By Duncan Epping, Principal Architect.
More and more storage vendors are certifying their stretched cluster solutions. Recently NetApp and IBM have both been added to the VMware HCL. Below you can find the links to the KB article which describe the supported configuration and the tested scenarios.
- Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller
- vSphere 5.0 support with NetApp MetroCluster
- Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) using EMC VPLEX
- Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HP LeftHand Multi-Site
Those at the point of deploying a stretched cluster I would highly recommend reading these KB articles. Get as familiar as you can with the failure scenarios described, test them over and over again. This is key for operating a stretched cluster and will also give you a deep understanding of how your environment responds to failures.
Disclaimer – EMCer here!
It’s GREAT to see other VMware storage partners join the vMSC.
There was a lot of work EMC put into the test harness with VMware as the first to go through about a year ago, and this was the outcome we wanted – to share the test harness, continue to partner with VMware to harden the stretched cluster use case.
It’s resulted in a lot for customers – look at the latest stuff in vSphere 5.0 u1 (VM HA response on PDL, VPLEX Geosynchony 5.1 support), the use cases of using a stretched cluster WITH SRM and more… We’ve made sure we continue to lead the way (lots to show at VMworld)