HyperSwap feature on IBM Storwize

Edit online

HyperSwap® is a high availability feature for IBM Storwize® that provides dual-site, active-active access to a volume. PowerVC version 2.1.0 provides the capability to register and manage HyperSwap volumes. One of the main objectives of this support is to leverage Storwize dual site cluster management capability to build high available workloads.

Registering HyperSwap with Storwize

If the IBM Storwize is pre-configured with HyperSwap topology, you can register the Storwize storage as HyperSwap into PowerVC. During registration, PowerVC detects HyperSwap topology. You can choose Enable HyperSwap and provide the peer pool. On successful registration, you will see the base template and HyperSwap template in the storage template list.

You can also enable the existing registered storage provider to use HyperSwap by clicking Actions > Enable HyperSwap.

HyperSwap requires to configure host ports to assign the preferred sites for I/O Optimization. For details on configuring host sites, see Configure Host Sites section.

To create HyperSwap volume, select the HyperSwap base Template. When the volume is available, it shows the HyperSwap properties in the volume details page. Once the volume shows copyType as active-active and mirroringState as ConsistentSynchronized, the volume is considered as stable and good to use. For details, see IBM Storwize HyperSwap Function.

Configure host sites

Storwize HyperSwap uses the preferred sites for path optimization. You must assign the registered PowerVM® host FC ports and assign the nearest site to which they are located. Storwize host entry is assigned the site based on the site selection to the host ports. You can select multiple ports to assign the site. A single port can be only part of one site. Whenever a new host is registered in PowerVC, you must update the host site port configuration in order to use HyperSwap volumes. For details, see Configure Host site API.

Prerequisite
  • IBM Storwize should be pre-configured with HyperSwap topology with all the required site configuration for IO groups, pools, and storage nodes.
  • PowerVC will use the pre-existing HyperSwap configure to enable cinder volume replication.
Supported operations
  • Supported volume operations are create volume, delete volume, resize volume, retype volume, delete volume, create volume group, create group snapshot, and delete group.
  • All VM operations are supported except: deploy VM, restore VM, and clone VM.

Limitations

  • Deploy VM or Clone VM using HyperSwap image volumes is not supported because Storwize does not allow volumes to be converted to HyperSwap volume if there are in-progress FlashCopy mappings. So if you need a VM with HyperSwap volumes, you can provision the VM with base template and when background FlashCopy is completed, then retype the volume to use HyperSwap template.
  • By default, HyperSwap base template uses all the IO Groups configured for the storage nodes. Default HyperSwap template does not allow removing I/O Groups, if customer wants to use selected I/O groups then they need to create custom template.
  • When live capture of HyperSwap VM is performed, image volumes will be non-HyperSwap.
  • Clone volume for HyperSwap is only supported for non-HyperSwap (non replicated) target template.
  • Creation of HyperSwap group from HyperSwap group snapshot is not supported.
  • Capturing a VM that has both HyperSwap and non-HyperSwap volumes is not supported.