GeoEvent and VMware Replication

[AdamRepsher]

Hello Everyone,

I am wondering if anyone else has any problems or experience with GeoEvent Extension and VMware replication.  Specifically, turning off a VM at one physical location and turning it back on in another.  I have not read any documentation specific to VMware compatibility with GeoEvent Extension.  I am also aware that there is a slicker way to do this in VMware such as VMotion over WAN, but we don't have the bandwidth to do that yet.

In our current setup, there are a number of VMs that are replicated to an alternate operations center.  If the primary location goes dark, we can spin up those VMs at the alternate location.  We have manually done this to the GeoEvent VM and have found one issue.  When I originally installed this VM, I configured GeoEvent with its local AGS as the machine name instead of "default".  I set up all of my FS and Streaming outputs to this "machine named" registered AGS.  Later on, one of the Esri GeoEvent guys added that "default" registered AGS for me.  When the replicated VM was turned on at the alternate location, all of my FS and Streaming outputs were re-configured to use the "default" AGS connection.  They showed as working in the GEManager, but no data was shown flowing.

To correct:

1. I opened the output
2. Changed the ArcGIS Server Connection from "default" to my named server connection
3. Changed the Name of the output.
4. Saved the output.

Of note, just changing the AGS Connection and saving did not work.

If anyone has any other experience with this type of setup, or with VMotion over WAN, I would like to hear about your experience.

Thanks,

--Adam

[RJSunderman]

Hello Adam -

I've received some information on your question I can share. I don't have any first-hand experience with VMware replication, but there are some architecture consultants within Esri Professional Services who do. Your customer service representative could help put together a consulting engagement, if that is something you would like to pursue. Please reach-out to me off-forum and I'll provide you with some names for consultants with experience in this area.

Speaking generally, VMotion is something that you would want to integrate within the data center. VMware vCenter's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is used to move your VMs to the Disaster Recovery site and spin them up. VMotion can create the VMs and SRM can then move these VMs to DR to establish a similar enterprise GIS operational environment. The Esri architecture consultants who responded to me have some documentation for implementing DR, but a lot of the consulting is identifying exactly what you are trying to accomplish.

Here are some considerations you may need to address:

• Data currency and ArcGIS Server site configuration.
  
  If you have a primary data center it is relatively easy to maintain a DR site at same operational level with a slightly different server configuration. For example, N+1 fault-tolerant servers are not normally deployed within a disaster recovery site. With ArcGIS Server deployments, changes made to your primary data center can be replicated to your DR.  For the most part this is a static set of operations and DR can take advantage of primary data center licensing.

• Maintaining your Desktop operational environment.
  
  This can be a challenge when the data being used is consistently changing. For example, if analysts need the ability to continue data editing and service publication tasks from where they were when the primary site went down, snapshots or replication of changes must also be moved to DR. This can be done during data center operations, but it requires additional licensing.

• Portal for ArcGIS is another dynamic that needs to be incorporated into the VMotion and SRM environment. You'll have to implement monitoring for facility failure and either manually or automatically switch the Portal configuration to reroute requests from the primary data center to the DR data center.

Hope this information helps -

RJ