HPE EVA Storage
1748195 Members
5039 Online
108759 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
Kurz
Frequent Advisor

Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

Hi,

we currently mirror 2 EVA 6000s with host-based mirroring in HP/UX.
Unfortunately, VMWare is not able to mirror LUNs, so we probably will need to use Continuous Access.

Is it possible to achieve transparent fault tolerance with Continuous Access? If one EVA fails, VMWare is not supposed to notice.
If this is not possible, then at least is it possible to implement transparent switching for a planned downtime like a controller firmware update?

best regards,

Michaela

 

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk Array to Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Enterprise). -HP Forum Moderator

5 REPLIES 5
IBaltay
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

Hi,
yes you can manual failover only with VMwares.
The automatic failover called CLX is supported for Linux and Windows.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01710704/c01710704.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
the pain is one part of the reality
Patrick Terlisten
Honored Contributor

Re: Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

Hello Michaela,

there is no way to get a transparent failover with CA. You need some kind of storage virtualization, like DataCore SANmelody/ SANsymphony etc.

You can achieve a semi-automatic (but not transparent) failover with RSM or VMware Site Recovery Manager.

Best regards,
Patrick
Best regards,
Patrick
Kurz
Frequent Advisor

Re: Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

And without CA? Can you make the LUNs reappear at the same FC address automatically after a short downtime? VMWare has a high timeout for disk access, so this might be ok.

best regards,

Michaela
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

At the same FC address?

You would have to plug the 'secondary' EVA to the 'primary' Fibre Channel switches, because the addresses are defined by the switch.

The 'seamless failover' solutions have the ability to 'spoof' to source system's World Wide Port Names. The EVA does not have this feature.
.
Kurz
Frequent Advisor

Re: Host based mirroring vs Continuous Access on EVA6000

Thanks a lot for the information.
We'll have HP with us next week, maybe they can offer some solution. I'll keep you updated.