Replication ensures the data protection of designated volumes within a PowerFlex environment. It maintains a remote copy of one or more volumes, configured between two PowerFlex systems designated as peer systems. PowerFlex supports asynchronous replication with an RPO as low as 15 seconds. The peer systems are connected using a LAN or WAN and are physically separated for protection purposes.
Replication is defined within the scope of a protection domain. All volumes that participate in replication are contained in Replication Consistency Groups (RCGs). An RCG is an entity that includes one or more sets of consistent volume pairs. A volume from a single protection domain on the source, is replicated to a remote volume from a single protection domain on the target. This creates a consistent pair of volumes. Replication journal capacity from storage pools in the same protection domain is shared among RCGs.
The PowerFlex Storage Data Replicator (SDR) software handles replication activities and manages the I/O of replicated volumes. The SDR is deployed on the same server as the Storage Data Server (SDS). Only I/O from replicated volumes flows through the SDR. See the Dell PowerFlex: Introduction to Replication white paper for more details on the replication technology along with deployment and configuration details and design considerations for replicating PowerFlex clusters.