Ask the Expert: VPLEX and RecoverPoint – What’s New?

Following today's press release, we are delighted to open up this discussion on what's new with VPLEX and Recoverpoint, .

We look forward to a fun, collaborative and informative discussion.

Regards,

Mark

Just reading about the new Recoverpoint offering, there is a software-only option for Recoverpoint?  What does that entail?  Would that be a recoverpoint installation that somehow doesn't use the Recoverpoint appliances?

Bubba Meetze

Hi Bubba,

Thanks for the first question.  You are absolutely correct.

RecoverPoint can now be configured as a software-only solution, a virtual RecoverPoint Appliance (vRPA).   The vRPA runs on a VMware virtual machine (VM) for less-demanding environments and is available with VNX.   This brings an affordable Tier-1 data protection product to the Midrange saving customers up to 60%. 

RecoverPoint now offers a choice to ensure the best value for a customer’s business and application environment.  Customers can still choose a physical RecoverPoint appliance (RPA) for maximum performance and multi-site configurations.    For small sites or less-demanding environments, customers can choose a software-only virtual RPA (vRPA) option for VNX for a lower total cost of ownership.

Steve

What type of documentation is posted online for the vRPA?  I have found a FAQ but not much else.

Hi

Please stay tuned - more documentation on the VRPA is forthcoming shortly.

Blogs from Chuck Hollis (Are Snaps Dead?) and Itzik Reich (RecoverPoint 4.0 Finally!) cover some additional details if you are interested.

Regards

Ashish

Is VPLEX now more integrated with VMware?

Hi

I wanted to confirm if version 4.0 allows more than just one remote and local copy of data.

Also I am at EMC World next week will demos be available?

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Yes, 4.0 allows up to 4 remote copies, or 1 local and 3 remote copies. One of the remote copies can be Sync, and the others (or all) could be Async. Each link is independent so it allows you to access different points in time in different locations - it's really cool.

Interestingly, since our implementation is symmetric, you can also replicate from multiple sites into a single location. This gives you the flexibility to build your multi-site environment any way you want.

Please visit the RecoverPoint booth at EMCworld for more details and to see demos. To specifically learn more about multi-site support, how it is implemented and performance considerations, join the session titled: "RecoverPoint: Optimizing Your Environment for Multi-Site Data Protection".

Yossi

Hi John,

Yes, VPLEX has added VAAI support, which offloads storage intensive operations to the arrays. This hardware acceleration enables your VMware hosts to scale by saving CPU and network bandwidth.

Steve

What is the advantage of the enhanced integration with VMware SRM for any-point-in-time recovery?

I understand that VPLEX is a virtualization layer which is capable of consolidating storage devices from different vendors. My question is :

1. Does this virtualization needs 3rd storage vendor support? For example, we want to consolidate backend IBM and HP storage, does VPLEX needs support from them? Or is it transparent to VPLEX?

2. In addition to virtualization, it looks like VPLEX's another bright spot of design is workload mobility. We are now able to move VM anywhere within or even between datacenter around the globe, but without storage movement, the VM mobility is nothing. So what's the main technology behind VPLEX to support such storage mobility along with VM mobility? How to make sure data consistency and at the same retain an acceptable performance?

thank you!

Hello:

Is there any update regardig whether or not thick pool LUNs will be supported for journal on VNX arrays?

Any news that this might be supported in RP 4?

Thanks

Hi

Thank you so much for your questions. Here are some responses to the questions you have raised:

1. VPLEX has a support matrix which includes EMC and non-EMC storage. You should be able to look at the support matrix to determine if your specific array is supported.

2. This question has multiple parts. So, I will try to separate the pieces out:

a. VPLEX provides its own 'copying' of data to create distributed virtual volumes. This is what allows the storage to be present in multiple locations simultaneously. The presence of this storage allows virtual machines to be migrated from one location to another.

b. VPLEX Local and Metro will respond back to the host only after the data has been written to the array (locally in the case of VPLEX Local and across both sites in the case of VPLEX Metro). This coupled with consistency groups within VPLEX will allow you to maintain data consistency that you seek.

c. The focus of your last question is around performance. There is an excellent white paper (EMC VPLEX: Elements of Performance and Testing Best Practices Defined) that talks about the best practices for VPLEX performance. As a gross summary, performance boils down to correct sizing of your environment for the expected I/O load and ensuring that you have sufficient bandwidth when going across sites (such as in a VPLEX Metro).

Please let us know if there are any additional questions that we could help with.

Regards

Ashish

> What is the advantage of the enhanced integration with VMware SRM for any-point-in-time recovery?

Hi John,

Thanks so much for the question.

With !RecoverPoint version 4, VMware SRM users can designate any of the available points-in-time, to be used once the SRM plan is executed. With this, the full potential of RecoverPoint is unleashed allowing users the same benefits they have as when not using SRM: For example utilizing a "golden" image or an application consistent point-in-time and checking out different points in time for a test/dev scenario.

The point in time selection is done through the EMC VSI extension to the vSphere client (a free plugin).

Regards,

Boaz

Is the multi-site replication supported with RecoverPoint/SE 4.0 ? If yes, can RecoverPoint/SE 4.0 replicate CX4 + VNX to VNX ?

Best Regards,

Sandro.