Home > Storage > PowerStore > Storage Admin > Dell PowerStore: Technical Primer > File replication
Starting with PowerStoreOS 3.0, asynchronous file replication is now available. You can use asynchronous replication to protect against a storage-system outage by creating a copy of data to a remote system. Replication is a software feature that synchronizes data to a remote system within the same site or a different location. Replicating data helps to provide data redundancy and safeguards against storage-system failures at the main production site. Having a remote disaster recovery (DR) site protects against system and site-wide outages. It also provides a remote location that can resume production and minimize downtime due to a disaster. The PowerStore platform offers many data-protection solutions that can meet DR needs in various environments.
The asynchronous replication for PowerStore is designed to have minimal impact on host I/O latency. Host writes are acknowledged when they are saved to the local storage resource, and no extra writes are needed for change tracking. Because write operations are not immediately replicated to a destination resource, all writes are tracked on the source. This data is replicated during the next synchronization. With protection policies, asynchronous replication uses the concept of a recovery point objective (RPO). The RPO is the acceptable amount of data, which is measured in units of time, that may be lost due to an outage. This delta of time also affects the amount of data that must be replicated during the next synchronization. It also reflects the amount of potential data loss in a disaster scenario.
PowerStoreOS versions 3.0 and later add the File Mobility network to the Network IPs section of settings. The file mobility network is prerequisite infrastructure required for the exchange of control traffic between file clusters in replication and file-import environments. It uses the same management network VLAN and subnet settings.
For more information about file asynchronous replication, see the document Dell PowerStore: Replication Technologies.