VPLEX Metro is a storage virtualization appliance, it implements a distributed “virtualization” layer with and across geographically data centers ”the LUN is presented to the VPLEX and VPLEX will present it to the Server”; VPLEX Metro delivers availability and data mobility platform that enables mission-critical applications to remain up and running during a variety of planned and unplanned downtime scenarios
The VPLEX platform should be used at sites where 99.999% uptime is required. The major solutions that the VPLEX provides are avoid/reduce/eliminate cluster downtime, migration with near zero downtime and reduce latency for geo-clusters.
Additionally, VPLEX works with any kind of block storage on the backend “storage agnostic”. This will give the client the flexibility to choose any kind of storage backend in the future and not being locked onto products from a specific vendor; it also solves the problem of stretching clusters between local and remote sites.
The key to the use of VPLEX is data replication between SAN volumes whereby the data is mirrored on different storage arrays and can be accessed at any time from any of the arrays. This allows for seamless disk access across arrays from an application throughout maintenance or disaster scenarios.
To access the service, a user should create a stretched LUN “distributed device” then add it to a virtual volume group in VPLEX. This group will host all the LUNs that the service will use. The LUNs will be mirrored through specific policy with the other VPLEX on the secondary site.
In an event where the primary site goes down the second VPLEX will pick up the LUNS and keep presenting the LUNs to the stretched cluster. Except for the time required for the internal VPLEX process, failover is transparent to the services accessing the data.
All data communication between the two VPLEX takes place on the back-end.
Data Protection and Failover
At a minimum VPLEX will mirror the LUNs from the primary LUN to the secondary LUN with no latency. In case of a hardware failure or power failure VPLEX will failover the primary LUN to the secondary LUN with no downtime. This is implemented on the VPLEX layer. The user can still create different protection layers or add DR policy to this technology
VPLEX Metro Benefits
- Seamless failover without service interruption.
- Seamless migration without service interruption.
- Can create one cluster in two different geographical sites and fail over without service interruption.
Note: VPLEX is an In-line device, performance is not the goal of VPLEX; Mobility, High Availablity and Data Migration is the goal.
