Replication Manager and usingATA disk for Clones.

Question

Our E-mail team has decided to start replicating our Exchange 2003 server to a remote site using EMC Replication Manager. The Exchange server is connected to an EMC Clariion CX3-80. We have vast amounts of ATA storage available for them to use as clones; however they state that the clone storage must be the same type as the production Exchange LUN's, which is Fiber Channel. We have very little Fibre Channel storage available and would have to add more. Can anyone tell me if 300GB 2Gb ATA storage is acceptable to use for Replication Manager clones. The entire Exchange environment is 1.8TB over 6 disks.

AranH1 · Answer

From a purely DR perspective, your DR site does not have to be the same as production. Not everyone has the luxury of having the same level of performance at a DR site as the production site.

Exchange will "work" on slower speed high capacity disks. It just will not operate at the same level of performance as the production site. But that is obvious and I am sure you already understand that.

I think though that using slower devices and fewer spindles on the remote site may slow down the replication a little bit but that may be acceptable for your DR plan.

Personally for local clones and DR clones at our remote site we always use higher capacity, slower speed disks. It is an economical necessity.

Question for you though, what is the replication transport? MirrorView? Are the disks 320GB ATA (there were no 300GB ATA) or 300GB FC?

JD4ME1 · Answer

AranH you are correct. Our clone disks are 320GB ATA disks, not 300. Also, we would be using mirrorview as the transport.
Thanks for the resopnse. I was hoping for someone to say it's okay to use ATA for clones. I can see no reason why not.

Replication Manager

Replication Manager and usingATA disk for Clones.

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