Dell PowerStore Configuring SMB

You can use planned failover to test disaster recovery. When you perform a planned failover, the NAS server replication session is manually failed over from the source system to the destination system. Before the failing over, the destination system is synchronized with the source system, to prevent any data loss.

Before performing a planned failover, be sure to stop I/O operations for any applications and hosts. You cannot pause a replication session that is undergoing a planned failover.

When operation is normal, changes made to the NAS server and file systems during the DR test are preserved and replicated back to the original source when reprotect is initiated (either manually or automatically). However, if you do not want to save the changes made during DR testing (either data or configuration), you can select to discard the changes, using REST API or PSTCLI commands:

• REST API - POST /replication_session/{id}/reprotect discard_changes_after_failover
• PSTCLI - replication_session -id <value> reprotect [-discard_changes_after_failover]

The changes that are discarded:

• For NAS Servers:
  • Configuration changes
• For file systems:
  • Configuration changes
  • File system data changes
  • Snapshot resources
  • File system size changes
  • Quota changes
• For exports and shares:
  • NFS export changes
  • SMB share changes

For details on using the REST API and CLI to discard changes after failover, see Dell PowerStore REST API Reference Guide and Dell PowerStore CLI Reference Guide at dell.com/powerstoredocs.

After the NAS server is reprotected, you can initiate a planned failover again to bring the resources online on the original source system.

There are two ways to initiate a planned failover:

• From Protection > Replication, select the relevant replication session, and then select Planned Failover.
• From the Protection tab of the resource, select Replication, and then select Planned Failover.

After a planned failover, the replication session is inactive. To synchronize the destination storage resource and resume the replication session, use the Reprotect action. You can also select the auto-reprotect option before failing over, which automatically initiates the synchronization in the opposite direction (at the next RPO) after the failover is complete, and returns the source and the target system to a normal state.