Hello and welcome to this unity video covering asynchronous file replication. In this video, we will discuss unity's native support for replication. Review the order of operations for asynchronous file replication then close with a demonstration and list of additional resources storage and it administrators can be challenged with keeping their data available in the face of natural disasters, power loss and network failures, losing access to a learn or file system is simply not an option to this end data replication is an adequate solution for storing data concurrently across locations.
For example, a disaster recovery site can be set up a distance away from the production data center. So disaster scenarios can be survived by the recovery site. Asynchronous replication sets an interval on the order of minutes to hours known as a recovery point objective or RPO tracks the change data over that RPO interval and transfers only the modified data to the destination site. There is also the option to configure a manual replication session where data is only sent to the destination. When the user runs a sync asynchronous replication leverages Unity's unified snapshots technology for tracking changes to the source resource between RPO intervals when a replication session is established, two system snapshots are created on the source and destination storage resources.
You will see these snapshots in unisphere but they are not user modifiable and do not count towards snapshot limits. The snapshots are refreshed and updated during each RPO interval to keep the source and destination resources in sync unity offers native support for asynchronous file replication. Perform asynchronous replication between storage pools on a single system or between two remote systems. Native support means that no third party tools or appliances are needed to configure and perform replication. This video covers asynchronous file replication. If you are interested in the other forms of native replication on unity. Additional references are available on E MC online support and are covered at the end of this video configuring a replication session involves the following steps, create replication interfaces on your systems.
These interfaces are used for communication between your two systems, establish a replication connection between the systems. A replication connection enables replication sessions to be created between the two systems. Replication connections can be established between systems in asynchronous synchronous or both synchronous and asynchronous mode. Finally configure replication sessions on existing storage resources or as part of creating a new storage resource. Asynchronous file replication is supported between purpose-built unity systems and unity VSA systems. Asynchronous file replication can be configured on the following file resources.
NAS servers, file systems and VMWARE NFS data stores. There are additional considerations for configuring asynchronous file replication for a file system or VMWARE NFS data store to be replicated. Its parent NAS server must first be replicated for ease of use. When an existing NAS server is configured for replication, its associated file systems and VM ware NFS data stores will automatically be replicated to ensure access consistency, perform fail over operations. First on the NAS server replication session, then on its associated file systems and data stores, our demonstration will walk through the replication setup and creation process on a new NAS server and file system.
We will be using a purpose built unity system and a unity vs A. Our two systems already have storage pools configured. We will start in unisphere of our purpose built unity system on the main dashboard, click replication on the left navigation pane. From this page, we will be able to manage all parts of our application. Begin by clicking interfaces, click the plus button to open the create replication network interface menu. We will input the IP information for our replication interfaces, click OK and wait for the interfaces to be created. The interfaces have been created successfully and are now listed on the interfaces page. A replication interface has already been configured on our unity VS A.
So we can click the connections tab to create a replication connection, click the plus button to open the create replication connection menu. We will input the management IP and log in information for our unity VSA system. For security purposes, we will enter the administrator password for this purpose built unity system for connection mode, we will keep it as asynchronous and click. OK. A job will be started to establish the replication connection between the two systems. Once complete, we can configure an asynchronous file replication session. Let's create a new NAS server and configure it to be replicated click file on the left navigation pane. We are brought to the file systems page where we will see the file systems provisioned on the system to create a file system. We will first need a NAZ server.
Click the NAS servers tab, click the plus button to open the create and NAS server wizard give the NAS server a name, select a storage pool and click next. We will enter an IP address subnet mask and gateway information for our NAZ servers, network interface. Then click next for sharing protocols. We will select windows shares. We will enter the windows domain and administrator password for our active directory server. Then click next, we will leave UNIX directory service, unchecked and click next on the DNS step. We will click add and add our DNS server, then click add. And then next the replication step is where we will configure the replication settings for the NAS server. Check the enable replication box, then review the options. Replication mode will remain asynchronous. We will change the RPO to 120 minutes and we will keep the replication to our unity VSA system.
Click next, review the summary of our NAZ server and click finish to start the creation. Once the job is completed, we can click close to close this window. Our NAZ server has been created and configured for replication. Double click the NAS server to open the NAS servers properties. Click the replication tab. Notice that a picture of the replication session is displayed to easily verify the direction of replication. Below the picture are the set of actions available for the replication session including pause, sync, fail over with sync and delete. Notice that only the applicable replication operations for the given system and resource are available. Let's create a file system on this NAS server and replicate it.
Click close to close out of the NAS server properties page, then click file systems, click the plus button to open the create a file system wizard. We will select our NAS server, then click next, let's name our file system. Then click next, select a storage pool and set the size to 250 gigabytes. Click next, we will check SNB share so that a share is created with the file system and name it to match the file system's name. We can see that the S and B share pa has been updated to match the share name we provided. Click next, click next to move past the additional S and B share setting step.
We will leave the snapshot settings as is and click next on the replication step, we can see that enable replication is already checked and the replication settings have been automatically adjusted to match the NAS server replication session. We will click next, review the summary, then click finish to start the creation process. The file system and SNB share will be created and replicated. And when the operation has finished, we will click close. We've already seen the replication tab from a storage resources properties page. Let's review the file system replication session from the replication page. Click replication.
We can see our file system replication session as well as our NAZ server replication session. Double click the file system replication session to show the replication session's details. Click close, click more actions here, we can review the actions that are currently available for this replication session. This concludes the demonstration for more information about replication on unity. Please refer to the videos titled E MC Unity, Asynchronous block replication and E MC unity synchronous block replication as well as the white paper titled E MC Unity Replication Technologies. These resources are available from EMC online support.
