Chapter 1. Introduction to Site Recovery Manager

Before I embark on the book proper I want to outline some of the new features in SRM. This will be of particular interest to previous users, as well as to new adopters, as they can see how far the product has come since the previous release. I also want to talk about what life was like before SRM was developed. As with all forms of automation, it’s sometimes difficult to see the benefits of a technology if you have not experienced what life was like before its onset. I also want at this stage to make it clear what SRM is capable of and what its technical remit is. It’s not uncommon for VMware customers to look at other technologies such as vMotion and Fault Tolerance (FT) and attempt to construct a disaster recovery (DR) use case around them. While that is entirely plausible, care must be taken to build solutions that use technologies in ways that have not been tested or are not supported by VMware.