replication

[dfisher]

Is there any plans for replication/rsync between iscsi servers? We currently have two iscsi enterprise servers and would like to place one at our disaster recovery site and replicate the volumes between sites. I noticed that the source CD contains the rsync package. Thanks.

[To-M]

Resynchronization is only for FILE LEVEL synchronization, while in iSCSI we are
dealing with block level device. Whole new engine is being written
and will be available when ready.

[cstowe]

Is the new engine with replication still on track for early July availability? I've been running the ISCSI demo CD and like what I see so far. With replication, our company can sell your product to our customer base.

[To-M]

Just a note on version 1.70 - This is not ready yet please be patient.

Yes! Version 1.70 will be ready. Here is a short description of how it is designed.

volume replication:

Working of the replication is very similar to RAID 1.

The first stage is rebuilding of the destination to be the copy of the
source volume. Next stage (endless) is online modifying the destination
volume to keep the mirror. The difference comparing to the RAID 1 is that,
after any broken connection only the changed data will be 'rebuild' (again
first stage takes place) on the destination.

Note: the replication should be performed on separate NIC and the connection
should be as fast as the main network connection, to prevent lowering data
throughput.

Once you create the Target Volume you have the choice to set it as Source or
Destination to the mirrored server. Replication of volumes should be same
size.

Please contact 770-881-7680 for all of North America Pre-Sales questions.

[dfisher]

I still have not seen version 1.70 posted for iSCSI Enterprise. Will it be posted soon? Thanks.

[To-M]

We are in final testing for release, our engineers eagerly provide high quality and will not
release until all tests are valid.

[Brentvb]

I have not seen version 1.70 for iSCSI Enterprise.
Will be be there soon ?:)

[To-M]

The release of iSCSI Enterprise v1.70 that contains Target Volume Replication is not yet complete. Please be patient as there is allot of high level testing that has to take place in order for it to provide the maximum stability. We appreciate your desire to have this feature as this will provide so many benefits, but we will not release until all tests have been approved by our engineers.

[TonioRoffo]

How is failover handled in replication situations? Is there a method to switch to the other SAN if primary fails? Or do we have to do this manually?

My initiator would be ubuntu linux server.

Thanks for your reply!

[To-M]

When the new release of v1.70 is complete the function to provide Target Volume Replication is very similar to RAID 1.

The first stage is rebuilding of the destination to be the copy of
the source volume. Next stage (endless) is online modifying the destination
volume to keep the mirror. The difference comparing to the RAID 1 is that,
after any broken connection only the changed data will be 'rebuild' (again
first stage takes place) on the destination.

Note: the replication should be performed on separate NIC and the
connection should be as fast as the main network connection, to prevent
lowering data throughput. Once you create the Target Volume you have the choice to set it as Source or Destination to the mirrored server. Replication of volumes should
be same size.

Changing destination to source without loosing data is only possible when
data is consistent.

This is a manual operation on how to change source to destination:
1. Stop replication task on source or turn off server
2. Now it will be possible to change destination to source, when the data is
consistent.

[jayglate]

Would it be possible to load balance requests between them using LVS. It would be something like this http://www.howtoforge.com/high_availability_nfs_drbd_heartbeat

Basically this is two boxes replicated via DRBD and then load balanced. Can we not just load balances the requests (reads/writes) between the two and count the on replication engine to replicate the data?

Jay.

[To-M]

Jay,

I have read thru some of the documentation and researched in our database to see if this has been performed by any of our previous customers and could not find any. Currently we have Target Volume replication with new version 1.70 on our website for this update. If adding additional replication from what I read, this site references to provide highly available NFS servers, the iSCSI Enterprise is not a file sharing server. This would require our NAS-XSR Enterprise product. You can test this by downloading NAS-XSR Enterprise for 30 days link is below.

http://www.open-e.com/data_storage_solution/server/service_and_support.php?lang=en&subserv=trial_cd_downloads