How to utilize VNX to synchronize Active/Active file server in two sites ?

i think you need to look into VPLEX

if you to write to one volume from different systems you need some kind of federation system

You need to be a bit more specific

Why do I need EMC VPlex ? is there anything special with VPLEX ?

because I'd like to utilize the current infrastructure investment that I have here to achieve the result above.

Dynamox,

Isthere any example of what sort of Federation System that I need to implment ?

VPLEX provides that federation.

With only RDM luns as the criteria (might need bit more information), VPlex looks like the best option since it would provide the capability of Storage Federation to support and manage multiple arrays from a single source.

Unfortunately I do not have access to use VPlex at the moment because my company has already invested in the VNX 5300 and 5500 series with fully loaded DAE & FAST cache.

is there any software base solution or any other feature of VNX ?

Rainer,

What I mean Active/Active is that both file servers which is used to host user home drives in both data centers can be accessible for the users.

I was thinking some other technologies to be used like EMC VNX Replicator to replicate the data at the background without having to reinvest in major hardware.

so far based on Googling around my choices are limited to the following:

Physical RDM LUN presented as NTFS to the VMware VM and then configure DFS-R replication to both data center.

EMC VNX presenting CIFS share to the File server VM......

I'm still new to this type of technology so any kind of assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Replicator wont work – neither will block based mirroring like MirrorView

They all work the way that the secondary site is readonly until a failover

Even it they would allow active/active block access from two locations like VPLex that alone still wouldn’t help to put two Windows servers as active/active with the same file system on top since NTFS is not a cluster file system.

Sure you can create a CIFS share on both sides – but that each side would be a separate CIFS server and file system

Hm.. so in this case the block base NTFS solution is not an option with my current VNX hardware ?

how about creating it as CIFS share on both sites ? is there any technology that can assist ?

so far the CIFS share is not as reliable as the block based FC or iSCSI connection.