Standalone pods can also be protected by continuous asynchronous replication, which on the FlashArray is called ActiveDR.
ActiveDR links two distinct pods and sends data to the target as quickly as it can--achieving much lower RPO than Periodic Asynchronous replication. In Purity 6.0 and with the 4.0 release of the SRA ActiveDR protection of a pod is supported for control within SRM.
For more information on implementing ActiveDR with VMware, see the following:
ActiveDR with VMware User Guide
A difference between Continuous Replication from a Pod (ActiveDR) and Periodic Replication from a Pod (Protection Groups) is that ActiveDR replicates from one pod to another. The target is not the root (non-pod) part of a FlashArray. So when you configure array managers, you ensure that the FlashArray hosting the source pod is configured as the local array and the FlashArray hosting the target pod is listed as the peer array.
Below is an example ActiveDR configuration. Two pods activeDRpodA and activeDRpodB hosted on FlashArrays flasharray-m20-1 and flasharray-m20-2 respectively.
To configure this relationship in SRM, create a new array manager if not already created between those FlashArrays. If this pair is already configured, FISN
Ensure that the 4.0 or later Everpure SRA is installed:
Then provide a friendly name for the array manager and then enter in the source FlashArray into the local array and the remote FlashArray address into the peer array:
Ensure you are creating array managers on the correct vCenter/SRM server. Enter local arrays that are local to that vCenter:
For ActiveDR management, the entered credentials must be array admin level credentials, because pod state manipulation is considered an administrative change.
Click Next.
Enter in the information for the remote manager with the information in reverse:
Click Next.
The next screen shows all found array pairs and will auto-select pairs that are eligible to be enabled (the arrays on each side of a pair must be discovered locally by array managers configured on opposite SRM servers).
You do not need to enable every pair. Array managers will list all physical FlashArray pairs, pod to physical array pairs, and ActiveDR pod to pod pairs. In this case, I will only enable the pod pair I want SRM to control by deselecting the others. Other pairs can be enabled at any point in the future.
Click Next and the confirm the selected pair(s) to enabled and click Finish.
This will invoke a discover of that pair and all volumes in the pod will be returned: