Data Migration from EVA 8000 to 8400

[Je Thomas]

Hi All,
I have ordered a new EVA 8400 for replacing an existing EVA 8000. The 8000 has almost 18TB of Data in it. Can i use CA to migrate the data. If yes whats the procedure.

Hosts connected are VMWare and windows server., Cisco Director Switches.

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

you can use the instant-on license of CA or a special migration license. This license is the same as the instant-on, but with support.

You have to setup the new EVA, change the zoning and setup DR groups. Put the Vdisks to the DR groups and give the EVAs time so sync. After the sync delte the DR groups on the source (old server), but don't let Command View EVA delte the destionation Vdisks.

Remove the presentations of the old Vdisks and present the new ones the the servers. You should stop VMs, applications etc. before you do this. :)

Regards,
Patrick

[Víctor Cespón]

- EVA8000 needs to have at least firmware 6.1xx
- You need to create at least a zone that includes one port of each EVA. These ports must be dedicated to CA replication.
- There must be FC access from one EVA to the other
- There must be enough space on the EVA8400 to store the vdisks on the EVA8000 and some more space for DR group log (200 GB per DR Group by default).
- You must have one CA license on each EVA, for the amount of data you'll be replicating at the same time
- Create one DR group with a set of vdisks that must be together. For example if a application or database stores files on several vdisks, you must replicate all vdisks inside the same DR group to mantain consistence
- If the replication link speed is enough, you can use synchronous replication. Once the full copy is done, you'll have an exact copy on the EVA8400. Then you can perform a controlled failover, transfer the access to the vdisk on the EVA8400 and delete the DR group.
- You can replicate all vdisks to the EVA8400 this way. The copy is done while the vdisk remains accessible. After full copy is done, you have identical copies on both EVAs. Then you can failover and use the vdisk on the EVA8400.
- If using asynchronous replication, you must switch it to synchronous and let the log empty before the failover.

[Je Thomas]

Thanks for the reply guys.

i have no issues with VM Serveres but my concern is windows host.
Once i am done with the failover do i need to present the VDisks to the host or do i need to do the same before Failover.

If i need to present the VDisk after failover then shall i present it normally to windows host or they is something else that i need to do as Windows will see the LUN as a Raw space. If i format the LUN data will be lost, is there a procedure i need to follow for windows.

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

you can create a normal presentation for the destination vdisks. If you do the failover, just do a rescan on windows to ensure, that windows can handle the volumes.

But I think you will get in trouble with VMware. The SCSI Inquiry string will change, because of the new controllers. You have to resignature the volumes. Until that, you will get snapshots warnings and VMware ESX won't mount the datastores.

Regards,
Patrick

[Uwe Zessin]

Right, you can set up the destination virtual disk's presentation in advance, but by default, the EVA will not present the data to the server's (no matter if it is Windows or VMware or ...) - that is a good thing.
There are modifications (inquire-only and read-only) possible, but they are for SPECIAL CONFIGURATIONS ONLY - please do not try them out unless you can explain why you need to do it.


After the failover, the EVA will use the predefined presentations and active them / turn them into real ones.
But nothing prevents you to prepare some scripts and present afterwards - at one customer site I have implemented additional present/unpresent scrips, because this additional flexibility was wanted.


I am not sure I understand the last paragraph... (from Je Thomas, not Patrick ;-)

Normally you do not present a VMware VMFS datastore to a Windows server (except for the VCB proxy, but that server needs some special setups) or some other operating system.

[Je Thomas]

Uwe my question was when we do a failover, will the luns show as RAW disk to the new host?

Also i have CV 9 installed and we dont have CA in our environment. Can we get Trial versions of CA from HP for Dat migration.

[McCready]

Just a few small points from my understanding (always superceeded by the latest unannounced rules from HP):
> - EVA8000 needs to have at least firmware 6.1xx
Usually the rules are that HP likes to see the same major versions (and sometimes the exact minor ones communicating between EVA's while doing CA, without changes to a DR group, although it will work. So, you might plan to upgrade the EVA8000 to a 6.2x version as your new one will probably have 6.220. See section 3.4 footnote 1 in the below
http://h50146.www5.hp.com/products/connectivity/img/eva_software_compatibility_reference.pdf

>- You need to create at least a zone that includes one port of each EVA. These ports must be dedicated to CA replication.
The need to dedicate the port to CA is a recommended best practice to avoid I/O contention between replication I/O's and host I/O's, CA will still work without dedicated ports, and if you have a 4-port EVA, it is not recommended as then you are trading off your redundancy for host connections.


>- There must be enough space on the EVA8400 to store the vdisks on the EVA8000 and some more space for DR group log (200 GB per DR Group by default).
The DR group log is not space that gets explictly allocated, but is space that is left free so that any I/O's during and outage are retransmitted when the link is back rather than having to full-copy the entire disk. Since this is just for short-term migration, I would not worry about having explictly allocated space for logs (which I plan on having about 25% of the total GB of the DR group for, keeping in mind it gets stored in VRAID1 format)


Also, I would get the special migration CA license if possible so you can be "officially" supported, although you can usually get questions answered with any EVA support in force. In case you did not get that ordered, you can get the instant-on CA license for 60 days upon a fresh install of CommandView in my experience - you probably want to be at the latest fully supported version anyway (ask HP for the best version to use.)

You will have to down your applications on the disks you migrate as you unpresent from the old array and present from the new, and I would create a "test" disk for each application/OS and try migrating that first in order to get the steps down pat. Also, doing the changes with SSSU is recommended if you have lots of disks to do, a short time window and/or SSSU experience. Use the "Capture Configuration" command to get lots of examples for your current setup.