How are SANTap/Recoverpoint and ornamental grasses a like? Well think about this, grasses can be used in all different types of landscapes and climates. Whether its the tall prairie grass of the Midwest or the brown, itchy, sneezy bermandagrass in my backyard. Grasses..overcome..and integrate nicely into any environment.

Quick Facts..

• Grasses are adaptable to changing conditions and can thrive in poorer quality soils than any other plant
• Grasses seemly operate with little effort to maintain
• Grasses come in many flavors, colors, textures, heights, etc.

As you can see the power of grass (ease up there Captain Toke, not that kind of grass) elevates beyond all that is indigestible in this world…

So what the hell am talking about? Lets flip the script..

Quick Facts

• RecoverPoint is adaptable to changing conditions in your environment. Whether your WAN link is 10Mbps or 200 +Mbps, through a combination of BW reduction and WAN acceleration this whistle shines under any situation. Integration is non-disruptive to hosts which is a must in today's ever changing Data Center.
• RecoverPoint seemly operates with little effort. Once the initial setup is complete, the system for the most part is always dynamically adapting to write changes to maintain consolidated or non-consolidated snapshot pushes to other appliances. You simply add additional journal volumes to maintain your RPO or another wards pop on the cruise kids you never realized replication could be so fluent.
• RecoverPoint via SANTap has the power to replicate from and to nearly any array and nearly any OS. OSs and arrays of any type, vendor, color, texture or height : )

Ok, ok enough fun for the day…how much can one really talk about Ornamental grasses in one post, eh? I had fun..

Modus  Operandi

Although all of these explanations and Operandi are covered here, I thought I would take a page from my engineering notes to give you, my faithful readers, a crib sheet for your future fabric splitter/RecoverPoint gigs. See you in the field!

Summary of what goes in what VSAN

The Front End VSAN will encompass the following:

• Host initiator ports (HBA ports)
• DVT (Data Virtual Target)

The Back End VSAN will encompass the following:

• RPA’s (RecoverPoint Appliances)
• Storage Targets
• CVT (Control Virtual Target)
• VI (Virtual Initiators)
• AVT (Appliance Virtual Target)
• Any host initiators that will not be under SANTap’s services but need to access Storage ports in the BE VSAN

What I have to create

• FE VSAN, the assumption is the current VSAN in a non-recoverpoint environment will be the BE VSAN.
• A DVT for each BE storage target in the FE VSAN
• One CVT per BE VSAN
• AVT in the BE VSAN
• Zoning below..

Zoning that needs to take place

• Create  a host to storage zone in the FE VSAN. You copy the zoneset from the BE VSAN for use in the FE VSAN. Otherwise create new and zone all host initiators in the FE VSAN to the DVTs.
• Once all host initiators are in the FE VSAN, all traffic should be flowing through the SANTap module. Now we can introduce RP, no impact to the host and completely transparent.
• Zone CVT with VI and RPA ports
• Create AVT, add all RPA ports to zone

Explanation of each Acronym Above

FE and BE VSANs – Front End and Back End Virtual SAN. In a simple ST implementation there is the concept of FE VSANs and BE VSANs. This is a requirement for SANTap in this proxy mode setup. Proxy mode basically means the host must exist in a different VSAN than the storage targets. These are setup on the MDS itself per fabric. The FE VSAN will contain all host initiator ports and the DVT or Data Virtual Target.

DVT- Data Virtual Target (FE). This is a virtual instance of your storage ports. Data sent to a DVT from a host is forwarded to both the BE storage ports and the RPA (which enables replication). You will have a DVT for each storage port on your BE array. The DVT communicates with the CVT and the BE storage ports.

CVT – Control Virtual Target (BE). This is the interface used by RecoverPoint to talk to the SANTap services. It also sends a copy of the write I/O to the RPA itself.

AVT – Appliance Virtual Target (BE). This allows for masking of the RPA’s themselves allowing it to mimic the host itself, ultimately given the RPA’s the same view of the SAN that the host see’s.

VI – Virtual Initiators (BE). This is the virtual instance of your host initiators. To the storage ports this looks as though the real host is writing to it. This gets created automatically when a host in the FE VSAN logs into the DVT.

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