Dell EMC Powermax and VMAX All Flash: SRDF/Metro Overview and Best Practices
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Best Practices Dell EMC PowerMax and VMAX All Flash: SRDF/Metro Overview and Best Practices Abstract SRDF/Metro significantly changes the traditional behavior of SRDF to better support critical applications in high availability environments. This document covers the SRDF/Metro enhancement for Dell EMC™ PowerMax, VMAX3™, and VMAX™ All Flash storage arrays. September 2020 H14556.7 Revisions Revisions Date Description September 2019 Content and template update September 2020 Updates for PowerMaxOS Q3 2020 release Acknowledgments Author: Michael Adams The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. Copyright © 2019–2020 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. [9/25/2020] [Best Practices] [H14556.7] 2 Dell EMC PowerMax and VMAX All Flash: SRDF/Metro Overview and Best Practices | H14556.7 Table of contents Table of contents Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................................... 2 Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Executive summary ............................................................................................................................................................. 5 Audience ............................................................................................................................................................................. 6 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Key differences ................................................................................................................................................... 8 2 Configuring SRDF/Metro ............................................................................................................................................ 10 2.1 Createpair operation ......................................................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Device pair synchronization .............................................................................................................................. 10 2.3 Device pair operation ........................................................................................................................................ 11 2.4 FAST integration ............................................................................................................................................... 11 3 SRDF/Metro resiliency ............................................................................................................................................... 12 3.1 Understanding bias ........................................................................................................................................... 12 3.2 Understanding the array-based witness ........................................................................................................... 14 3.3 Understanding the Virtual Witness (vWitness) ................................................................................................. 17 3.4 PowerMaxOS / Solutions Enabler 9.0 (and greater) Witness Enhancements ................................................. 19 3.4.1 Bias implications ............................................................................................................................................... 20 3.5 Use bias resiliency option ................................................................................................................................. 20 3.6 Witness best practices for redundancy............................................................................................................. 21 3.7 Witness behavior during failures and recovery ................................................................................................ 21 3.7.1 Witness selection and promotion ...................................................................................................................... 21 3.7.2 System failures ................................................................................................................................................. 21 3.7.3 System recovery ............................................................................................................................................... 22 4 Example host support matrix ...................................................................................................................................... 23 5 Features and functionality by service release ............................................................................................................ 24 5.1 PowerMaxOS 5978 Q3 2020 service release .................................................................................................. 24 5.2 PowerMaxOS 5978 Q2 2019 service release .................................................................................................. 24 5.3 PowerMaxOS 5978 Q2 2018 service release .................................................................................................. 24 5.4 HYPERMAX OS Q3 2016 service release ....................................................................................................... 25 5.5 HYPERMAX OS 5977.811.784 service release ............................................................................................... 25 6 SRDF/Metro device maintenance (add/move operations) ......................................................................................... 26 6.1 Createpair –exempt .......................................................................................................................................... 26 6.2 Movepair –exempt ............................................................................................................................................ 26 3 Dell EMC PowerMax and VMAX All Flash: SRDF/Metro Overview and Best Practices | H14556.7 Table of contents 6.3 Understanding the consistency exempt status ................................................................................................. 27 7 SRDF/Metro online device expansion (ODE operations) ........................................................................................... 29 8 SRDF/Metro Smart DR ............................................................................................................................................... 30 8.1 Witness configuration ....................................................................................................................................... 30 8.2 Environment definition ...................................................................................................................................... 30 8.3 Smart DR setup ................................................................................................................................................ 31 8.4 Converting SRDF/Metro with DR to Smart DR ................................................................................................. 32 8.5 Smart DR removal ............................................................................................................................................ 33 8.6 Adding devices and Online Device Expansion (ODE)...................................................................................... 33 8.7 Smart DR control operations ............................................................................................................................ 34 8.7.1 Solutions Enabler SYMCLI control operation syntax ........................................................................................ 35 8.8 Monitoring Smart DR ........................................................................................................................................ 36 9 Best practices ............................................................................................................................................................. 42 9.1 Boot from SAN support ..................................................................................................................................... 42 9.2 Host multipathing software ............................................................................................................................... 42 9.3 AIX native multipathing software ...................................................................................................................... 43 9.4 AIX, GPFS, and PowerPath 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