Configure Disaster Recovery as a Service with Zerto

1. Prepare Zerto environment

A typical Zerto test environment for private cloud DRaaS would contain two vCenter clusters: a protected cluster and a recovery cluster.
For a quick guide, see Abiquo and Zerto test environment.

The Abiquo DRaaS integration with Zerto will be subject to the requirements and limitations of the Zerto product. For example, for VM protection see Zerto limitations.

Abiquo uses the Zerto API so it cannot filter folders by cluster. All folders of all clusters in the vCenter are shown, so multiple root folders may display. If this happens, rename datastore folders to give them unique names. And in your configuration, for the abiquo.draas.recovery.folder.name property, set a unique folder name.

Your Zerto clusters should be added as hosts in different Abiquo datacenters. 
See Add VMware vCenter clusters as servers.

2. Abiquo properties

You will need to configure Abiquo properties on the Abiquo Server and the Remote Services server.
See Configure properties for disaster recovery as a service with Zerto, then plan to restart the abiquo-tomcat process from the affected servers for these changes to be applied.

3. Networks

To use Zerto in a multi-tenant environment, you will need separate recovery and failover networks for each tenant.

For recovery and failover test networks, create these networks for each tenant in vCenter with a base name (from abiquo.properties) and a tenant suffix.

To be able to easily capture VMs into Abiquo, create networks in Abiquo to represent the recovery and failover networks, for example, external networks.

Save the details of the tenant networks to register in Abiquo in the next steps.

• Network name, address, mask, gateway, tag
• Tenant name, tenant network suffix

4. Set up DRaaS in Abiquo

To set up DRaaS in Abiquo, log in as the cloud administrator and do these steps: 

1. Add Zerto DRaaS plugin license.
2. Create protection managers to register Zerto entities in Abiquo.
   For "Available datacenters" select at least one datacenter where the plugin will use the NARS remote service to connect to Zerto.
   See Create a protection manager for disaster recovery.
3. To be able to easily capture recovered VMs, create networks in each tenant in Abiquo to register the recovery networks and failover test networks.
   Use the details from the "Networks" step above.
   See Introduction to external networks and Create an external network.
4. Optionally configure pricing and accounting
   1. Set prices for VMs with DR protection in tenant pricing models in Datacenter resource prices.
      The platform will include these prices in VApp cost estimates on deploy and on demand.
      See Create a new pricing model.
      In Abiquo accounting, the default is to include "DR protected VMs". See Abiquo Accounting Services Integration.
5. Edit each tenant enterprise:
   1. Create the DR-code enterprise property and set the value to the tenant's network name suffix.
      For example, for the vCenter recovery network DraasnetEnt1 where "Draasnet" is the recovery network base name, create a "DR-code" property with a value of "Ent1".
      See Set enterprise properties to store tenant details and metadata.
   2. Optionally set limits on the number of DR protected VMs for the enterprise, or for the enterprise in a datacenter, and for each virtual datacenter.
      See Set allocation limits for an enterprise.
6. Assign the "Manage VM disaster recovery protection" privilege to cloud user roles.
   See Modify the privileges of a role.