EnsureDR Quick Startup Guide for Cohesity
Ver:1.0 - 11/25/2021
EnsureDR is a software solution that makes sure your data recovery (DR) site works when you need it. By running automatically every few days, DR testing is performed and used to reveal issues that need to be addressed - keeping the business up to date with its DR state. EnsureDR supports DR solutions (data movers) such as Carbonite replication, Zerto, VMware SRM, Netapp, Veeam, Cohesity, Recover Point, Azure ASR, and more.
Documents description
In this quick startup guide, you will learn how to quickly set up the EnsureDR job to test VM's health check status using your data mover in your DR environment. For advanced features please refer to the full user guide. Please follow the instructions, and if you need additional help please contact support@ensuredr.com.
Prerequisites
To make EnsureDR works properly, there are a few prerequisites to set up in advance.
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Servers and Console |
One server with Windows 2016/2019 with 16 GB mem, 4 CPU, 250 GB disk, single NIC. EnsureDR management VM (EDRM) should be located on the DR location of a testing environment. The latest VMware VM tools must be installed on the EDRM server and assigned a static IP. The server must have only a single NIC. The correct time zone should be set for the machines. The server should be joined to a domain. |
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Credentials |
Domain account which is the local administrator on the EDRM server. VMware vCenter user which has administrator rights. |
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Cohesity |
To avoid any duplicate IPs in your environment, please validate that your Cohesity profile is properly configured with the test networking settings to run inside an isolated/bubble network on the DR site prior to starting the job from the EDRM. A dedicated name for the test profile is required for use in an isolated bubble network. When setting the name for the test profile within Cohesity Helios, ensure "DR test profile" is used. The failover will run only for the "DR test profile" profile and if it is not present, the failover process will fail. |
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Firewall |
Port 443 needs to be open from the main EnsureDR management server (EDRM) to the source and target Cohesity servers. Port 443 needs to be open from the main EnsureDR management server (EDRM) to the source and target VMware vCenter servers. Port 443 needs to be open from the client workstation to the EDRM server. SMTP port should be open for the reporting, from the EDRM server to the local mail server. Usually, the SMTP port number is 25 but can be different. Please ask your mail administrators for the correct port number. |
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Antivirus |
If you have antivirus software running inside the EnsureDR management server, add an exclusion for API.exe and EDRRunner.exe. |
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Reporting Mail |
SMTP mail service available for the EnsureDR server to send the report via mail such as local exchange or Office365/Gmail. |
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Supported Version |
Cohesity version 6 |
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Supported Browser |
Google Chrome |
Setup
Prepare a server VM with a clean install of Windows server 2016/2019 (as described in the prerequisites table).
EnsureDR manager setup
- Log on with the service account you created in advance as described in the prerequisite document.
- Run the EnsureDRSetup.exe file as an administrator on the server you created upfront.
- Choose your data mover type and set a domain user credential that has local administrator rights on the EDRM server.
- Set up the default location for the installation, accept the license, and then install the product.
- Wait until the installation is finished; which, depending on the environment and components, may take a few minutes to complete.
- Save provided link for future access (used in the steps below).
- When the installation is finished, restart the EDRM server.
Creating the first job
- Open the Google Chrome browser and navigate to the link you saved in the previous step
- A welcome message pops up in the browser, click on “I Am Ready”.
- Create a job in the next four simple steps
- Fill in the necessary information in the first step.
- Enter a job name
- VMware environment details for source and destination vCenter.
- Cohesity data mover details for source and destination hostname.
- Workflow user, domain user with elevated privileges on windows local servers, and Linux user with proper privileges on servers added to the job.
- On the second step, network configuration, press next.
- Relevant for advanced jobs only
- For the third step, EnsureDR will fetch data from your Cohesity data mover by collecting the Recovery Plans.
- Select the desired servers that you want to test, and right-click to move this server to the right panel job list.
- Finally, define the email address for a report recipient, schedule a time, and set up the job rerun frequency. Now you are ready to execute a job by clicking to "Save & Run" button.