VMware Horizon Community
ajcohen1
Contributor
Contributor

App Volumes Storage Groups - replication between clusters?

Hi all,

I'm just trying to get a sanity check on storage groups in App Volumes 2.14.

I want to automate (or hopefully simplify) how we get app stacks from QA to Pro by using storage groups.

I want to set up a storage group that is made up of a QA cluster datastore and a non-attachable NFS datastore to auto-replicate Dev appstacks to the NFS.

I then want to set up another storage group from the NFS datastore to our Prod cluster datastore to replicate those same app-stacks to Prod. Prod and QA don't talk to each other so I will, have two AppVolumes environments that don't know about each other.

If I make changes to the app stacks in the QA-NFS group, is this going to cause problems with the NFS-Prod group? I have a bad feeling it will. Is there a better way to be doing this?

Thanks,

Ambrose

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

To be honest we are not using the non-attachable datastore because we manually copy the appstacks.

For as far as I can see it if you use the non attachable to sync appstack from Dev to Prod this is what is gonna happen.

You create (or update, the result is the same) an appstack within Dev. Within 4 hours (I thought this was the default) the appstack will be synced to the non-attachable datastore. Worst case scenario 4 hours after that the appstack will be synced to production so it will be in 2 places.

As long as you don't attach or assign the appstack there's no issue, other than a lot of appstacks that you might need to remove in prod due to the fact that dev made a mistake or packaged something that didn't need packaging.

What we do is just copy the files around using datastore browser. If you are able to reach the dev datastore from production environment you can simply copy the files and import them in production.

Reply
0 Kudos
Hofkicks
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We also stage AppStacks from QA to PRD manually using the datastore browser and Non Attachable NFS volumes for QA and PRD. Works fine!

Reply
0 Kudos
lookandfeel
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi,

is there a possibility to manual start the reclamation between the datastores within the storage group?

Or is it the only option to watit up to 4 hours when the replication occurs automatically?

Regards,

Andre

Reply
0 Kudos
Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Yes you can. Just go to the storage group (Infrastructure --> Storage Group) and select Replicate.

Do keep in mind that if you have a large amount of appstacks to sync it might end up using all network bandwidth. Don;t do this during a login/boot storm.

lookandfeel
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Ray,

thanks a lot for your answer!

Regards, Andre

Reply
0 Kudos