Getting Started

This page covers what you need before you can protect and recover workloads with DRM, and the recommended order to set everything up.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Two sites, each running Cockpit and at least one Vapor host:

  • A primary site where your workloads run today.
  • A recovery site with enough CPU, RAM, and storage to boot the protected workloads.

• Administrator access to both Cockpit consoles and both DRM consoles.

• Network connectivity between the sites on these ports:

  Port	Between	Purpose
  7770	Vapor ↔ Vapor	Replication data transfer
  7771	Cockpit ↔ Cockpit	Site pairing and recovery orchestration
  7772	DRM ↔ DRM	Recovery-plan replication

• The recovery-site Vapor host registered in its Cockpit by a routable IP address (not 127.0.0.1). The IP Cockpit stores is reused as the cross-site replication endpoint, so a host registered as loopback cannot receive replicas.

Storage target must be reachable by the hypervisor

The recovery-site storage pool you choose as a replication target must be readable by the hypervisor process. A pool located under a restricted home directory (for example, mode 0700) will fail to open the recovery disk. Prefer a standard pool such as the images pool.

Licensing

Orchestrated recovery is a licensed capability:

• Cockpit must have the Disaster Recovery entitlement enabled at both sites. Without it, failover, test failover, and reprotect return a "not licensed" error and appear disabled in the UI.
• DRM must be licensed (or within its trial window) to enroll workloads and author plans.

To confirm licensing, open each Cockpit's licensing view and check that Disaster Recovery is enabled, and open each DRM's license status to confirm it is active and has headroom in the protected-VM count.

Trial mode

A fresh DRM starts in a time-limited trial that allows a small number of protected workloads — enough to evaluate the full lifecycle end to end before applying a license.

Connect DRM to its local Cockpit

Each DRM instance manages its local site through that site's Cockpit. In the DRM console, open Settings → Cockpit Integration and enter the local Cockpit URL and an administrator credential. The status should read connected before you continue.

Recommended first-run order

Follow this order the first time you set up a site pair:

1. Confirm connectivity and licensing on both sites (above).
2. Pair the two sites — Cockpit-to-Cockpit and DRM-to-DRM.
3. Protect your first workload and let its baseline replication complete.
4. Run a test failover to confirm the workload is recoverable — this is non-disruptive.
5. Author a recovery plan grouping the workloads you want to recover together.

Always rehearse first

Never rely on an untested recovery configuration. Run a test failover after protecting a workload and after any significant change. It boots the replica in an isolated network and leaves production untouched.