Symmetric active-active Metro Volume architecture: Read and write I/O can occur directly on either PowerStore cluster hosting the Metro Volume. Bi-directional synchronous replication ensures the volumes on both clusters are synchronized during normal operation.

Non-disruptive life cycle management: You can provision and decommission Metro Volumes non-disruptively. Other configuration tasks, such as modifying a preferred role, do not interfere with application I/O.

Snapshot support: User snapshots created by a Protection Policy on Metro Volumes are available on each PowerStore cluster hosting a Metro Volume. You can use snapshots for various reasons such as creating thin clones, or performing volume-refresh and restore operations. During the active-active state of a Metro Volume, the snapshots are taken simultaneously on both PowerStore clusters and result in near-identical snapshots. For snapshots taken when Metro Volume is not in the active-active state, the snapshots are replicated to the peer system after self-healing reestablishes the Metro Volume.

Host connectivity: Metro Volume supports VMware ESXi FC or iSCSI front-end connectivity with Uniform or Non-Uniform storage presentation.

VMware integration: Metro Volume is designed to work in tandem with vSphere High Availability (HA). Also, it is compliant with ALUA states and integrates with vSphere storage multipathing. Lastly, Metro Volume can be configured and managed by the Dell VSI.

Uniform topology path cost awareness: When using uniform storage presentation, Metro Volume supports granular ALUA states for both equidistant and non-equidistant paths.

Proactive use cases: Metro Volume supports proactive use cases such as planned maintenance, disaster avoidance, load balancing, and migration.

Pause: You can pause Metro Volume protection for maintenance operations and resume it later.

Self-healing: Metro Volumes are synchronized and recovered to an active-active state automatically.

Figure 10.    Metro Volume with uniform host connectivity