Virtual Domains

[david]

Hi,

Hopefully a quick question.
I have some 3pars and primeras. The primeras will be consolidating the 3pars.
The 3pars have no virtual domains.
The primeras have virtual domains.
Hosts are ESXi plus physical and virtual with RDMs.
Primera virtual domains are separating the different volumes and hosts etc that are on the 3pars they are consolidating.
ESXi data can be vmotioned to the primeras in the correct domains.
The physical servers can not use rcopy or federation in the current setup as source and destination need the same virtual domains (for some reason).
Peer motion cant / shouldnt be used, the OS (2012R2) isnt supported.
So after all this detail the question is:

movetodomain is that a disruptive command?

If its not, and moves all the linked objects while online. The virtual domains can be created on the source array, moved to it and then rcopy run and a swicth over done.

I have contacted support, but an answer on this has not been given. I have provided the info above (more details), but got back basically the restrictions i knew about, not a solution to get past them. So hoping to get a quicker and more accurate reply here

[Richard Siemers]

I personally have never deployed virtual domains, or used the movedomain command.

That said check out this link: https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/do ... cale=en_US

Moving domain objects to another domain
Moving objects between domains is an online operation and does not interrupt host I/O.
Procedure

To move a domain object in or out of a domain, issue the movetodomain -vv|-cpg|-host <object_name> <domain_name>|set:<set_name> command, where:
-vv|-cpg|-host is the type of object (VV, CPG, host, respectively) user are moving
<object_name> is the name of the VV, CPG, or host user are moving.
<domain_name> is the name of the domain to which user are moving the specified object.
<set_name> is the name of the domain set to which user are moving the specified host.

That said, I recommend you setup a test first with a non-production host, and a test VV.

[david]

Thanks, I had been looking through the PDFs and it doesn't have that in it. Documentation on virtual domains is very slim.
With using virtual domains, it looks like not too many use it, our installer said we were the first company that he has been to that was going to use it.
I was planning on doing a test today as I got another response from HPE, not answering the question on this but about using peer motion again, which if following the compatibility matrix, 2012R2 isnt on it (though will probably be fine).
I just feel that if rcopy can be used, its what we use now between arrays, better than using peer motion that needs a client installing on the OS (how is that with a VM that has RDMs?)
So will give the test ago and hopefully its good.

Thanks again.

[Richard Siemers]

Virtual domains was intended for multi-tenant use cases. Such as a COLO facility renting/leasing part of a 3PAR to multiple customers. Maybe useful when a company is splitting/merging or selling off a piece of the business, you could continue to share a 3PAR for a period of time and support separate security domains. When you have one IT department, with one SAN admin team, it adds complexity and work for little benefit.

Good luck on the test!

[david]

Thanks, we are using it to ensure the segregation of volumes and hosts due to compliance reasons. We have had multiple arrays to fulfill these requirements, but to save money decided to use / try virtual domains. Adding monitoring / notifications whenever domain moves are done and restricting general accounts to access all the domains, just not have the ability to migrate between.

[david]

Just to update on how it was.

Move between domains is online, As all the volumes were in the same CPG, I just picked the CPG to be moved, it then calculated all the hosts, host groups, volumes, volume set, snaps etc that also needed to be moved.

They were then all moved.

If you have rcopy running for some of the volumes being moved, the replication will continue even though its not in the same domain on the other array. It will just not allow you to restart it (again, why this limitation?)

Once it moved everything (few seconds), it was just the case of setting up rcopy between the 3par and primera.

No interruption at all happens.

[Richard Siemers]

Thanks for sharing the result. Nice work leveraging available resources to achieve the project goal.

Not 100% sure on the rcopy restart. I would imagine is a security check. New domain, needs a new authorization to start.