On Jun 8, 2010, at 5:17 PM, Moazam Raja wrote: > Hi all, I'm trying to accomplish server to server storage replication > in synchronous mode where each server is a Solaris/OpenSolaris machine > with its own local storage. > > For Linux, I've been able to achieve what I want with DRBD but I'm > hoping I can find a similar solution on Solaris so that I can leverage > ZFS. It seems that solution is Sun Availability Suite (AVS)?
Yes. > One of the major concerns I have is what happens when the primary > storage server fails. Will the secondary take over automatically > (using some sort of heartbeat mechanism)? Once the secondary node > takes over, can it fail-back to the primary node once the primary node > is back? This functionality is not built into AVS itself, it is usually done by a high availability manager, such as NexentaStor's Simple-HA with Auto-CDP, or a disaster recovery manager such as Oracle's Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition. > My concern is that AVS is not able to repair the primary node after it > has failed, as per the conversation in this forum: > > http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=19096 > > "AVS is essentially one-way replication. If your primary fails, your > secondary can take over as the primary but the disks remain in the > secondary state. There is no way to reverse the replication while the > secondary is acting as the primary." I'm not sure where the poster got this information, or how it seems to be at odds with the design goals of AVS. Perhaps they only looked at one piece of the puzzle and then got lost? > Is AVS even the right solution here, or should I be looking at some > other technology? Out of the box, AVS is just one part of a total solution. What we've done at Nexenta is to automate and greatly simplify AVS administration with the Auto-CDP plugin. From an administrator's point of view, you point Auto-CDP at the local ZFS volume, point each disk in the volume at a disk on the remote machine, and push the go button. Changing the flow is done with a simple CLI command. On top of Auto-CDP, the Simple-HA plugin manages the start of services and IP address migration between the two systems. Once again, the plumbing is hidden behind the walls and the administration interface is short and sweet. For more information, see the docs at: http://www.nexenta.com/corp/documentation -- richard -- Richard Elling rich...@nexenta.com +1-760-896-4422 ZFS and NexentaStor training, Rotterdam, July 13-15, 2010 http://nexenta-rotterdam.eventbrite.com/ _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
