HP P6000 Cluster Extension Software Administrator Guide (5697-2274, November 2012)

1 P6000 Cluster Extension features
HP P6000 Cluster Extension offers protection against application downtime due to a fault, failure,
or site disaster by extending a local cluster between data centers over metropolitan distance.
P6000 Cluster Extension reinstates critical applications at a remote site within minutes of an adverse
event, integrating your open-system clustering software and HP P6000 Continuous Access to
automate failover and failback between sites. This dual integration enables the cluster software to
verify the status of the storage and the server cluster. The cluster software can then make correct
failover and failback decisions, thus minimizing downtime and accelerating recovery.
Integration into cluster software
P6000 Cluster Extension Software provides tight integration with the cluster software and is managed
as a resource of the clustered application service (like a disk or IP address).
P6000 Cluster Extension integrates with Microsoft Failover Cluster (MSCS)
For supported cluster software versions, see the HP SPOCK website: http://www.hp.com/storage/
spock.
Graphical user interface
P6000 Cluster Extension for Windows can be configured using the Failover Cluster Manager GUI.
P6000 Cluster Extension offers full integration into the GUI so that you can easily set and change
resource values.
CLI for easy integration
P6000 Cluster Extension provides a CLI to enable disaster tolerant environments if no cluster
software is available for your operating system or if you want to integrate HP P6000 Continuous
Access with your choice of cluster software.
This feature is useful if you use custom software to migrate application services from one system
to another or if you want P6000 Cluster Extension to check the DR group member states to ensure
that you can automatically start your application service on the local storage system.
For detailed information, see CLI commands and utilities (page 53).
Disaster tolerance through geographical dispersion
Using two or more storage systems, HP P6000 Continuous Access copies data to a remote data
center. Cluster solutions using P6000 Continuous Access disk mirroring are called metropolitan
clusters or geographically dispersed clusters. In this arrangement, a server is a member of the same
cluster dispersed over two or more sites. In such clusters the server is relieved from writing any I/O
request to the disk more than one time because the storage system controls the replication process
(see Figure 1 (page 7)).
6 P6000 Cluster Extension features