Ask the Expert: Data Protection for Critical Applications on Next-Generation VNX

Question

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED ON THESE ATE EVENTS... Ask the Expert: Transactional NAS and Next Generation VNXAsk the Expert: Best Practices for VNXe Capacity Planninghttps://community.emc.com/message/752499#752499 EMC provides a spectrum of data protection solutions depending on your RTO and RPO requirements. This Ask the Expert event focuses on new enhancements that allow you to improve data protection for business critical applications and reduce overall costs, including: Application Consistent Replicas: AppSync offers a simple, SLA-driven and self-service approach to protect virtualized Microsoft and VMware environments and now adds support for SQL Server 2008 and 2012, Exchange 2013, and VMware over NFS (File). Affordable Teir-1 Data Protection Capabilities: RecoverPoint 4.0 delivers near zero RPO and protects against both physical (remote) and operational (local) failures. Recover to ANY point-in-time to minimize data loss while reducing operational costs with Bandwidth Reduction and Synch over IP. Lower capital acquisition cost with the new Virtual RecoverPoint Appliance (vRPA). Continuous Operations: The combination of VPLEX and VNX delivers continuous active-active operations within and across data centers for VMware, Oracle RAC, and block data migrations. Application Uptime: New VNX active/active for block improves application uptime by allowing clients to access a Classic LUN simultaneously through both storage processors for improved reliability, ease-of management and improved performance. Your hosts: Parag Pathak is EMC's Sr. Product Marketing Manager for AppSync. Anand Paladugu is the Product Mananger for AppSync. Ely Cohen joined EMC in 2013, as Product Marketing Manager for RecoverPoint. As a team member in a number of startup companies over the years, Ely gained valuable technical knowledge, market understanding and business skills in different industries including enterprises, carriers and in the area of network management, voice and VoIP. Eli Lopez is EMC's Product Manager for RecoverPoint. He joined EMC in 2010 and has expertise in NAS, VNX, and RecoverPoint. Boaz Michaely is EMC's Product Manager for RecoverPoint. Brian Henderson is a Corp Systems Engineer turned Marketer. He worked in Microsoft solutions, launched AppSync, and is currently working in the  VNX Product Marketing with a focus on Microsoft, Data Protection, and VNXe. Check out his blog. This discussion will be moderated through September 16. Follow the thread in your inbox (see option on right) to receive updates! We are including a link to this White paper in support of this discussion: EMC VNX Replication Technologies: An Overview This white paper describes the replication technologies supported by the VNX series. Data is a critical component in the operation and function of organizations. Implementing data protection methodologies enables data centers to avoid disruptions in business operations. Every data center needs to replicate data for disaster recovery (DR) and redundancy. To protect data from disasters, replication technologies that enable you to securely store multiple copies of data are needed. This white paper covers RecoverPoint, VNX Replicator, MirrorView, Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF), and VPLEX.

Mabro1 · Answer

This discussion is now open. We look forward to a fun, interactive and informative discussion. Regards, Mark

dynamox · Answer

Q1. What stops Appsync supporting VMFS on block storage ?

Q2. Is MirrorView really dead , will RecoverPoint functionality ever be integrated into VNX platform (considering you have so much horse power now "MCx") ?

luigi_dm · Answer

Application Uptime: Q: is the ALUA defitley decommisioned with N.G. VNX ???

bhendu · Answer

Hi Dynamox! Q1. What stops Appsync supporting VMFS on block storage ? Answer: Nothing stops AppSync from supporting VMFS over block.  That was available in our first release of AppSync 1.0 that has been available for some time now. The new functionality which customers have been asking about is about supporting VMware datastores over block and file - and now in 1.5 we've added the file support with support for VMware datastores on NFS. Q2. Is MirrorView really dead , will RecoverPoint functionality ever be integrated into VNX platform (considering you have so much horse power now 'MCx') ? Answer: I wouldn't consider MirrorView dead, it's still an option that is built-into the array which provides specific functionality that some customers prefer.  In the big picture, however, RecoverPoint now offers all of the capabilities that were previously only available on MirrorView (including a big one recently when RecoverPoint offered multi-site support with RP 4.0). The integration points are there today including versions of RecoverPoint especially designed for VNX including RecoverPoint/SE and RecoverPoint vRPA (virtual RecoverPoint Appliance).  This RecoverPoint 'virtual edition' only requires an ESX server to run the RP software - lowering the cost of entry for many customers. Over time, we will continue enhancing this integration based upon customer feedback and adoption. Thanks, Brian

bhendu · Answer

ALUA is not decommissioned.

Active Active Symmetric Processing is only available on Classic LUNs at this time. Classic LUNs are our highest-performing LUNs so that is where we initially invested, and over time we intend to have comparable features for Pool LUNs.

scottboss1 · Answer

what about backing up to DataDomain?  has this been increased also or left behind?

dynamox · Answer

Brian Henderson wrote:

ALUA is not decommissioned.

Active Active Symmetric Processing is only available on Classic LUNs at this time. Classic LUNs are our highest-performing LUNs so that is where we initially invested, and over time we intend to have comparable features for Pool LUNs.

i am curious how many customers that purchased VNX are still using FLARE LUNs, i have a feeling there are a lot more customers using pools LUNs and that's where i would expect that functionality to be available first.

bhendu · Answer

Hi Scott,

Backing up VNX data to Data Domain is very common and something that we anticipate will continue to increase. These products are typically sold separately but are highly complementary. Recently VSPEX announced support and integration with VNX, Avamar, and Data Domain. I would also expect this integration to continue to increase over time.

scottboss1 · Answer

I know many customers using FLARE LUNs (aka luns out of a RaidGroup).

JamieD73 · Answer

For RecoverPoint support, is AppSync limited to RecoverPoint/SE?  And can you select a specific point in time from a RecoverPoint journal image in order to get a crash consistent image RecoverPoint support?

ParagPathak · Answer

Hi Jamie, AppSync is not limited to RecoverPoint/SE. It works with RecoverPoint/SE, RecoverPoint/EX, and RecoverPoint/CL when the storage device is a VNX. And yes, AppSync can do crash-consistent images by picking a point in time from the RP journal. Hope that helps. Thanks! Parag

ble1 · Answer

Existing core backup users of EMC portfolio will most likely use NetWorker.  In the past PowerSnap was handling snapshots on CLARiiON and whole snapshot suite has been redesigned in NW 8.1.  How does AppSync fit here?  Is it integrated or does it stand outside whole picture?

jpveen · Answer

Question about one of the old basics: hot spares.

From what I have seen hot spares are gone. All unbound drives on the array are eligible for use as spares.

However what about the customer with 5 sparedrives (which are all 5 unbound) where next week a storage admin comes in, needs additional capacity, and just by mistake uses all of the spares....

Can we somehow designate drives as reserved for sparing?

VSOFT2 · Answer

If we are using storage tiering with FAST VP, will it not create problems for application backup. Because a application will be present in Multiple tiers depending upon hot data.

bhendu · Answer

Storage tiering itself should not create problems for backup per se, but it doesn’t do anything specific to eliminate problems either.

Depending on your environment, FAST VP should accelerate backup. The data with the highest rate of change will be in the higher tiers, providing more performance for differential (most frequent) backups.

VNX

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