SAN Replication

[Jestin John Chacko]

Please clarify the following:

Is it possible to replicate from HP Xp12000 SAN to any other non-hp SAN Box located at different geographical site? If Yes, How? If No, Why?

[Yogesh M Puranik]

Hi,


I Think it is not possible because of,

1] Difference in Hardware architechture/Configuration.

2]Difference in LUN allocation Policies.


Althogh, You can manually sync. the data between two differnt SAN boxes.



Rgds

YMP

[Liviu I.]

It should be obvious that the only replication possible given the above setup, would be using a host : one presents a volume from the XP12000 storage to a host; he builds a degraded RAID-1 software volume; then adding to the RAID-1 a volume presented from the non-hp box, the synchronization is realized by the OS of the host.
Still I am not experienced with any non-hp boxes in order to know if any of the producers support some emulation of the HP (XP) replication protocols, but being closed source I doubt there is one.
L.

[TTr]

There are virtualization appliances that allow you to do precisely that. It is not a simple setup neither cheap but every vendor has one. IBM calls it SVC, I know Cisco has one too and not sure what HP calls it.

[Yogesh M Puranik]

Hi,

You are points are highly appritiated, which will encourage us to reply you next time.

Rgds
YMP

[Jestin John Chacko]

Dear to all
thanks for the replies .....

yogesh sorry for the delay in submitting points for the same .....:)


Can i get a clear cut idea of the same ...is there any document that i can go through if so please give me the links for the same

your replies will be pointed sure :)

[shIVinator.]

Yes this can be done with HP's External Storage software. This software allows the migration of data from a SAN to the XP. I believe that there are two options when buying it:

1) the full package
2) just the data migration (which includes HP services as well)

The full package allows you to manage other hardware through the XP interface.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/extstxp/index.html

Regards,
Duane

[Vincent Fleming]

There are several options open to you...

It somewhat depends on the distance between the sites, and the bandwidth you have. If they're close to each other and have high bandwidth, you can extend the SAN between the sites and use External Storage across the WAN link.

Assuming that they're more than 100km apart, you can put a small XP (XP20000) at the remote site and do CA between the two XPs. You would then use External Storage on the XP20000 to connect the foreign array so the replication can go there.

You can also use host-based replication software, such as StorageWorks Storage Mirroring. SM is Windows only, though. It is very economical for small deployments (a couple of servers at most).

As someone previously mentioned, you can also use a virtualization device (such as the SVSP), but it does not support XP yet.

If it's a one-time data migration you're looking for, you have other options as well, including Brocade DMM and host-based migration tools - rather than continuous replication technologies like CA.

Good luck!

[Jestin John Chacko]

Thanks to all for your replies......