HP StorageWorks 4000/6000/8000 .HP StorageWorks SAN Design Reference Guide, Pa - Page 271

13 SAN Virtualization Services Platform This chapter describes HP SVSP. HP SVSP is a scalable platform that provides: • Centralized management of the HP SVSP domain and its objects • Multitiered data protection • Nondisruptive data provisioning • Local and remote replication and volume management HP SVSP improves array utilization by creating storage pools that span multiple arrays. Storage pools are managed using a single interface and are provided with a rich set of virtualization features, even though they span multiple physical devices from multiple vendors. After a storage pool is defined, a volume of storage, called a virtual disk, can be allocated from the storage pool to a server. The virtual disk size is flexible and independent of the size of physical storage component or any logical unit in the SAN. Features HP SVSP offers the following features: • The ability to create storage pools that span up to 16 arrays • SAN storage-based local and remote replication • Thin Provisioning for designated virtual disks, even if the array does not support Thin Provisioning • A centralized VSM GUI to manage all objects in the domain, providing a single view of data on multiple arrays • Data migration between arrays from multiple vendors • Disaster recovery for a site, array, or virtual disk • Bidirectional, asynchronous remote replication with automated initial normalization between source and destination NOTE: HP SVSP uses built-in iSCSI; therefore, no additional devices are needed to connect HP SVSP to the intersite IP network. See Table 137 for network requirements for asynchronous replication. • Synchronous mirroring across 100km or (0.5ms) one way over a Fibre Channel network • Native support for up to four site campus, metropolitan, and continental disaster-tolerant nl configurations • Virtual disk size of 1 GB to 2 TB • Virtual disk groups to preserve write-order consistency across multiple virtual disks • HP SAN API server-based CLI that allows scripted access to VSM • I/O continuation during normalization and merging, and data migration to another pool in the domain • Multiple-path failover support SAN Design Reference Guide 271