- VASA Provider version 1.1.0 fully supports array based replication for vVols in Site Recovery Manager. The requirements can SRM User Guide: FlashArray vVols Array Based Replication and SRM - Requirements and Limitations.
- The vSphere API Failover Replication Group no longer removes the source VMs volumes and volume groups on the Source FlashArray.
- When a Failback operation is ran, the old protection group, volumes and volume groups will be re-used as part of the Failover Replication group process.
- Please see the vVols and SRM documentation here for more information.
- Purity 5.3 introduced a new feature to protection group (pgroup) snapshots. Traditionally any pgroup snapshot that was manually issued had to be done from the source FlashArray. Now the pgroup snapshot can be initiated from the target FlashArray. Here is an example of initiating the snapshot replication from the target FlashArray. Here is the pgroup that the example will use:
We are running this commands from the Target FlashArray, sn1-m20r2-c05-36. Here is the syntax for issuing the replicate-now from target:purepgroup list sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 Name Source Targets Host Groups Hosts Volumes sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 sn1-x70-b05-33 sn1-m20r2-c05-36 - - sn1-x70-b05-33:Config-01d38118 sn1-x70-b05-33:Config-02e76fe3 sn1-x70-b05-33:Config-035e45e6 sn1-x70-b05-33:Config-05858f94 sn1-x70-b05-33:Config-06c89486
The --on optional argument is what is used to specify which Array to initiate the replication job. The source FlashArray will be given as part of that argument.purepgroup snap --replicate-now -h usage: purepgroup snap [-h] [--replicate | --replicate-now | --for-replication] [--suffix SUFFIX] [--apply-retention] [--on ON] PGROUP ... positional arguments: PGROUP protection group name optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --replicate arrange for this snapshot to be replicated when the replication schedule allows --replicate-now replicate this snapshot to the specified targets immediately --for-replication this snapshot will be used for manual replication request at a later time --suffix SUFFIX snapshot suffix --apply-retention this snapshot will be retained and eradicated by the local and remote schedules --on ON source of protection group
Checking on the transfer for the pgroup, the new snapshot can be found being replicated to the target array.purepgroup snap --replicate-now --on sn1-x70-b05-33 x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 Name Source Created Remote x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001.139 x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 2020-06-04 10:47:53 PDT sn1-x70-b05-33purepgroup list sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 --snap --transfer Name Source Created Started Completed Progress Data Transferred Physical Bytes Written sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001.139 sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 2020-06-04 10:47:53 PDT 2020-06-04 10:47:53 PDT - 2.06% 7.10M 4.50M sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001.138 sn1-x70-b05-33:x70-1-policy-ac1-light-001 2020-06-04 10:02:00 PDT 2020-06-04 10:01:59 PDT 2020-06-04 10:03:39 PDT 100.00% 105.78M 100.88M - With the new feature of initiation replication jobs from the target array, the VASA Provider now correctly handles the SyncReplicationGroup API. When a Sync is issued (from SRM, PowerCLI, Python, etc), the VASA Provider will now initiate the snapshot to be replicated at the time of the request. Prior to VASA 1.1.0, the Sync call would wait for the next scheduled snapshot to be replicated before completing.
- With VASA 1.1.0, the FlashArray VASA Provider officially supports multi-vCenter when not in Linked Mode. There is a KB that details the process of configuring the VASA provider for Multi-vCenter environments.
With the release of Purity//FA 5.3.6 there is a new version of the VASA Provider running on the FlashArray. VASA 1.1.0 brings several improvements, enhancements and some new features to the VMware Virtual Volumes ecosystem. The following KB covers these new features and the improvements found in VASA 1.1.0