Dell PowerVault MD3260i - Manual (Page 8)

• Remote Replication
• Snapshot Virtual Disk
For more information on obtaining and activating MD premium features, see the Dell PowerVault MD3600f-series
Storage Array Owner's Guide, Dell PowerVault MD3200-series, and Dell PowerVault MD3600i-series or go to dell.com/
support and select your array model from the product selector.
Protected And Recovery Site Installation Requirements
As part of configuring the recovery solution described in this guide, the required VMware platforms must be installed on
both the protected (primary site) and recovery (secondary site) host sites. For more information, see
Installing the
Recovery Solution Components .
Dell MD Storage Array Installation Requirements
SRM 5.0 relies on the MD storage array's Remote Replication premium feature to maintain data replication between the
protected site and the recovery site. Replication must be configured on the MD storage array before configuring SRM.
See
Setting Up Remote Replication on the MD3600f Series Storage Array. at dell.com/support/manuals.
Virtual Disk Layout Considerations
Before setting up Remote Replication, consider the datastores residing on the virtual disk as well as the virtual machines
residing on the datastore. Remote Replication on the MD storage array functions on a virtual disk-level only; therefore,
any datastores or virtual machines residing on a replicated virtual disk are protected. If no virtual machines require
protection, make sure that your virtual machines-to-datastores-to-virtual disks are designed efficiently. For example, in
the figure Single Virtual Disk Replication, a 400 GB virtual disk is used to house a single datastore containing four virtual
machines. However, only VM1 and VM4 require protection. If a single virtual disk containing a single datastore is
created, all four virtual machines will be protected, but at a cost of replicating 400 GB of data across the network link to
a remote storage array.
Figure 2. Single Virtual Disk Replication
Using the same protection requirements, figure Multiple Virtual Disk Replication shows that the multiple virtual disks
created and only the virtual machines that require protection being replicated. The result is less data moving across the
network, as well as increased ability to control individual failovers of VM1 or VM4, if necessary.
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