Have you ever seen a running database server move LIVE between Data centers across Cities?

Disaster proof Zero down time solutions is the topic of today' blog and i will start it with last week EMC VPLEX announcement where EMC showcased their new solution which enables you to present LUN's accross a 100KM away remote Datacenter while the actual storage is not there but present in local Datacenter. Another capbility of their Metro VPLEX solution is Distributed coherent cache which makes long distance Live migration [Hyper-V] and VMotion [Vsphere] possible [see videos below]. Though EMC claims this is something new, HP CLX and HP SVC provides this functionality of long distance Live migration already. [see videos below]

The key new feature that VPLEX provides is that different nodes across different datacenters can simultaneously read and right Lun on shared bus which means you can enable Cluster shared volume [CSV] feature on those nodes and though the physical nodes are in different geographical location [limited to 100KM as of now] they can share the VHD files placed on a CSV Lun provsioned via EMC VPLEX. Till now this was only possible by using ISCSI based SAN like HP Lefthand, Dell Equalogic etc.

Another benefit of VPLEX is that it runs on a layer above storage so EMC and Non EMC storage array can be aggregated to create new Luns. Ok Fair enough, now you can have the pleasure of watching the videos where running database server move LIVE between Data centers across Cities!

EMC VPLEX - Simple, Scalable vMotion over distance


Hyper-V Long distance Live Migration with HP StorageWorks


The intention of the article was to give you a quick insight of new storage solutions including quick intro to VPLEX which can be leveraged for disaster proof datacenters. Hope you enjoyed the Videos!

GAURAV ANAND