Building Disaster Recovery Serviceguard Solutions Using Metrocluster with Continuous Access for P9000 and XP A.11.00

5 Using XP or P9000 features in a Metrocluster Environment
Metrocluster with Continuous Access for P9000 and XP and thin
provisioning volumes
Metrocluster with Continuous Access for P9000 and XP includes support for Thin Provisioning
Volumes (TPVOLs) only on arrays XP20000, XP24000, P9500 and beyond, and P9000 disk array
family. When TPVOLs are configured, there is a possibility that the TPVOL utilization will exceed
the specified capacity or threshold of the pool. When this threshold is exceeded, the state of all
pool volumes are marked as BLOCKED. As a result, no I/O can be written to the TPVOLs, and
subsequently, the Metrocluster package fails. However, the package failover fails in the remote
site, as the pools at the remote site are also marked as BLOCKED, since the configuration is symmetric
with the configuration at the primary site.
To overcome this problem, the pool utilization must be manually monitored to determine when the
predefined threshold is achieved. By monitoring the utilization, additional storage space can be
allocated to the pool as and when required.
For more information about configuring and monitoring Thin Provisioning volumes, see the HP
StorageWorks P9000 Provisioning for Open Systems User Guide or HP StorageWorks
XP24000/XP20000 Thin Provisioning Software User's Guide at:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Product.jsp —>Storage Software —>
HP StorageWorks XP Array Manager Software —> Manuals.
Following are the guidelines that must be considered for configuring Thin Provisioning Volumes in
a Continuous Access Pair:
• This feature is supported on arrays XP20000, XP24000, P9500 and beyond.
• The Primary Volumes (PVOL) and Secondary Volumes (SVOL) must be Thin Provisioning
Volumes.
A combination of regular volumes with Thin Provisioning volumes is not supported.
• Only Continuous Access Synchronous and Journal configurations are supported with Thin
Provisioning Volumes.
• All synchronous fence levels with the values set as DATA and NEVER are supported.
• Journal volumes cannot be TPVOL.
• Pool volumes cannot be part of the Continuous Access pair.
• When pools used for a Metrocluster package are shared with other packages or applications,
ensure that the pools are not over provisioned by one application impacting the high availability
of the other applications.
• A Metrocluster package can have multiple pools or TPVOL.
• Configure adequate monitoring and alerting mechanisms for the ThP pools.
HP storage works smart tiers
Metrocluster with Continuous Access for P9000 and XP Version A.11.00 includes support for Smart
Tiers on HP Storage P9000 Disk Array family. Using Smart Tiers you can configure the storage
consisting of multiple kinds of hard disk drives including SSD, SAS, and SATA. All restrictions and
guidelines that are applicable to HP Storage P9000 Smart Tiers are applicable in the Metrocluster
environment. For information about HP Storage P9000 Smart Tiers, see the HP StorageWorks
P9000 Provisioning for open systems user guide at http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/
TechSupport/Product.jsp —>Storage Software.
Metrocluster with Continuous Access for P9000 and XP and thin provisioning volumes 61