With SRM it is possible to change the IP settings for VMs between the DR site and production site, as VMs failover and failback between the sites, without manual IP changes.

In SRM 5 there is a new UI for modifying the IP customisations at a per VM level, this allows changing of IP address, mask, default gateway, DNS and WINS servers.

So for example here we have SRMDEMOVM1 which at the production site has IP 172.16.100.173 and at the DR site has IP 10.1.100.173 also with respective gateway and DNS server IP changes between sites.

While IP customization is pretty straightforward to once you have planned out the IP changes, it's worth noting that this adds additional time to the recovery process to change the IPs, and added complexity for applications - more so bespoke/legacy applications and/or ones that are tied to IP address not FQDN.

So far my experience designing and implementating SRM solutions the split has been 50/50 regards spanned VLANs and implementations requiring IP address changes. My preference always... Spanned VLANs - Why?! Well it leave so much less to go wrong at the application layer, plus most important of all the recovery time (RTO) is faster.

So how is it done?

1. Navigate to your recovery plan with the VMs that require IP customisations (at this point I'm mixing between the "s" and "z" spelling- BTW "s" is correct I'm British wrong!!).

2. Right click a VM you want to change the IP for and select Configure.

3. For each vNIC you can change the IP settings, select the appropriate "IP Settings - NIC #" and tick "Customize IP Settings during recovery"

4. First configure the protected site IP (this is the production site where the VM resides now). You can click "Retrieve" to pull out the current settings if the VM is on.

5. Note the protected site IP settings are now populated. Now click "Configure Recovery" which will configure the IP settings for the DR site.

6. Enter the IP settings for the DR site.

Note: Don't forget the default gateway and DNS servers will be different too.

7. Now both protected and recovery site IP settings are populated in the VM recovery properties dialog. Click Ok to save this.

8. Note in the recovery plan that VMs sub recovery steps will now have a new "Customize IP" step.

At time of writing when SRM 5.0.1 was released the following Windows and Linux guest OSes were supported for IP customisation:

Windows 2000 Advanced Server (SP4 with Update Rollup #1) 32-bit
Windows 2000 Advanced Server (SP3, SP4) 32-bit
Windows 2000 Advanced Server 32-bit
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition R2 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition (SP1, SP2) 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition R2 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition R2 SP1 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (SP1, SP2) 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Vista Business (SP1, SP2) 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Vista Business 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows XP Home Edition (SP1, SP2, SP3) 32-bit
Windows XP Home Edition 32-bit
Windows XP Professional Edition (SP2) 64-bit
Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 6.0 Server 32-bit& 64-bit
RHEL 5.5 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 5.4 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 5.3 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 5.2 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 5.1 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL 5.0 Advanced Platform 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.9 32bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.8 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.7 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.6 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.5 32-bit & 64-bit
RHEL AS 4.0 (and updates U1-U4) 32-bit & 64-bit
SLED/SLES 11 (SP2) 32-bit & 64-bit
SLED/SLES 11 (SP1) 32-bit & 64-bit
SLED/SLES 11 32-bit & 64-bit
SLED/SLES 10 (SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4) 32-bit & 64-bit
SLED/SLES 10 32-bit & 64-bit
Ubuntu 10.04
Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu 11.04
Ubuntu 11.10