Administrator Guide

Live Volume overview
34 Dell EMC SC Series: Synchronous Replication and Live Volume | CML1064
5 Live Volume overview
Live Volume is a high availability and data mobility feature for SC Series storage that builds on the Dell Fluid
Data™ architecture. It enables non-disruptive data access, data migration, and stretched volumes between
SC Series arrays. It also provides the storage architecture and automatic failover required for VMware
vSphere Metro Storage Cluster certification (vMSC) with SCOS 6.7 and newer. SCOS 7.1 extended Live
Volume automatic failover (LV-AFO) support to Microsoft Server 2012/Hyper-V 2012 and newer clusters.
5.1 Reference architecture
Live Volume migration
Live Volume is a software-defined high availability solution that is integrated into the SC Series controllers. It
is designed to operate in a production environment that allows storage hosts and applications to remain
operational during planned volume migration or data movement regardless of the geographical distance
between arrays. The automatic failover and restore features available for vSphere Metro Storage Cluster
integration with SCOS 6.7 and newer, and for Microsoft environments with SCOS 7.1 and newer, provides
high availability for applications and services during planned or unplanned events in the data center.
Live Volume increases operational efficiency, eliminates the need for planned storage outages, and enables
planned migrations as well as disaster avoidance and disaster recovery. The Live Volume feature provides
powerful options:
• Allows storage to follow mobile virtual machines and applications in virtualized environments within a
data center, campus, or across larger distances
• Supports automatic or manual mechanisms to migrate virtual machine storage as virtual machines
are migrated within or across hypervisor clusters
• Zero application downtime occurs for planned maintenance outages
• Enables all data to be moved non-disruptively between arrays to achieve full planned or unplanned
site shutdown without downtime
• Provides on-demand load balancing; Live Volume enables data to be relocated as desired to
distribute workload between arrays
• Stretches Microsoft clustered volumes between geographically disperse locations
• Allows VMware vSphere and Microsoft Clusters to see the same disk signature on the volume
between data centers and allows the volume to be clustered across arrays