Best practices for Remote Copy

Consider the following best practices before setting up your Remote Copy system.

• Distance between the systems

  • Storage systems in the same room can be connected through network adapter (NIC) switches, or through FC networks. Longer distances require other topologies.

  • For disaster recovery purposes, the distance between storage systems depends on the disaster from which you need to recover (for example, a local power outage verses a widespread natural disaster).

  • In synchronous replication mode, the latency of Remote Copy writes increases with distance.

• Bandwidth

  RCIP configurations can fully use all 1 Gbps or 10Gbs links during the synchronization process. If you use networks with lower throughput, the throughput between systems running Remote Copy software might be capped by the network speed.

• Connection requirements

  Network connections (or transport methods) can be IP or FC.

• Data availability and speed

  • To maintain data availability, you must use at least two links to connect storage systems.

  • Remote Copy requires at least two separate network connections between storage systems to ensure availability in case one of the networks fails. For optimal availability, connect the two HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems to separate network equipment.

  • When there are multiple physical links between the storage systems, Remote Copy uses all the available links that are configured for the same Remote Copy target to transmit data in parallel.

  • To limit the potential for data loss, Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends that synchronous mode replication be used whenever the additional write latency will not exceed the maximum write latency tolerable by the application whose data is being replicated.