Protecting VMs to and from

Oracle Private Cloud

Appliance X9-2 with
RackWare DR
Oracle and Rackware Inc - Tech Brief | May 2023

May, 2023, Version [1.0]

Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates
Public
Table of contents

Introduction 3
Environment 3
Installing and Licensing RackWare Management Module (RMM) 4
Installation 4
Licensing 7
RackWare GUI 8
Protecting workloads using RackWare DR 8
Architecture / Network Diagram 8
Prepare Origin and Target 9
Creating a wave 9
Adding Hosts to Wave 10
Wave options 11
Disaster Recovery with RackWare 11
Available approaches: 11
Creating DR Policy 11
Applying DR Policy 12
Auto-Provisioning 13
Creating a user on PCA 14
Registering Clouduser on RMM 14
Applying Cloud Configuration to Waves 15
Additional features offered by RackWare RMM 17

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Introduction
RackWare’s RMM (RackWare Management Module) is a comprehensive Hybrid Cloud Management solution that
provides customers with utmost flexibility in their cloud adoption journey.

PCA X9-2, Oracle’s latest in the Private Cloud Appliance product family, provides private cloud infrastructure and
architecture consistent with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

RackWare with its true ANY-to-ANY migration, back-up, and disaster recovery capabilities, now allows users to move
their workloads into PCA X9-2 from on-prem VMWare, OLCNE, Nutanix, Cloud (AWS, GCP, IBM Cloud, etc.) and older
PCA generations. RackWare has also successfully demonstrated its capabilities to protect PCA workloads using
Converged DR and Backup by replicating workloads to OCI, remote PCA(s) and other clouds.

Fig. 1 - Platforms supported by RMM to migrate and protect workloads to Oracle PCA

Connectivity to the source and destination environments is over inherently encrypted SSH protocol and RMM is also
capable of cloud orchestration in the destination environment using REST APIs over Secure HTTP (HTTPS).

Environment
We can consider 3 scenarios:
Source / Origin Target / Destination
1 Cloud PCA X9-2
2 Older PCA PCA X9-2
3 PCA X9-2 Cloud

In all scenarios RackWare recommends that the RMM appliance resides in the Destination environment to safeguard
against DR events.

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Installing and Licensing RackWare Management Module
(RMM)
RackWare Management Module (RMM) software runs on any RHEL based 7.x Linux operating system. RackWare has
marketplace listings on major clouds like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, where users can deploy the instance with a single
click and self-start migration activities.

On platforms, where such listings are not available, RackWare provides an installation file.

The RMM installer name takes the form: rackware-<VERSION>-x86_64.sh

Ensure that the permissions of this file allow for execution, and if not modify via chmod 755.

The RMM software is dependent on various libraries and utilities. The RMM installer checks for these dependencies,
and automatically installs any that are missing. The simplest and safest option to ensure that all the correct packages
are on the server is to have temporary access to the Internet for the server prior to running the installer. Specifically,
ports 80 and 443 should be open in the outbound direction on the RMM and on any firewalls. Note that this step utilizes
the standard distribution package manager and requires Internet access.

Internet access can be disabled immediately after installation.

Installing the RMM over an existing installation is supported and, in fact, is the mechanism for installing a new version.
In this case there will be an existing CMDB, and by default the installation process retains that information. So, after
installation all existing resources will continue to reside in the CMDB.

Installation
Step 1. Execute installer by running the following command as root:
root@ovh-rmm01:[~]# ./rackware-<VERSION>-x86_64.sh

Step 2. Read and accept the EULA and the Microsoft licenses by entering "yes".

Step 3. Answer the prompts with default values [yes]:

a) perl-CGI
b) EPEL package installation
c) Modify iptables

Step 4. Download ISO for Linux vCenter Auto-Provision

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This file is needed when auto-provisioning Linux machines into a vCenter. If you are planning on

using the RMM to auto-provision Linux machines into a vCenter, then answer ‘Y’. Otherwise, accept the

default of ‘N’.

Step 5. Log Rotate

Maintains the sync job logs for a set number of days. Default is 15 days but can be set depending on the length of the
project.

Step 6. RMM-Hub

Unless you are using the RMM-Hub feature, accept the default of N for this prompt.

Step 7. GUI Selection and Configuration:

When prompted for the RMM GUI type, select [L] (default) for RMM Lite.

User will be required to provide and confirm a password for the ‘admin’ user, which is the default user for the GUI.

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Step 8. Passphrase

RMM requests users to input a passphrase to encrypt the onboard CMDB using 128-bit AES.

Step 9. Configuring a Storage Pool using ZFS

RackWare uses unformatted / unpartitioned block devices attached to the RMM to configure its storage pool using ZFS.

RMM Storage Pool using ZFS can be re-configured any time using the rwadm zfs configure command.

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Step 10. Configuring Network Interfaces

When prompted for the interfaces on which the RMM will listen, add each of the interfaces the RMM will use to
communicate with the source hosts.

Step 11. Configuring NTP

The next prompt will ask if the RMM should configure an NTP server. For the RMM to come up properly, the RMM must
have access to an NTP server, unless a professional services license is installed.

The default value of N to this prompt means that the RMM will use as the NTP server the default of pool.ntp.org.

If customer chooses to configure NTP server (Enter ‘Y’ at the prompt), they need to provide the name of the NTP server
for the RMM to use.

If the NTP server being used by the RMM is not reachable from the RMM then RMM's license will be temporarily disabled
and thus the RMM will not come up.

Step 12. Configuring NAT

The next prompt will ask if a NAT IP needs to be added. Unless otherwise instructed by RackWare,

accept the default value of [F]

Step 13. Rebooting server

Post installation, the server will need to be rebooted once for the installation to complete.

Licensing
The RMM service does not start until a valid license is placed under /etc/rackware.

For an initial installation, following messages would be displayed:

License not found in /etc/rackware/.

Generating the preinstall file. Preinstall file generated at /etc/rackware/rwlicense_preinstall_xxxxxxxx.
Please email this file to licensing@rackwareinc.com to get the license.

After receiving the license from RackWare, the license file needs to be placed under /etc/rackware and customer can
now execute ‘rwadm start rackware’

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RackWare GUI
To begin working with RackWare GUI, point the web-browser to the IP address of the instance on which RMM was
installed. Login using the ‘admin’ user and the password setup during installation process.

Protecting workloads using RackWare DR

RackWare DR protects workloads grouped as a collection and are referred to as waves. A collection can be a set of
applications or user requirement for migration. Before RackWare DR can protect the workloads, the user needs to
prepare the Origin and Target hosts.

Architecture / Network Diagram

The most common configuration is to have the RMM establish a TCP connection directly to the Origin server. The
diagram below shows the topology and ports that need to be opened when the RMM is performing a Capture/Sync
operation to a physical or virtual server in the Target environment.

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Prepare Origin and Target
All origin and target hosts need to have password-less SSH access enabled from the RMM over TCP/22 port (Custom
ports are also supported with additional configuration).
Linux
• Access Credentials: root user OR user with sudo privileges
• Storage:
o Origins’ volume groups must have 15% of used space available as free extents.
o /var/tmp should have 20 MB of free space available.
• no-exec: /tmp and /var/tmp filesystems should not be configured with no-exec properties in fstab.
• Grub: Origin servers should have /etc/default/grub file
• Antivirus: If any antivirus program is running on Origin, it should whitelist /mnt/rackware/ directory

Windows
• Access Credentials: SYSTEM user or local user with administrative privileges.
• Storage: Each volume should have sufficient free space (approx. 20%) for VSS snapshots.
• Antivirus: Origin should whitelist rsync.exe, rwattr.exe, rwchangesvc.exe and rw_tngsync_util.exe for any
antivirus program or Windows Defender
• Language: For any language other than English for SYSTEM locale, contact RackWare Support.

Creating a wave
To create a wave, simply navigate to Replication -> Waves and click on the plus (+) icon to open the wave create
wizard. Provide a name and click create.

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Adding Hosts to Wave
To add host to a wave, click on the wave to inspect. Then click on the add button ( ). The following wizard should
pop up allowing users to add the host’s details:

User can add multiple hosts to a wave:

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Wave options
• Parallel Count: Allows user to set the number of parallel transfers within the wave.
• Auto Provision: Users can configure the RMM to provision targets via API calls to the target cloud.
• DR Policy: User can configure a policy to periodically synchronize all the hosts in the wave.
• Passthrough: When enabled, data flows via RMM. (Origin -> RMM -> Destination)

Disaster Recovery with RackWare

Available approaches:
RackWare allows users to protect their workloads in 2 ways depending on customer’s requirements of RPO, RTO and
Cost.

Dynamically Provisioned Targets:

Users can opt to protect their workloads by maintaining a copy of the origin server’s image on the RMM. This image
can then be used to deploy an instance on the target infrastructure on demand in case of a DR event.

This approach can significantly reduce costs and lower the RPO at the expense of higher RTO.

Pre-Provisioned Targets:
Users can opt to protect their workloads by maintaining an active server instance on the target infrastructure in
addition to the origin server’s image on the RMM. Synchronization jobs are configured to update the image as well
as the target server at user specified intervals.

This approach achieves the lowest RTO but is costly as an active DR site is always maintained.

Creating DR Policy
A DR policy allows users to synchronize deltas from source to its image captured on the RackWare RMM and target
instance (in case of pre-provisioned scheme) at user specified intervals.

Users can create as many DR Policies as required with different periodicity. This allows greater flexibility to synchronize
different waves at varied intervals based on the user’s DR strategy.

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Applying DR Policy

To apply a DR policy, user can simply click on ‘No Policy’ which will open a Configuration dialog box.

Select which policy needs to be applied to the current wave and click on the ‘Assign Policy’ button.

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Assigning a policy to a wave will move the said wave from Replication->Waves to DR->Waves as it’s now configured
for DR.

Auto-Provisioning

Auto-provisioning is a feature that allows RMM to self-provision target instances identical to the origin using API calls.
RMM requires a user with sufficient privileges in the destination management node. Auto-provisioning also requires
that TCP/443 port is open to the destination’s API service.

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Creating a user on PCA
This is the list of required permissions a user must have for basic autoprovision to work. Permissions required for
additional autoprovision features are listed by feature below:
• read permission on the instance-images resource.
• manage permission on the instances resource.
• inspect permission on the VCNs resource.
• use permission on the subnet resource.
• inspect permission on the private-ips resource.
• read permission on the public-ips resource.
• use permission on the vNIC resource.
• inspect permission on the vNIC-attachments resource.
• inspect permission on the compartments resource.

To use reserved public IP addresses, these additional permissions are required:

• manage permission on the public-ips resource.
• use permission on the private-ips resource.

To attach additional volumes to instances, these additional permissions are required.

• manage permission on the volumes resource.
• manage permission on the volume-attachments resource.

If a simpler set of permissions is desired at the cost of being slightly more permissive, these permissions can be used
in place of the above:
• manage permission on the instance-family, volume-family and virtual-network-family resources.
• inspect permission on the compartments resource.

If simplicity in the policy is highest priority, a single permission can be used:

• manage permission on the all-resources resource.

Registering Clouduser on RMM

Since PCA uses OCI APIs, from the RackWare GUI, navigate to Configuration -> Clouduser and select OCI as the cloud
provider.

Input all the required details and add cloud user.

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Once Clouduser is successfully added, it can be used to configure the wave with auto-provisioning. This allows users
with a large set of granular options to finetune the migration. Users can configure network settings, compute shapes,
compartments, etc.

Applying Cloud Configuration to Waves

Cloud configurations can be applied to waves by clicking on ‘Not Configured’ hyperlink for autoprovisioning.

On selecting the PCA_CloudUser, fill in the values for the environment variables as shown below.

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Once autoprovisioning is configured on the wave, users are allowed additional VM deployment options for individual
wave items.

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Additional features offered by RackWare RMM

Right Sizing with Auto Provisioning: User can decide on reducing / increasing the compute and storage
specification for target instances. Allowing users the granularity of re-sizing the filesystems.

Dynamic Provisioning during DR: Users can leverage RackWare’s ability to locally maintain a replica image of
the source instance and use this image to deploy a failover instance in a DR event.

Backup, Single File Restore and Protected Snapshots: RackWare’s Backup offering comes with rich
feature-sets like snapshot retention up to 3 years, selective file restores and unlimited protected snapshots for point-
in-time recovery.

BIOS to UEFI: Users can seamlessly migrate to UEFI enabled instances without any additional configuration
changes to the original instance.

Throttled-Migrations: Users have a greater control over every single migration by being able to throttle the
bandwidth individually.

Completely Automated Failover and Fallback: Failover is completely automated as is falling back to the
Origin environment.

RMM provides many more features like selective filesystem syncs, file and folder exclusions, enabling cloud-init, and
custom post-scripts.

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