SRM and Lefthand VSA configuration question

[rmagoon]

I'm looking for some basic info on configuring the Lefthand VSA and the SRA. I have the VSA configured within one management group and two sites with a 2-way protected LUN that's presented to ESX/VC at both sites. The replication on the VSA perspective appears to be fine, and each ESX host is connected via iSCSI to their appropriate iSCSI target.

The issue I'm having is probably within the SRA configuration itself. When I configure the protection side array manager, it asks for two SAN/iQ Manager IP's. I'm assuming that's the IP address for each site within the VSA management group (correct me if I'm wrong). When I connect, it's showing the array ID of within site 1. I check that and click OK, and it's displayed under Protection Side Array Managers. But underneath the Protection Arrays is showing Unknown for the Peer Array with no LUN Count. I feel there's something wrong with this, or within the VSA/CMC configuration. If anyone has experience with these configuration settings, that would be greatly appreciated.

My VSA/CMC Configuration:

One management group with two sites that are routable. There is one cluster that contains two storage modules and one 2-way replicated volume.

Thanks in advance,

Rick

[Jay_Judkowitz]

Rick,

Are you mirroring the LUN across the two sites so that it's effectively one LUN? Or are you replicating the LUN such that it appears as two separate WWNs?

Thanks,

Jay

[rmagoon]

It appears to be shown as one lun that's mirrored across both sites. I assume this is the problem, but don't know how to resolve. I noticed that the Failover/Failback Volume option in the Volume context menu is greyed out....

Thanks,

Rick

[Michelle_Laveri]

Rick,

Your in look - I've been writing a book on SRM. It is heavily dominated by LHN VSA...

Now after VMware staffers have checked out the book - I am looking for end-users to give me reviews and feedback...

Interested?

Regards

Mike

[rmagoon]

I figured it out, thanks to your hint... I added another volume list, configured the volumes for primary and remote with no replication level. I added a local and remote snapshot. All seems to be good so far....

[Jay_Judkowitz]

Perhaps you've grouped the VSAs together in such a way as to make it seem like one virtual array instead of a separate arrays that you might replicate between.

I'm not sure how it works in detail though so I can't really advise more. Hopefully someone else on the forum can help more.

[rmagoon]

Sure, I'd be happy to review...I'm sure there's some stuff in there I can probably use while I'm stumbling through this stuff...

Thanks,

Rick

[Michelle_Laveri]

Yep, Jay is right - your two VSA will need to be in two separate management groups - and you use Remote Scheduled Copy with the VSAs...

I setup all the replication first - before begin the SRA and Array Managers configuration...

Anyway, Rick - I'll be in touch - about the book. I would have sent you my chapters on the VSA now - but it looks like you have resolved your issue anyway...

Regards

Mike

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hi Mike, if you're looking for other volunteers I'd be interested.

[rmagoon]

I had them in the same management group with multi-site cluster configured. Then I created a scheduled remote snapshot. I have since then blown away the management group and created two management groups with standard clusters. I don't see an option to configure Remote Scheduled Copy, just Scheduled Remote Snapshot. I'm assuming the Scheduled Remote Snapshot isn't what I want, because the primary data still won't be on the second volume, just the snapshot delta.

Thanks,

Rick

[Michelle_Laveri]

I had them in the same management group with multi-site cluster configured. Then I created a scheduled remote snapshot. I have since then blown away the management group and created two management groups with standard clusters. I don't see an option to configure Remote Scheduled Copy, just Scheduled Remote Snapshot. I'm assuming the Scheduled Remote Snapshot isn't what I want, because the primary data still won't be on the second volume, just the snapshot delta.

Thanks,

Rick

I was writing from memory - so Remote Scheduel Snapshot = Schedule Remote Snapshot...

This how it works... at the "protected site" VSA, it snapshots the volume locally, this is then copied to the "recovery site" VSA...

Whats your email address - I will send you the chapter on the VSA that's in my book.... For Your Eyes Only...

Regards

Mike

[rmagoon]

Thanks. My email is rmagoon@datatarget.com.

[lefthand]

Jay gave me a heads up about your post.

Mike is right.

For SRM you need two management groups that are doing scheduled remote snapshots between them. If you have the LeftHand adapter then you should have the user manual installed in the directory with it.

Look somewhere like c:\whereveryouinstalled SRM to\scripts\SAN\LeftHand Networks\Documentation. You should find a user manual with a full description of the requirements and some trouble shooting help.

The LeftHand SRA does not recognize "multi-site SAN" as something SRM wants to use because that is intended/supported for doing straight up VMotion and HA between two sites. Really nice if you have the correct environment to support it. SRM and our adapter would come into play if you had a multi-site SAN doing VMotion and HA and wanted to then remote copy that somewhere much further away as the DR stragey if the entire multi-site area was destroyed.

The remote copy feature is for long distance replication that cannot do VMotion or HA, perfect for SRM.

The LeftHand adapter also ignores any remote copies that are being made back to the same management group (I think that is what you were trying in the first place) because those are used for cloning and a copy that resides on the same SAN is not useful for DR.

Hope that helps.

[Michelle_Laveri · Accepted solution]

Rick,

Check your in box - I've sent you chapter 2 of my book on SRM which covers LHN VSA Setup...

I'm working on EMC Celerra at the moment (really struggling!) and also I need to look at NetApp as well...

Off to see some VMware folks next week - and they are going to show me some of their physical EMC/NetApp stuff in their labs...

Equallogics has offered me some of their HW on loan - but I don't when I'm going to find the time to the kit in, get it configured and then document it along side LHN...

I have a feeling I will be calling some forum folks assistence in making my SRM book a little more storage neutral than it currently is...

Regards

Mike

[depping]

Mike,

Chac Sakac is also working on Celerra with SRM at the moment. He's preparing an article for his blog. He migh be able to help you out!

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[Michelle_Laveri]

Yeah, I'm in contact with Chad... Got some of the PDFs on Celerra...

I find this stuff about eth0/eth0 and cg0/cdg1 confusing... all this data mover stuff... created an iSCSI LUN with a the wizard... but I still couldn't get out the starting blocks and get an ESX to see a LUN.

I remember bugging the hell out of Adam, for help on the VSA... and feel uncomfortable going thru that process all over again....

Regards

Mike

[rmagoon]

Thank you. I have been hacking at this thing for quite some time now and feel that I’m really close, thanks to the help of your sample chapter. I am getting half-way through a test failover and noticed that the snapshot LUN on the remote site will not mount. I noticed your chapter said not to configure the authentication lists or authentication groups to the remote VSA. I'm not sure how I'd configure the dynamic discovery on the remote ESX host if no authentication exists to any VSAs (or whether I keep iSCSI completely unconfigured on remote ESX...). I would be surprised if the SRA API was intelligent enough to set that all up.

Thanks again for your assistance,

Rick

[rmagoon]

It's fixed now, and test failover completed successfully. I did need to configure the recovery site iSCSI target to the remote snapshot. Does the Recovery site iSCSI configuration need to be pointed to both the recovery LUN and snapshot for either test or actual failover to function?

One of my other issues was that I was creating a recovery plan on the protected site instead of the recovery site. In hindsight having the recovery plan initiated on the protected site doesn't make sense during the event of a disaster...

The documentation that helped the most was Mike's chapter 2, while the Lefthand SRA documentation was also helpful in a general overview form. I also found the SRM Evaluator Guide and Administration Guide helpful as well.

I also just wanted to send a thank you to Lefthand for making the VSA evaluation appliance available to the community. I may have never had a reason to learn Lefthand SAN/iQ otherwise, and now I can recommend it to other customers. Maybe other storage companies would take note and realize the benefits of this model. Everything worked very well, but the "Searching for Upgrade Information" process took a while when authenticating to the management groups.

My next challenge is the RecoverPoint SRA once I get my hands on some demo equipment.

Thanks,

Rick

[YunghanLu]

I have a problem with creating scheduled remote snapshot.

When I try to modify the schedule time, I got a error message says "Failed to parse time from spinner control."

I found that document says I need to have one Scheduled Remote Snapshot to recognized by SRM as a remote copy.

If I cannot create Scheduled Remote SnapShot, I cannot setup SRM

My VSA Version is 7.0.01.6046

Can someone help me to give me some ideas?

[Michelle_Laveri]

I have a problem with creating scheduled remote snapshot.

When I try to modify the schedule time, I got a error message says "Failed to parse time from spinner control."

I found that document says I need to have one Scheduled Remote Snapshot to recognized by SRM as a remote copy.

If I cannot create Scheduled Remote SnapShot, I cannot setup SRM

My VSA Version is 7.0.01.6046

Can someone help me to give me some ideas?

I've never seen this error before - so I can't help you directly. I've alert Adam Carter of LHN, to see if he can help...

A stab in the dark. Time? Could it be a time problem..

A "spinner" in software is up and down arrow that allows you control a value - perhaps you passing a replication freqency which isn't allow - and rather than getting a meaningful error your getting a debug style message?

Regards

Mike