Seeding a large volume before remote copy

[PCrid]

Dear all,

have a horrible feeling I know the answer to the question, but as I'm an optimist I thought I'd ask anyway.

We bought in a P4300 G2 solution a few months ago, which consists of 4 P4300 G2 nodes locally and a VSA node which we are currently in the process of setting up for a remote site. The plan was to set up remote copy from some of our key volumes to the VSA on the remote site.

We've now got a few of our volumes replicating nicely, but in the near future we're going to want to start replicating a couple of large (read 500GB+) volumes, and as you can probably imagine, the initial sync of these over a VPN WAN with about 30Mb/s available bandwidth is going to take a loooong time.

When we initially investigated the options available to us, it was suggested to us by the HP rep that in order to minimise this pain, it would be possible to seed a remote volume using a portable demo VSA to physically transfer the data accross to the remote site, where we could use it to seed the remote VSA before initiating replication. However, having had some experience with the P4000 G2 for a while now, its far from immediately obvious how this might be achieved, if indeed it is possible.

If anyone on the forums has any idea as to whether this is possible, and if so, how we might go about it, I'd be grateful of your input. I can cope with a VSA install, its the process of transferring the seed data to a VSA, transferring it accross to the remote site then setting up remote copy to sync only changes to the seeded volume that I could really use some pointers with.

Thanks in advance for any pointers you may be able to give me.

Regards,
Pete

[Jim Silvia]

I've done something similar just with a normal VSA.

I'm not sure if they limit the demos (capacity).

If they don't its as simple as moving the demo, renumbering it's IP to the remote subnet, "Finding" the demo node once it is at the remote location.

Then remote copy the staged data from the demo to the production VSA. Then setup the remote copy from production to VSA to get the changes.

[PCrid]

Thanks for the answer. So, just to clarify, am I right in thinking the process is:

1. Set up a portable VSA in production VLAN
2. Remote copy from production volume on production cluster to remote volume on portable VSA
3. Relocate portable VSA to DR VLAN
4. Remote copy from remote volume on portable VSA to remote volume on DR VSA
5. Set up remote copy from production volume on production cluster to remote volume on DR VSA?

Thanks again,
Pete