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