DR using HP SAN

[sercas2]

This is my first post here and have become co-dependant of you folks for solutions :).

Current setup: Two (2) DL380G5 (fully loaded), dual/redundant Fibre Channel paths/fabrics to MSA1500 SAN running VMWare EXS 3.0.0. There will be a 10Mb point-to-point WAN link to the DR site. I've been tasked to come up with a DR environment and would like some input from you experts out there that have done this.

I figure I can go ahead and replicate the hardware at the DR site, but what other hardware (and software) do I need? Do you recommend a SAN-to-SAN based replication over FCIP or a guest-to-guest replication? We are trying to have the shortest amount of RPO/RTO as possible as a warm site, so what solutions are you folks doing? What third party solutions (hardware/software) have you folks implemented? I'd love to hear your solutions.

[BUGCHK]

The MSA1500 cannot do any array-to-array replication on its own.

[dconvery]

A few things -

Brocade has a fabric-based replication solution that may work. Or you could upgrade to a more-robust EVA4100 and use Continuous Access - EVA, which is an array-based solution. Another thing to look into is esxReplicator by Vizioncore.

In order of cost (high to low) and performance (fastest to slowest):

Continuous Access-EVA

Brocade (close call 2nd place)

esxReplicator

Double Take may also be an alternative, but it is Winders based, so the VMs are replicated at that level.

Good Luck!

[Eddy]

Check out something like IPStor from Falconstor, its a Virtual Storage solution. It will get you to the point you want...

You feed the LUNS from the MSA to your IPStor servers and you can replicate it all to another IPStor box attached to another set of Arrays. It practically turns a regular disk array into a SAN... Its not hardware dependant, you can replicate from an MSA 1500, to any vendors array..

[esiebert7625]

Here's a bunch of DR links you can read through that might help you...

Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity:

Vmware users explore disaster recover options - http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid94_gci1253386,00.html

Vmware ESX Server and Storage Architecture Best Practices for Performance, Backup, and Disaster Recovery - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/adc9591.pdf

Using Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning to Drive Virtualization in the Production Data Center - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/adc9732.pdf

An Aggressive Approach Using P2V to Address Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/adc9938.pdf

How Management Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Virtualization: A Brush with Disaster Leads to a Virtualization-Based Disaster Recovery Plan at the Las Vegas Valley Water District - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct0046.pdf

Leveraging VMware ESX Server in Disaster Recovery Solutions - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct5070.pdf

Implementing Effective Backup Strategies For Disaster Recovery - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9502.pdf

VMware Infrastructure 3 Capabilities for Improving Disaster Recovery - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9552.pdf

Using Virtual Infrastructure as a High Availability Platform for Physical Production Servers - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9560.pdf

RepliStor: Disaster Recovery and Data Migration Solution for VMware Environments - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9636.pdf

VMware ESX Server as a Foundation for High Availability and Disaster Recovery for the Microsoft Server Platform - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct0107.pdf

Migrating Server Operations from Remote Sites to the Data Center for Disaster Recovery and Protection -

http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct0893.pdf

Innovative Approaches for High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Your VMware Infrastructure Environment - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9708.pdf

Vmware Consolidated Backup for Disaster Recovery - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/labs2006/vmworld.06.lab01-VCB-PRESENTATION.pdf

HA/DR of Physical and Virtual Environments Using VMware ESX Server and Double-Take for Virtual Systems - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/bct9468.pdf

Platespin P2V DR - http://www.platespin.com/p2vdr/

Double-Take for virtual systems - http://www.doubletake.com/products/virtual-systems/default.aspx

Double-Take Replication in the VMware Environment - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_doubletake.pdf

Replistor - http://software.emc.com/products/software_az/replistor.htm

ESX 3 Disaster Recovery site options - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=473674

Disaster Recovery Plans - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=517701

Disaster recovery site VM Startup - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=514046

Disaster Recovery for Vms - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=502276

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

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Thanks, Eric

Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com

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[DaveBerm]

If you decide to go the route of replicating from within the VMs, you may also want to consider the company I work for, SteelEye Technology (http://www.steeleye.com).

We are similar to DoubleTake, however, in addition to realtime data replication, we offer an any point in time rewind feature which help protect against data corruption being replicated from the primary to the secondary server by allowing you to rewind data on the secondary server to any point in time prior to the corruption event. We also have solutions across both the Windows and Linux platform.

SteelEye Data Replication

http://www.steeleye.com/pdf/literature/SteelEye_Data_Replication-Windows-July07.pdf

Request a 30-day eval

http://www.steeleye.com/evaluate/index.html

David A. Bermingham

Director of Product Management

http://www.steeleye.com

[dconvery]

For a whole slew of links look at this site:

http://vmware-land.com/Vmware_Links.html

This guy keeps the links very up-to-date too.

Dave -

I am going to P.M. you....

[drubery]

As for performance I believe your MSA1500 Fabric may be limited to 2GB. A 10 GB iSCSI HBA may out perform that if properly configured. Please note I specified HBA not just a regular NIC or 10G uplink. Having an HBA Nic offloads processing operations to the HBA.

Dennis

[SnowCanada]

Thanks Eddy. FalconStor's IPStor platform is able to mirror any disk to any disk but beyond that there are OS- and application-aware SnapShot agents that allow you to capture accurate points in time with properly quiesced and aligned data pointers. If you look into FalconStor CDP solutions you can get to hourly snapshots that can be recovery in single digit minutes.

There's now a FalconStor CDP Virtual Appliance for VMWare available for download.

Site-to-Site replication is also supported and uses an ultra-efficient MicroScan algorithm working with 512 byte sectors. Most hardware replication is done at the block level (as high as 32KB) and may need to replicate 100% of the data. MicroScan replicates only unique sectors then reassembles the pieces on the other site.