HA cluster over dark fiber

[benma]

Hey guys,

i have to build a HA Cluster over a dark fiber links to a remote site.

SAN active/active ist on both sites. SAN connect via iSCSI.

How to let the Storage I/O stay at the local site?

Has anyone build such a env.?

Thanks for your help!

[benma]

From Duncan Epping:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/09/21/long-distance-vmotion/

Stretched HA/DRS Clusters would however mean that the cluster needs to be carved into sub-clusters to make sure I/O stays local. You don't want to run your VMs on site A while their VMDKs are stored on site B. This of course depends on the array technology being used. (Active / Active, as in one virtual array would solve this.) During Banjot session it was described as "tagged" hosts in a cross site Cluster and during the Long Distance VMotion session it's described as "DRS being aware of WAN link and sidedness". I would rather use the term "sub-cluster" or "host-group". Although this all seems to be still far away it seems to be much closer than we expect. Long Distance VMotion is supported today. Sub-clusters aren't available yet but knowing VMware, and looking at the competition, they will go full steam ahead.

[depping]

Correct,

Currently there's no such thing as sub-clusters unfortunately so there's no way to keep the traffic local. Traffic will be flying all over the place so depending on your bandwidth you might want to consider creating two clusters and a script which can move/reregister VMs when needed in case of total site failure.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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