Owner manual

20 HP VMA SAN Gateway User’s Guide AM456-9026A
vSHARE Feature Summary
vSHARE (VMA gateway software) manages SAN block storage on the HP VMA SAN Gateway,
providing high performance processing, high bandwidth DRAM, and high bandwidth access to HP
VMA Arrays.
Each HP VMA SAN Gateway operates as a SAN (Fibre Channel) target and provides access to
LUNs that are stored on its attached VMA memory arrays. The LUN management capability of
vSHARE includes the following features:
• Full-Speed LUNs: Each LUN is striped across all of the VIMMs in a flash Memory Array.
This ensures that the performance of the LUN is only limited by the performance of the whole
Memory array.
• Shared LUNs: Each LUN can be accessed via Fibre Channel and can be shared by many
initiators.
• Active-Active highly available configuration: Redundant gateway provides the ability for dual
redundant VHP VMA SAN Gateway servicing I/O requests for attached HP VMA Arrays. For
best performance, the configuration requires that client initiators use multipath I/O (MPIO)
software with a round-robin scheduling algorithm. For more information, see the
HP VMA SAN
Memory Gateway Installation and Configuration Guide
.
Note: LUNs are accessible in an active-active configuration through either HP VMA SAN Gateway
system configured in a redundant pair. Clients using MPIO can continue I/O through either HP
VMA SAN Gateway as long as at least one path is available.
Overview of vSHARE Software Configuration
The vSHARE software configuration must be understood within the context of a HP VMA SAN
Memory Gateway deployment. Before you configure vSHARE you must have completed the
following:
1. Assembled and cabled the HP VMA SAN Memory Gateway system hardware, as described in the HP
VMA SAN Memory Gateway Installation and Configuration Guide.
2. Defined the network connection, as described in the HP VMA SAN Memory Gateway Installation
and Configuration Guide
.
3. Configured one or two HP VMA-series Memory Arrays, as described in the HP VMA-series
Installation and Service Guide
.
4. Configured a HP VMA SAN redundant pair of gateways, as described in the Configuring a
Redundant Pair of VMA SAN Gateways - Process Guide.
Note: Configuring vSHARE is a prerequisite to using a HP VMA SAN Gateway for block storage.
The vSHARE software configuration allows you to define sophisticated rules for controlling access
to the LUNs by initiator groups, initiators, or target ports.