MSA to MSA Replication

[Clinton Elston]

Hi,

I would like to be able to replicate between MSA2012FC enclosures.

Head Office
MSA2010FC

Replicates to

Branch Office 1
MSA2010FC

and

Branch Office 2
MSA2010FC

Also would like to know if we can have slower and cheaper SATA disks in the branch office "DR" MSA's.

Is this possible and what software would have have for me to be able to do it.

TIA
Clinton

[TTr]

The MSA2000 does not support SAN based replication between 2 or more arrays. So you have to rely on an external method method to do replication. It really depends what you want to replicate in your case and how fast. Are you replicating specific files or volumes or database environments? Live replication or delayed and by how long?
The HP STorageworks storage mirroring is HP's official solution for the MSA2000 but there are others. As I said what are your needs?

[Clinton Elston]

Hi Thanks,
I am really searching for "logical" block level type replication, so it wouldn't matter what type of data was on the MSA.

For example, if I had 2 logical sets, one that hosted exchange, and one that hosted vmware vmfs partitions.

The "software" would replicate continuously across to 2 or more other MSA enclosures.
I do understand that this would be very dependant on bandwidth and such.

Thanks,
Clinton

[Cajuntank]

FYI, I talked to a Storage Engineer at HP about 4 weeks ago basically asking the same question. His answer to me was the storage mirroring software option; however, off the record he said, they would be delivering that functionality later on in a update to the controller. He couldn't tell me many more details like timeframe or if $$ was involved.

[Steven Clementi]

Clinton:

Look here...

" http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/sm/index.html "

As for hardware based replication... it would likely require connectivity over fibre connection or FcIP. I have not had my hands on the MSA2k as of yet so I do not know much about it. If this is the case though, it can get quite expensive if you are a small business.

Using a software based solution is probably what you want initially and HP StorageWorks Storage Mirroring is an excellent package.

The disks would not matter in this case as it is host based replication. You just define a source and a target or multiple targets.

There are other packages that also do this. HP Storage Mirroring provides failover capability as well.

Steven

[Steven Clementi]

Additionally... and traditionally, Storage Mirroring has been a Windows only product.

Recently, support for Linux and VMware servers has been added with features that seem to fit your need.


Steven