Set Up Primary and DR Cohesity Clusters

1 February 2024

In SiteContinuity, a Cohesity cluster is designated as a site and mapped to a specific location to help with subsequent DR operations. For more details, see Sites.

Before setting up disaster recovery in SiteContinuity, identify:

  • Primary Cohesity clusters that will protect your applications. When setting up disaster recovery in SiteContinuity, you will need to add these clusters as primary sites.

  • Secondary Cohesity clusters to which you want to replicate the applications in the event of a disaster. These clusters will act as secondary sites, also known as DR sites. When setting up disaster recovery in SiteContinuity, you will need to add these clusters as DR sites.

After identifying the clusters, complete the following configurations in the Cohesity cluster:

Step Description

Step 1:Meet Requirements

Ensure your primary Cohesity cluster and DR Cohesity cluster meet the requirements for disaster recovery in SiteContinuity.

Step 2:Create Backup Admin

Create a Backup Admin who will only have access to the local Cohesity cluster and not Helios or SiteContinuity. A Backup Admin's privileges are restricted to setting up local Cohesity cluster, creating, modifying, deleting Protection Groups and policies, and deleting runs, among other protection tasks.

You will subsequently create a DR Admin (in Helios) with the privileges to perform any DR operation in SiteContinuity. For more details, see Persona-Based Approach.

To create a Backup Admin:

  1. In the local Cohesity cluster, create a custom role with Data Protection privilege.

  2. Add a local user and assign the newly created custom role.

As a Backup Admin, complete steps 3 to 5.

Step 3: Register VMware vCenter server as a source

Register separate VMware vCenter servers as a source with the primary and DR Cohesity cluster. For details on how to register a vCenter server, see Register or Edit a Hypervisor Source.

Step 4:Protect the VMs

In the primary Cohesity cluster, add the critical VMs to a Protection Group and start the protection runs. You need successful backups of the VMs in the primary Cohesity cluster to establish replication between the primary and DR Cohesity clusters. For details on how to set up protection of VMs in Cohesity clusters, see Add or Edit a Protection Group for Virtual Servers.

Step 5:Establish Replication

Set up replication between the primary and DR Cohesity clusters. For details on how to set up replication, see Create a Connection to the Remote Cohesity Cluster. Replication is successfully established when the Protection Group on the primary Cohesity cluster is actively capturing snapshots of VMs and replicating them to the DR or remote Cohesity cluster.