cbarbere
asked on
Disaster Recovery Replication Solution For FastT SAN's
Hey folks,
We're currently running an IBM FastT700 at our main site and an IBM FastT600 SAN at a hot site we have setup about 500 miles away for DR purposes. We are connected from our main site to the hot site using a DS3 and are currently running a product called Doubletake (by NSI) to replicate our data across the WAN link.
For most of our data it's working somewhat well, a full mirror taking a day or two for about 500 GB of data. We're running into issues though when it comes to our "Imaging and Scanning" data. We have an Imaging and Scanning package that stores a huge amount of image files as tiny .tif files. One of our big drives of that data contains about 340 GB of these tiny files, but because there are so many of them, over 1.1 million directories and 9.9 million files, it can take upwards of 20 days to do a full mirror.
It does not appear to be a bandwidth problem as the rest of our data pushes through quickly and we're not seeing any huge usage on our DS3, seems to just be an issue with the files themselves.
Has anyone come up with a good DR replication software/hardware solution for this type of scenario?
Thanks!
We're currently running an IBM FastT700 at our main site and an IBM FastT600 SAN at a hot site we have setup about 500 miles away for DR purposes. We are connected from our main site to the hot site using a DS3 and are currently running a product called Doubletake (by NSI) to replicate our data across the WAN link.
For most of our data it's working somewhat well, a full mirror taking a day or two for about 500 GB of data. We're running into issues though when it comes to our "Imaging and Scanning" data. We have an Imaging and Scanning package that stores a huge amount of image files as tiny .tif files. One of our big drives of that data contains about 340 GB of these tiny files, but because there are so many of them, over 1.1 million directories and 9.9 million files, it can take upwards of 20 days to do a full mirror.
It does not appear to be a bandwidth problem as the rest of our data pushes through quickly and we're not seeing any huge usage on our DS3, seems to just be an issue with the files themselves.
Has anyone come up with a good DR replication software/hardware solution for this type of scenario?
Thanks!
ASKER
Hey gdek, thanks.
I was thinking I'd have to do something on the lock level vs. the file level just like you mentioned. When you say "expensive" how expensive is that approximately? ;) Know of any other products that do the same as the netapp as well so I can check out a couple of options?
I was thinking I'd have to do something on the lock level vs. the file level just like you mentioned. When you say "expensive" how expensive is that approximately? ;) Know of any other products that do the same as the netapp as well so I can check out a couple of options?
Well, by expensive I mean $80K+!
IBM also has FlashCopy- check that one out. It's meant to work with/within the FastT and DS series arrays. It esseentially has the same functionality, it's bound to be a heckuva lot cheaper.
That WILL be your best option for block-level transfer for the money. I know others that use it successfully.
IBM also has FlashCopy- check that one out. It's meant to work with/within the FastT and DS series arrays. It esseentially has the same functionality, it's bound to be a heckuva lot cheaper.
That WILL be your best option for block-level transfer for the money. I know others that use it successfully.
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ASKER
Thanks for all the info...
And thanks for the points!
look for an image\block based replication product- ie a netapp v-series in front of your fastT's, whose snapmirror product does just that. Since you are dealing with actually replicating the disk geometry it should go much faster. Caution: expensive compared to doubletake, but it works much better and will not seal cpu from your server. Also, this product allows you to do the baselin to tape, restore remotely and resync the mirror- nice, eh?