Site Recovery Manager ：Redhat Linux Virtual Machine Recovery Plan Manual IP Customization Behavior

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

When user runs a recovery plan for a Redhat Linux virtual machine with multiple NICs, manual IP customization might not be configured as expected.

Example.1

VM Linux Redhat 9 on protect site
NIC1 172.XXX.XXX.101 
NIC2 172.XXX.XXX.102
NIC3 172.XXX.XXX.103

Recovery Plan Manual IP customization configuration
NIC1 not configured  
NIC2 not confogured
NIC3 172.YYY.YYY.113

Result for IP address on DR site after recovery plan
NIC1 no IP address setting   <- 172.XXX.XXX.101 was the expected IP.  
NIC2 no IP address setting   <- 172.XXX.XXX.102 was the expected IP. 
NIC3 172.YYY.YYY.113

Example.2

VM Linux Redhat 8 on protect site
NIC1 172.XXX.XXX.110
NIC2 172.XXX.XXX.111
NIC3 172.XXX.XXX.112
NIC4 172.XXX.XXX.113

Recovery Plan Manual IP customization configuration
NIC1 172.YYY.YYY.110
NIC2 172.YYY.YYY.111
NIC3 172.YYY.YYY.112
NIC4 172.YYY.YYY.113

Result for IP address on DR site after recovery plan
NIC1 172.XXX.XXX.110  <- Same as IP address on protect site
NIC2 172.XXX.XXX.111  <- Same as IP address on protect site
NIC3 172.XXX.XXX.112  <- Same as IP address on protect site
NIC4 172.XXX.XXX.113  <- Same as IP address on protect site

-> There are some cases where only some NICs are not configured as expected.

 

Environment

Site Recovery Manager 8.X 

Site Recovery Manager (VMware Live Site Recovery) 9.X

 

Cause

RHEL9 behavior is as designed.
In RHEL9, network management has been changed to NetworkManger on OS. 
Therefore, when SRM processes manual IP customization, it first deletes all network configuration information in RHEL9 OS, 
and then configures IP addresses based on the manual IP customization settings.

In RHEL8 or earlier versions with multiple NICs,
If the NICs are configured with ifcfg-eth*, the behavior is the same as RHEL9, because only the contents of the ifcfg-eth* files will be deleted before the IP is customized.
If the NICs are configured with ifcfg-$InterfaceName (e.g. ifcfg-ens*), except for ifcfg-eth*, the manual IP customization in SRM recovery plans changes the IP address as expected.
If the NIC is configured in the OS as something other name than ifcfg-eth* or ifcfg-ens*,  the Manual IP customization in an SRM recovery plan does not change the IP address as expected.
That behavior is by current design.

 

Resolution

In RHEL9, when using manual IP customization with multiple NICs, it is necessary to set the SRM IP customization configuration for all NICs.

In RHEL8 or earlier versions, when using manual IP customization with multiple NICs, use ifcfg-eth* or ifcfg-ens* setting into OS. 

Additional Information

A future version of SRM will be fixed to allow successful modification of ifcfg-other names on RHEL8 or earlier versions.