I am looking to replicate our environment for DR purposes. We are running on VMWare and have SQL Server running on several servers. I need to replicate the volumes from primary equallogic to secondary equallogic. Is there a way to achieve this to get application consistent replicas of the volume?
For volumes that are configured for asynchronous replication between two Dell EqualLogic groups, you can use Dell EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager Microsoft Edition to create application-consistent Replica Smart Copies.
In your scenario, with ASM/ME, it is recommended to store SQL application data on iSCSI volumes - and not on virtual disks. If your SQL servers on on VMware VMs, then install ASM/ME on the VM Guest OS, and use the iSCSI initiator in the Guest VM to connect to the SQL database volumes.
To give some additional information to Michael's answer:
You'd want to create a 'guest attached iSCSI' setup. If you are using 2 x 1Gbit NICs for iSCSI, I'd recommend to buy another dual port NIC for iSCSI connectivity.
You would then set up these 2 ports on another vSwitch with 2 seperate VMPGs and bind each to a single port. Then you give the VM 2 extra vNICs (vmxnet3) and install ASM/ME. Now you give the VM it's own volume(s) and partition and format them in the VM. Then you move your DB and transaction logs to these volumes.
If you're using 4 x 1 Gbit, you could remove 2 iSCSI vmkernels, remove the NICs that those were bound to and do the same as above.
If you're using 2 x 10Gbit, you most likely can just create the 2 VMPGs on the same vSwitch.
If you're using full iSCSI HBAs (e.g. Qlogic), you will have to buy a dual port NIC and so like mentioned above.
Piggy backing the same 2 (1Gbit) NICs for guest iSCSI as the host uses for host iSCSI is not a good (long term) solution and I wouldn't recommend doing this.
michaelpacheco
66 Posts
1117
0
Posted July 22nd, 2014 07:00
Hello, Tom...
For volumes that are configured for asynchronous replication between two Dell EqualLogic groups, you can use Dell EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager Microsoft Edition to create application-consistent Replica Smart Copies.
Here is a useful document:
en.community.dell.com/.../download.aspx
Thanks,
Michael Pacheco