Dell PowerStore Configuring SMB

Overview

To enable enhanced redundancy and recovery if data loss occurs, PowerStore enables you to replicate NAS servers from a local system to a remote system.

By default, replication occurs at a NAS server level - all the file systems within the replicated NAS server are replicated to the remote system. You can select to add file systems or delete file systems from the NAS server when it is a part of a replication session.

You can select asynchronous replication, where the systems are synchronized based on a defined RPO, or synchronous replication, where changes are replicated from the source system to the destination system immediately when they occur.

The following pre-requisites are required to enable file replication:

• A file remote system
• A File Mobility network must be configured and mapped (see PowerStore T and Q Networking Guide for Storage Services on the PowerStore Documentation page).
• A protection policy that includes a replication rule.

Consider the following for NAS server replication:

• It is not required to define separate protection policies for NAS servers. The same protection policies can be applied to both block and file replication.
• You can delete file systems from the source system of a replication session. After deletion, only the remaining file systems are replicated to the destination. The status of the destination system is not impacted following the file system deletion. If you delete file systems from a replicating source NAS server and then fail over to the destination system, the file systems that were deleted from the old source are not replicated by the new source. If you want to replicate these file systems, generate clones that can be replicated and delete the file systems.
• You can fail over a replication session to the remote system. Failover occurs for all the file systems within the failed over NAS server.
• When you create a replication session, quotas are not visible on the destination system even if they are enabled on the source system.
• For asynchronous replication, RPO is configured at the NAS server level and is identical across all associated file systems.
• For synchronous replication, increasing the size of a file system that is under replication requires pausing the replication session first. Reducing the size of a file system does not require pausing the replication session.
• For synchronous replication, it is not possible to change the network latency of the replication system pair to a higher value than five milliseconds when synchronous replication sessions are defined.
• Switching between synchronous and asynchronous replication is not supported for file replication.

For detailed information about NAS server replication procedures, see Protecting your Data on the PowerStore Documentation page.