Zerto

Introduction

In a virtual environment, Zerto offers a business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) solution that offers write-order fidelity replication in close to real time with no impact on product workloads. Workloads may be secured, moved, and recovered either inside the same hypervisor environment or across hypervisor environments thanks to support for various hypervisors like vSphere or Hyper-V and public cloud sites like Azure. Both the protected and the recovery locations have Zerto installed. A browser-based user interface controls the catastrophe recovery across various sites. Zerto may also be managed programmatically using PowerShell cmdlets or a series of HTTP APIs.

By eliminating the risk and complexity of modernization and cloud adoption, Zerto assists companies in accelerating IT transformation. Zerto is reinventing disaster recovery, retention, and cloud management by swapping out several antiquated technologies with a single IT Resilience PlatformTM. This is accomplished by giving cloud and virtualized infrastructure settings access to enterprise-class disaster recovery and business continuity technologies.

Except for the actual replication of data, ZVM is a Windows service that controls everything needed for replication across protection and recovery locations. The Zerto User Interface maintains this protection once the ZVM communicates with the hypervisor administration user interface, such as vCenter Server or Microsoft SCVMM, to obtain the inventory of VMs, discs, networks, hosts, etc. Moreover, the ZVM keeps track of modifications to the hypervisor environment and reacts appropriately.

Pre-requisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 12.0.1 and above.

Hierarchy of Zerto resources

     - Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site

               - Zerto Virtual Machine
               - Zerto Volume
               - Zerto Virtual Protection Group
               - Zerto Virtual Replication Appliance

Default monitoring configurations

Zerto have default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. Users can customize these default monitoring configurations as per their business use cases by cloning respective global templates and global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends doing this activity before installing the app to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for each Native Type of Zerto. You can find those Device Management Policies at Setup -> Resources -> Device Management Policies -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: zerto Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site - 1 (i.e, appName = zerto, nativeType = Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site, version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates

   OpsRamp has a Global template for each Native Type of Zerto. You can find those templates at Setup -> Monitoring -> Templates -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: zerto Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site Template - 1 (i.e, appName = zerto, nativeType = Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for each Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup -> Monitoring -> Monitors -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site Monitor zerto Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site 1 (i.e, monitorKey = Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site Monitor, appName = zerto, nativeType = Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site, version = 1)

Configuration and installation

1. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Integrations and Apps.
3. Click Manage Apps.
   Notes:
   • If there are already installed applications, it will redirect to the INSTALLED APPS page where all the installed applications are displayed.
   • If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.

4. Click + ADD on the INSTALLED INTEGRATIONS page. The AVAILABLE INTEGRATIONS AND APPS page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

5. Click ADD in the Zerto application.
6. In the Configuration page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
7. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• Select the following:
  • App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.
  • Event/Alert Polling: enables integrating third party alerts into OpsRamp using further configurations.
• Below are the default values set for:
  • Alert Severity: Possible values of Alert Severity Filter configuration property are “Error”,“Warning”.
  • Alert Severity Mapping: Possible values of Alert Severity Mapping Filter configuration property are “Error”:“Critical”,“Warning”:“Warning”.

8. Select the below mentioned Custom Attribute:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

9. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
10. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
11. Click ADD.

12. Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it.
    Note: From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.
13. Click NEXT.
14. In the Installation page, select an existing registered gateway profile, and click FINISH.

The application is now installed and displayed on the Installed Integration page. Use the search field to find the installed application.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the Zerto application.

View the Zerto details

The discovered resource(s) are displayed in Infrastructure > Resources > Zerto, with Native Resource Type as Zerto Virtual Manager Local Site. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details, and the Metrics tab to view the metric details for Zerto.

Resource Type Filter Keys

Zerto application Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys.
Note: We can filter the resources with the discoverable keys only.

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alert based on customisation.
Supported macros keys:

                                ${resource.name}

                                ${resource.ip}

                                ${resource.mac}

                                ${resource.aliasname}

                                ${resource.os}

                                ${resource.type}

                                ${resource.dnsname}

                                ${resource.alternateip}

                                ${resource.make}

                                ${resource.model}

                                ${resource.serialnumber}

                                ${resource.systemId}

                                ${Custome Attributes in the resource}

                                ${parent.resource.name}

Supported metrics

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existing critical alert is recovered.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts Metrics can be used to monitor Zerto resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values
• OpsRamp has provided 9669 as default Port value for processing ZVM Rest APIs. Users can modify this value from the application configuration page at any point of time if required.
• Zerto Event/Alert polling will start only if the user enables Event/Alert Polling in configuration. Possible values of Alert Severity Filter configuration are Error, Warning.
• OpsRamp provides default mappings to map Zerto Severity with OpsRamp Severities as part of Alert Severity Mapping configuration. Users can modify them as per their use-case at any point of time from the application configuration page. Possible OpsRamp Severities are Critical, Warning, Ok, Info.
• OpsRamp uses the GET /v1/alerts API for alerts polling functionality and below is the flow of execution:
  • For the first poll request, OpsRamp considers the alerts which have is_dismissed=false and Alert Severity Filter,Alert Severity Mapping configuration details to parse and publish the critical/warning alerts and store those alert unique identifiers at app level to use them in further monitoring request processings.
  • From second polling onwards, application checks whether previously polled alerts are healed(i., is_dismissed=true) or not using current poll requests’s API response and create OK alerts for them accordingly. The application checks whether any new alerts with is_dismissed=false are present in the current poll request’s API response and poll those critical/warning alerts and store the unique identifiers accordingly for further procedures.
• Component level thresholds can be configured on each resource level.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.
• No support for the option to get Latest snapshot metric.