HP StorageWorks Storage Mirroring evaluation guide (T2558-96075, February 2008)

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Since it can be essential to quickly know the status of failover,
Storage Mirroring offers various methods for monitoring the
state of failover. When the Failover Control Center is
running, you will see four visual indicators:
 The Failover Control Center Time to Fail counter
 The Failover Control Center status bar located at the bottom of the window
 The Failover Control Center colored bullets to the left of each IP address and source machine
 The Windows desktop icon tray containing a failover icon
For more information on the visual indicators, see the User’s Guide.
Simulating a failure
To fully evaluate failover, you need to simulate a failure. The Failover Control Center does not have to be running in order
for failover to occur, but for the purpose of this evaluation, make sure that it is running so that you can see each step of the
process.
1. Ping the source’s IP address from a client machine.
2. Ping the source’s machine name from a client machine.
3. Disconnect the network cable(s) on the source. Notice immediately, that the Failover Control Center Time to Fail
counter decreases and never resets. You will see the icons change to yellow and eventually to red.
4. You will be prompted to determine how to apply the data in queue on the target. Select Apply Data in Target Queues
Then Failover
. Once the icons are red and the Failed Over message is displayed, failover has occurred.
5. Ping the source’s IP address from a client machine.
6. Ping the source’s machine name from a client machine.
As you can see, the target has taken on the identity of the source. Application and user requests destined for the source are
routed directly to the target. The impact on your end users is minimal.
Simulating data changes after failover
While your source is failed over to your target, end users continue to work without interruption and the data on the target
will be updated. To fully evaluate the next step, restoration, simulate the changes that the end users would have made on the
target while the source was unavailable.
1. Identify the file that you edited earlier on the source.
2. Locate that same file on the target and make edits to it. Save the changes.
3. Modify the other three files from earlier, but this time make the modifications on the target copy of the file. Save the
changes.
If desired, you can also test the target data as you did earlier. See
Testing your target data on page 7-7. You can test user data
using the associated application, and you can save the changes if desired. If you want to test application data, start the
application services on the target, and test the application data by using clients to connect to the application. Because the
source is now failed over, you will not need to worry about pausing the target, taking a snapshot, or configuring clients to
access the application from the target. The clients will continue to access the source, which is now being handled by the target
machine.
NOTE: The Windows Event Viewer on the target provides details on the actual steps that have occurred during
failover.