User Manual

QuickSpecs
HPE MSA 1040 Storage
Optional Software
Page 17
Customer
Benefits
Disaster Recovery
Replication technology has typically been used to address disaster recovery issues. Disaster recovery is still the
driving business case behind replication. Remote replication can be implemented from the production site to one or
more remote sites across a campus, across town, across a state or across the country. When a disaster strikes the
primary location, the applications can be brought up at the remote site and continue processing against the
replicated copies. When the primary site is back online, the replication can be reversed and when the data is
resynchronized, processing can be switched back to the primary site and business can continue. In the past, if an e-
mail system experienced a disaster it was an "oh well" moment. The loss of a day or more of e-mail was not
considered important. Today, e-mail is a critical component of many companies' business plans and recovering e-
mail after a disaster quickly and completely is required.
Maintenance
HPE Remote Snap software can also be used to solve other business needs. For instance, E-mail servers may need
periodic maintenance that can take hours to complete. With remote replication in place, the downtime can be
minimal (as long as it takes to bring the remote peer of the primary e-mail server online). The primary server can be
worked on (patches, hardware upgrades, etc.) and then brought back online and into production. A whole
datacenter can be failed over to a remote site on purpose to perform maintenance on generators, air conditioning,
etc. Replication can also be used to perform a datacenter move with minimal downtime (fail everything to the DR
site, move the production datacenter to its new location then fail the DR site back to the new datacenter).
Storage Based
Data replication is performed at the storage subsystem controller level and is totally transparent to the host,
alleviating unnecessary host cycles to perform the data mirroring functions. Unlike a fabric based or host based
solution, the storage based solution dedicates its resources to managing the replication process between arrays,
with minimal impact to applications, other data or devices on the SAN.
Bi-Directional