How to add second HP Storage MSA2040 ...

[wowhsieh]

  There is a HP MSA2040 via SFP+ fiber direct connect to two HP D380 G9, each DL380 runs VMware Esxi and two servers act as VMware HA, another IBM X3650 M2 runs VMware vCenter, now I'm going to add a second HP MSA2040 as a redundant(HA) for the first one MSA2040.

  How and what's the steps to add the second HP storage?

P.S. VMware license is Essential Plus

[Steven Clementi]

Hello wowhsieh!!

From the sounds of things, in order to connect the second MSA to your existing servers you would need additional Fiber Ports on them.  However, I am more concerned with the fact that you want to add the second array for redundancy.  Individual MSA's are not "redundant pairs" and can't be configured as such.  Each MSA should have two controllers, which make each individual array more redundant.  Furthermore, and considering you have directly connected servers to the array... you are probably not set up to use any replication features that are array based.

That said, there are still some options for "redundancy" between systems.  You could set up local replication within VMware vSphere.  Your Essentials Plus licensing should include this native vSphere Replication feature.  This is just one option.

If you want to configure the environment proeprly, a more indept analysis of what you have and what your goals are would be required.  However, It is probably safe to say that you would need to set up a network infrastructure (Storage or Ethernet, depending on the model of the controllers) so that you could take full advantage of all the available features of the MSA and vSphere Licensing you have.

Hope this helps, post more information if you want to dig into it some. 

[wowhsieh]

Hi Steven,

    Thanks for your quick reply, the main purpose of two DL380 and two MSA are for Redundancy(HA/Backup), actually half or one day downtime is acceptable, since there is no more budget, I wonder what you said MSA array based replication features need further license fee or not?

  if MSA array based replication included inside, how to connect second MSA and setup?

  if MSA array based replication not included, perhaps vSphere Replication is better for this case?!  and how to connect and setup second MSA?

We know each DL380 "should" use two fiber direct connect to MSA for link redundancy, but in this case we only use one, we plan to use the other one to conect to second MSA, we "think" it can work?!

 Appreciated for any comment or suggestion.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

Yes if you want to implement MSA replication it's License feature and need to purchase it separately.

Coming to your setup, you need to go for VMware vSphere Replication if there is no budget...........vSphere Replication is provided as a no-charge component of all eligible vSphere licenses, ranging from VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Kit to VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition™. 

You can look at the below links which may help you,

https://www.vmware.com/in/products/vsphere/replication.html

https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/it-ops/implement-vsphere-replication

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmw-wp-vsphr-5.5-pltfrm-white-paper.pdf

Note: I would suggest to involve proper Solution Consultant to understand pros/cons of Block level replication or MSA replication compare to Vmware Replication

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

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