Dell PowerStore – Easily Create a Metro Volume in Six Clicks
Thu, 04 May 2023 20:12:42 -0000
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In this short blog, I’ll walk you through the configuration of a metro volume and prove that it’s possible to enable a metro session in just six clicks, when the remote system and a standard volume are already setup.
A metro volume is a volume that runs a bi-directional synchronous replication between two different sites. Hosts using either side of a metro volume get active-active simultaneous access on both sides of the metro volume. The use case for a PowerStore metro volume is a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (also known as a stretched cluster configuration) with VMware vSphere.
PowerStore metro volumes support a latency maximum of 5ms and a maximum distance of 80miles/100km. After the operator sets up a metro volume, PowerStore internally creates a metro session to control the replication between the two sites. When the remote system relationship is set up on PowerStore, and the volume is mapped to one or more hosts, it requires just six additional clicks to set up a metro session for a standard volume, as shown here:
1. Select the volume. 2. Navigate to PROTECT. 3. Select Configure Metro Volume.
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4. Click the pull down to select the remote system. 5. Select the remote system. 6. Click CONFIGURE | |
To mitigate any performance impact on the source system for the new, unsynchronized metro volume, PowerStore immediately starts with asynchronous replication and switches into synchronous replication once the data is in sync. | |
Because a metro session replicates all IO synchronously, active-active host access is possible on both ends of the metro volume. Even during the initial synchronization, hosts can map the new volume on the replication destination but only get active paths when the metro session is in an active-active state.
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When hosts are in a uniform configuration, active paths are provided by both participating PowerStore clusters. The following example shows a uniformly connected host that can access the metro volume in two storage networks (fabrics).
Here is the mapping of individual NICs in this example:
ESXi Host | NIC 1 | PowerStore-A | Node A Node B | C0:T0:L2 (Active I/O) C0:T1:L2 |
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| PowerStore B | Node A Node B | C0:T2:L2 C0:T3:L2 |
| NIC2 | PowerStore-A | Node A Node B | C1:T0:L2 (Active I/O) C1:T1:L2 |
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| PowerStore B | Node A Node B | C1:T2:L2 C1:T3:L2 |
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Author: Robert Weilhammer, Principal Engineering Technologist
https://www.xing.com/profile/Robert_Weilhammer