The PowerStore native asynchronous replication features allow supported storage resources to be replicated remotely between systems. Table 4 shows the supported system configurations.

Table 4.      Supported system configuration for asynchronous replication

This section outlines the supported configurations for asynchronous replication. For more information about which systems are supported for asynchronous replication, see Appendix A: Replication support across platforms.

The native asynchronous replication feature is supported in many different topologies. Deployment models vary depending on the configuration requirements. At a system level, the following configurations are supported:

1. One-directional: A single-source system replicating to a single-destination system
2. Bi-directional: A two-system topology in which each system acts as a replication destination for the peer production resources
3. One-to-many: A system topology in which a single system replicates multiple resources, each to a different remote system (also known as “fan out”).
4. Many-to-one: A system topology in which multiple systems replicate their respective resources to a single system (also known as “fan in”).

Figure 48 shows these supported topologies. The figure uses volumes to represent the storage resources. Asynchronous replication allows for many different deployment models to meet the needs of an organization.

Figure 48.    System-level asynchronous replication topologies

The bi-directional replication topology is typically used when production I/O must be spread across multiple systems or locations. The systems may exist within a single data center or in different, remote locations. With this replication topology, production I/O from each system is replicated to the peer system. During an outage, one of the systems can be promoted as the primary production system, and all production I/O can be sent to it. Once the outage is addressed, the replication configuration can be changed back to its original configuration. This replication topology ensures that both systems are in always use by production I/O.

The one-to-many replication topology is deployed when production exists on a single system, but replication must occur to multiple remote systems. This replication topology can be used to replicate data from a production system to a remote location to provide local data access to a remote team. At the remote location, thin clones can be used to provide host access to the local organization or test team.

The many-to-one replication topology is deployed when multiple production systems exist and are replicating to a single system to consolidate the data. This topology is useful when multiple production data sites exist, and data must be replicated from these sites to a single DR data center. One example of this configuration is a remote office branch office (ROBO) location.

For the one-to-many and many-to-one replication topology examples that are shown in Figure 48, one-directional replication is depicted. One-directional replication is not a requirement when configuring the one-to-many and many-to-one replication topologies. Each individual replication connection can be used for bi-directional replication between systems. This ability allows for more replication options than what is depicted in the figure.