yeah ..device groups are just logical containers that allow you to group devices ..so it's easier to manipulate them.

Great, that makes my life much easier. I figured it had to be possible, but just wanted to make sure there wasn't some other step in there, that I was missing. I was afraid I would wipe out the production database, if I added the disks that were already in use. Thanks a lot for the help, I really appreciate it.

Here in Italy our kids learn what we call "Insiemi di Eulero Venn" when they are 6 to 8 years old .. They spend hours drawing circles around red apples, green apples and bananas to draw "subsets" of a bigger and complex set of items ..

In my mind DiskGroups are the same as the circles our child learn at primary school .. You simply draw circles around all the devices that a host can use .. and later you'll target this "subset" of devices with commands ..

As long as you draw circles, you do nothing that can hurt your beloved devices .. Troubles may start when you issue commands against DGs

you always have interesting analogies ..i'll give you that

My apologies first...as I am coming late to this thread and may not have caught the full meaning of what you ask, since I seem to read your needs differently.

You say you have a SAN - I will take that has 1 SAN
You say you have been tasked to replicate your Prod data (disks) on Prod server to a Dev server.

If your simply looking for a "copy", you could set up new disk on the Dev server and copy your data across. That would be a one time copy. Quick & easy.

If your looking to have a daily updated version of your Prod data (disks) on your Dev (disks) you could set up BCV disks on your Dev server. Set up your device group on both your Prod and Dev, with the BCV's in the group. Then nightly, via a simply script, you could sync them and then split them and remount your refreshed BCV (Dev server) disks back up. Thus keeping them seperate during production hours. This takes a bit longer, but is often what I see for shops that want to run a second copy of a database for reports (read only access) and such. Or to mount and leave idle so they can be used to do cold backups.

From the earlier threads, maybe I mis-read, but it sounds like (especially since you say your new to EMC) you might mistakenly give access to your Prod disks to both Prod -AND- Dev. And that could be a problem.

Just a thought,
Rita