Stretch Cluster - Primary and Secondary Replicas on same zone

[alg204]

Here is a screenshot of our new stretch cluster federation. The strech cluster has 2 zones (node 1 and 2 are one zone & node 3 and 4 are the other zone).

As seen in the screenshot, we have some VMs that have both primary and secondary replicas in the same zone. During HA failover that means failing over to the zone the VM doesn't have any replicas at then it wont' fail over. 

Any way we can get all VMs to have primary and secondary replicas at different zones? 

[Mahesh202]

Hi alg204

Yes, it is possible to configure HPE SimpliVity Storage to have primary and secondary replicas of VMs located in different zones. This configuration is commonly referred to as a stretched cluster or multi-site deployment.

To achieve this, you would need to have two or more physical data center locations, each representing a different zone. Each data center location should have SimpliVity nodes deployed within it.

Here are the general steps to configure a stretched cluster with primary and secondary replicas at different zones:

1. Deploy SimpliVity nodes in each of the data center locations (zones) where you want to have primary and secondary replicas. Ensure that the nodes are connected and can communicate with each other.
2. Create a SimpliVity Federation to link the SimpliVity nodes across the different zones. The Federation provides a unified management interface and allows you to manage the stretched cluster as a single entity.
3. Within the Federation, configure the SimpliVity nodes in a stretched cluster configuration. This involves defining the different zones and associating the nodes within each zone.
4. When creating or migrating virtual machines (VMs), specify the placement policy to ensure that primary and secondary replicas are located in different zones. You can configure the policy to distribute replicas across zones to achieve high availability and disaster recovery.

By following these steps, you can distribute the primary and secondary replicas of VMs across different zones within your HPE SimpliVity Storage environment. This configuration provides increased resilience and enables failover even if an entire zone becomes unavailable, ensuring continuous availability of your VMs.

I would suggest you to consult the HPE SimpliVity Tech support to seek assistance for detailed instructions specific to your environment.

Hope this helps.!!

Regards
Mahesh

[alg204]

Hi @Mahesh202!

Where would I go to do step 4? Specifically "You can configure the policy to distribute replicas across zones to achieve high availability and disaster recovery."

"When creating or migrating virtual machines (VMs), specify the placement policy to ensure that primary and secondary replicas are located in different zones. You can configure the policy to distribute replicas across zones to achieve high availability and disaster recovery."

[alg204 · Accepted solution]

This thread can be closed. We noticed the zone names when running svt-federation-show were appearing as "(none) => name" so we thought maybe the svt-zone-realize didn't take when engineer ran. We ran svt-zone-realize and looks like everything is now running as expected. No vms are on the same zone anymore for replicas.