the partner cluster, failover virtual machines.
   Important: As a prerequisite for virtual machine failover, shut down the virtual machine on the primary cluster.

   1. In the Red Hat® OpenShift® console of the partner cluster, go to Virtualization > VirtualMachines.
   2. Search for the virtual machine and from the ellipsis overflow menu, select Stop.

   Before you delete a virtual machine, make sure to copy the YAML file so you can redeploy the virtual machine using that at a failover site. If you stopped the virtual machine before copying the YAML, restart it after the deployment.

   For the procedure to failover, see Failover applications from site 1 to site 2.
4. After the failover is complete, remove the original virtual machine from the primary cluster.
   1. Go to the Red Hat OpenShift console of the original virtual machine on the primary cluster.
   2. Go to Virtualization > Virtual Machines.
   3. Search for the and from the ellipsis overflow menu, select Delete.
   4. In the Delete VirtualMachine window, click Delete.
   5. Select the resources of the virtual machine and click Delete.
5. Deploy the virtual machine on the current primary cluster.
   1. In the virtualMachines page of the Open shift console, click create virtual machine and select the option with YAML.
   2. Copy paste the YAML file copied from the original cluster.
      The status of the newly deployed virtual machine is in Running state.
   3. To validate, do the following steps:
      1. Go to Storage PersistenVolumeClaims and check whether the virtual machine is operational. Also, check whether the used capacity of the persistentvolumeclaim is correct.
      2. Alternatively, check the Used (GiB) capacity column value of the virtual machine in the Applications page of IBM Fusion HCI System user interface.

      Note: If a virtual machine is created using Red Hat template catalogs, then you can also create Virtual Machine using Clone PVC option. For the procedure to clone, see Creating a virtual machine by using Clone PVC.
6. Initiate the planned failback.
   1. Stop the virtual machine in the current primary cluster.
   2. Go to the the IBM Fusion HCI System user interface of the partner cluster and failover the virtual machine.
      For the procedure to The primary cluster reverts to the original primary where the virtual machine was set up originally.
   3. Remove the virtual machine from the current primary cluster.
7. Deploy the virtual machine on the partner cluster or the original primary cluster.
   1. In the virtualMachines page of the Open shift console, click create virtual machine and select the option with YAML.
   2. Copy paste the YAML file copied from the original cluster.
      The status of the newly deployed virtual machine is in Running state.
   3. To validate, do the following steps:
      1. Go to Storage PersistenVolumeClaims and check whether the virtual machine is operational. Also, check whether the used capacity of the persistentvolumeclaim is correct.
      2. Alternatively, check the Used (GiB) capacity column value of the virtual machine in the Applications page of IBM Fusion HCI System user interface.

      Note: If a virtual machine is created using Red Hat template catalogs, then you can also create Virtual Machine using Clone PVC option. For the procedure to clone, see Creating a virtual machine by using Clone PVC.