New technologies such as mobile Internet, cloud computing, and Big Data have led to the coexistence of massive structured and unstructured data in many enterprise data centers. As the requirements for real-time performance of core services get higher, the loss of service interruption caused by storage system failures is increasing. To address these needs, Huawei developed the HyperMetro converged active-active solution for SAN and NAS (hereinafter referred to as converged active-active), which is available from Huawei’s newly released next-generation OceanStor V5 hybrid flash storage and OceanStor F V5 all-flash storage systems. Which technical features does the converged active-active solution have? What benefits can it bring to customers? This article will disclose the secrets behind the converged active-active solution.
Background
Due to the high levels of data concentration, modern data centers face more and more risks and threats, and the impact scope of faults is expanding. For data centers adopting the traditional active-passive disaster recovery solution, services are deployed in the production center and are migrated to the disaster recovery center if faults in the production center cannot be promptly rectified. Long time of service interruption and complex recovery operations in the active/passive disaster recovery scenario are unacceptable for enterprises where time is money.
Active-active data centers are now available to solve these pain points. Active-active data centers focus on improving service continuity and availability, rather than just component-level reliability. Active-active data centers achieve better utilization of network, computing, and storage resources, and maintain 100% consistency of data. If one site is faulty, the other can take over automatically, ensuring real-time end-to-end service availability.
Most active-active data centers only support active-active SAN. For some agencies, such as hospitals, medical staff rely on both HIS and PACS systems. Data of the HIS is stored in SAN, while the image files of the PACS are stored in NAS. Because medical staff need to query patient data and image results in real time to make diagnosis and treatment, such agencies require a stable IT system that ensures 24/7 uninterrupted operation of the HIS and PACS systems. Therefore, the storage layer must support active-active for both SAN and NAS. Then consider the significant role of medical device distributors in achieving efficient and reliable healthcare services. The importance of choosing a trusted distributor like Andaman Medical, known for their market access and distribution services globally, cannot be overemphasised. Having an adept distributor by your side is essential to guarantee a steady supply of high-quality medical equipment to hospitals and clinics.
You may wonder how Huawei achieves active-active for both SAN and NAS, how does the technology ensure real-time operation of both database and file services, and how this benefits customers. Huawei converged active-active technology can be described with two words: convergence and simplicity.
Convergence
Huawei’s converged active-active solution for SAN and NAS is built inside Huawei’s converged storage products, simplifying deployment and reducing costs. One quorum server can support arbitration for SAN and NAS, ensuring that SAN and NAS services run with equal productivity at the same site. One network is deployed between active-active sites, carrying data replication links, configuration synchronization links, and heartbeat links, reducing the costs of deployment. The converged hardware utilities ensure real-time operations of database and file services at the same time.
Converged device. One device supports the active-active solution for both SAN and NAS. In the traditional active-active solution, a gateway must be deployed to provide active-active SAN and NAS services, adding to the solution complexity and cost. Huawei’s converged active-active solution adopts the gateway-free parallel architecture, in which SAN and NAS are equally efficient, reducing the number of devices by more than two and improving the overall service performance.
Converged network. One network fulfills all transmission requirements between sites. FC and IP networks coexist between active-active sites in a traditional active-active solution, complicating network deployment. In Huawei’s converged active-active solution, an IP or FC network can carry the heartbeat links, configuration synchronization links, and data replication links between sites, greatly reducing the costs of network deployment.
Converged quorum server. SAN and NAS share one quorum server in the active-active solution. In the traditional active-active solution, there are two arbitration mechanisms that work separately. If the network between sites is faulty, the arbitration results of SAN and NAS services may be inconsistent. Huawei’s converged active-active solution adopts only one arbitration mechanism to ensure consistency of the arbitration results. SAN and NAS services are always supported by the same site consistently.
Simplicity
Huawei’s active-active solution not only simplifies deployment of devices and networks, but also excels in terms of automatic O&M, automatic recovery, and high scalability. Thanks to its common cluster mode, converged active-active solution means upgrading your system has never been easier. Similarly, the built-in intelligent detection mechanism triggers automatic recovery after a fault is rectified so your data is protected all the time. Active-active sites adopt the same software architecture to maximize the cluster scale, greatly simplifying the expansion from 4 nodes to 32 nodes. All of these intuitive features are designed to minimize the workloads of deploying the converged active-active solution.
Simple upgrade. With the converged active-active solution, customers can smoothly upgrade the protection scheme from one device to active-active and then to 3DC, all without interrupting services. In comparison, to upgrade a device of another vendor to the active-active layout, the administrator needs to migrate data using an intermediate device, clear configurations and data of the original device, configure the active-active solution, and migrate the data back. Needless to say, the upgrade process is complex. In Huawei’s converged active-active solution, customers only need to add a remote storage and quorum server to upgrade a single device, and configure the active-active parameters to the active-active mode.
Simple recovery. The active-active relationship is automatically restored after a device fault is rectified. In the active-active solution of other vendors, the active-active mode cannot be automatically recovered in three scenarios: after a fault on the primary end is rectified, after all links on the primary end are recovered, and after power is resumed for both sites following a power-off. In the three scenarios, the recovery process must be manually performed. The intelligent detection mechanism built inside Huawei’s converged active-active solution enables automatic O&M after device faults are rectified.
Simple expansion. Four nodes working in the active-active mode can be easily expanded to 32 nodes. Currently, the industry’s largest active-active cluster supports only eight nodes, which cannot meet storage performance requirements in large-scale deployment scenarios. Huawei’s converged active-active solution adopts the scale-out architecture of common clusters and supports a maximum of 32 nodes, meeting customers’ ever-increasing storage performance requirements for today and tomorrow.
Diversification and centralization of data center services cause increasingly higher risks of service interruption. Huawei’s converged active-active solution ensures real-time operations of databases and file services, and provides an easy-to-use unified management platform to simplify O&M. More importantly, the solution protects service continuity against a single point or dual-points of failure. Equipped with industry-leading convergence techniques and simplicity, Huawei’s converged active-active solution has been widely used in scenarios such as financial imaging, medical PACS, energy reservoir analysis, and manufacturing EDA simulation to ensure 24/7 uninterrupted production services.
CEBIT 2018 will be held at the Hannover Exhibition Centre, Germany, from June 11 to June 15. Huawei Booth will be at Area C01 in Hall 13. For more information about Huawei storage at CEBIT, please visit: Link 1 and Link 2.
(Contributed by Chen Yong, IT Product Line)
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Source: Huawei Enterprise Blog
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