Product Documentation

About network objects

Resiliency Platform discovers and displays information about layer 2 and layer 3 networks for the discovered assets.

Layer 2: The second level in the seven-layer OSI reference model, is used to transfer data between adjacent networks in a WAN or LAN environment. This layer is also known as Data Link Layer.

Examples of layer 2 networks: Port group/VLAN, vSwitch, cloud network and cloud subnet if the target data center is in cloud.

Layer 3: The network layer in the OSI reference model. mainly include routing and forwarding, as well as internetworking, addressing, packet sequencing, congestion control and further error handling.

Examples of layer 3 networks: Subnets and cloud subnets.

Resiliency Platform discovers and displays information about Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks in your datacenter. For VMware datacenter, Resiliency Platform 4.0 also supports NSX-T type networks present in vCenter server. It discovers and displays information about NSX-T provisioned L2 network objects from vCenter like Opaque switch, Opaque network and virtual distributed switch 7.0. NSX-T transport zones were discovered as vSwiches and NSX-T segments are discovered as port groups/VLAN.

For cloud technologies like AWS, Azure, vCloud Director and Google Cloud Platform, cloud subnets serve the purpose for both the layer 2 and layer 3 networks in the network pair. Network objects like private cloud subnet and private cloud network are listed under Network Types drop down irrespective of the cloud data center configuration.

See Viewing network objects.

You can manually add subnets, VMware port group/VLANS and Hyper-V VLANs that are not discovered in a data center. You cannot add vSwitches and cloud networks, if they are not discovered. Adding subnets using IPv6 address and pairing them across data centers is supported. Either while adding the network objects or while editing the discovered network objects, you need to choose a purpose. Purpose can be Production or Rehearsal.

See About Purpose.

For mapping the purpose of the network objects as Production or Rehearsal, See Mapping network objects (Production and Rehearsal mapping).

Network objects like private cloud subnet and private cloud network are listed under Network Types drop down irrespective of the cloud data center configuration.

A network pair is created using network objects across data centers. The network pairs should be defined before a resiliency group is created. Depending on whether the participating networks in the pair are layer 2 or layer 3 networks, the pair can be used for connecting the assets to the networks, or for assisting the customization of the IP addresses in the target network. The create network pair operation eliminates the need to manually connect each asset to a network at the target data center. For example, port group/VLAN to cloud network and subnet to port group/VLAN.

When the resiliency group is created, the network objects in the network pairs are evaluated by the Resiliency Platform. The CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) information from the network object is used to automatically calculate the IP address for the applicable assets in the respective target network if any of the below mapping is done:

The layer 2 network object pairs are mandatory to be defined for recovery to cloud environments, private cloud environments and recovery of physical machines to VMware environment. This mapping is optional for recovery from on-premises to on-premises environment. If the mappings are not defined for recovery to on-premise environment, then the virtual machine NICs are not connected to any network.

A layer 3 network pair is optional. If it is defined, the IP address for the asset is calculated based on the target subnet CIDR and can be further customized. If the network pair is not defined, then the IP address for the adapter gets assigned in one of the following ways:

When you perform a migrate, recover or rehearsal operation on a resiliency group, the Resiliency Platform evaluates the network pairs that have the layer 2 network objects and gets connected to the expected target network.

Using Resiliency Platform console, you can create network groups of cloud subnets for AWS cloud data center and port group/VLAN for VMware environment only.

In case of Google Cloud Platform, if shared subnets are discovered, the host project name is appended to the VPC name to distinguish the shared subnets from another project.

See About network groups.

When you clone your virtual machines, ensure that you assign the appropriate host name and IP address to the cloned virtual machines.

See Managing network objects in Resiliency Platform.