Dell PowerStore Protecting Your Data

Using replication for disaster recovery

In this disaster recovery scenario, the source system, Boston, is unavailable due to a natural or human-caused disaster. A destination system, New York, was created, which contains a full copy, or replica, of the production data. Data access can be restored by failing over to New York because a replication session was configured between the Boston and New York systems.

Using replicas for disaster recovery minimizes potential data loss. The replica is up-to-date with the last time that the destination synchronized with the source, as specified in the associated replication rule. The amount of potential data loss is based on the recovery point objective (RPO) setting in the associated replication rule. The replication session can be failed over to the New York destination system, using the latest data that was replicated from Boston.

After the session is failed over to the New York system, it becomes read/write. When originally establishing a replication session between the source and destination systems, the storage resource was given the correct access permissions to the host and share. Creating the correct host access on the destination system ahead of time reduces downtime in an event of a disaster.

To resume operations on the Boston system, when it is available:

1. From the New York system, select the Reprotect option, which resumes the replication session in the reverse direction.
2. After the systems are synchronized, select the Planned Failover option on the New York system.
3. Select the checkbox to auto-reprotect the system after failing over. Or, after the failover is complete, on the Boston system, select Reprotect.