Does HP 3Pars's Peer persistence applies to physical distributed machines or just virtual ?

[farid_nasiri]

Peer persistence has proven capabilities on Vmware Metro clustering architectures , the key point is could it be applied on physical distributed physical windows2008R2 / linux machines or not ?

[sergio_rolandi]

Yes, for windows and esx 5.0 and starting from 3PAR firmware 3.2.1, here is an extract from 3PAR 3.2.1 remote copy user's guide PG 164.

This non-disruptive failover configuration is supported with several VMware ESXi 5.0, Windows

Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012 R2 host configurations.

Of course all others prereq have to be satisfied.

Also see :

Technical white paper

Implementing Microsoft multisite clustering using HP 3PAR Peer Persistence

Regards Sergio

[Sheldon Smith]

Peer Persistence covers several things.

At the bottom is whether or not the 3PAR array enables the ALUA (asymmetric logical unit access) feature in the host persona. Check the appropriate HP 3PAR <your-OS-here> Implementation Guide. If so, we then take a virtual volume, replicate it to the secondary 3PAR. If the secondary creates the volume, it will retain the volume WWN of the primary volume. Regardless, both primary and secondary volume must have the same LUN WWN. In the Remote Copy Group (RCG), it must have the path_management, auto_failover and auto_recover policies.

Note: The RCG must be synchronous.

When a manual switchover occurs, the RCG will switch direction. IO will pause, the paths change between active and standby, and IO resumes to the now active paths of the now primary volume.

In addition, there is the HP 3PAR Quorum Witness which is required for automatic transparent failover. 
Currently, the Quorum Witness only works with VMware ESXi 5.x or Windows Hyper-V 2012 R2 systems.

Note: While I work for HP, all of my comments (whether noted or not), are my own and are not any official representation of the company.
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[farid_nasiri1]

by using HP 3PAR CLI "# sethost -persona 2 windowshost" in windows 2012 and Changing from Host Persona 6 or Persona 1 to Host Persona 2 the host will enable ALUA on all the LUN paths
so logically peer persistence will be enabled on our physical windows host . is not it ?

thanks

[Sheldon Smith]

Yes. And it's persona 15, see the table "HP 3PAR Peer Persistence switchover and failover requirements" in the HP 3PAR Remote Copy Software User Guide.

(Latest part number as of this message, QL226-98022.)