Product Overview

SAN StoreSafe Manager enables a site to more tightly control and monitor the number of mirrored disk copies that are required for mission-critical disk data.

With traditional disk mirroring, when an application requests an I/O, the request succeeds as long as at least one online mirror of the disk data is available. Failures of other MCP mirror disks are completely transparent to applications.

SAN StoreSafe Manager is used for sites that require a minimum number of MCP mirrored disks. If the number of mirrored disks falls below the specified threshold for the site, a StoreSafe alert is triggered. A site administrator can configure the impact level of a StoreSafe alert. The level can range from informational messages that simply inform the operator about problems to directing applications to handle new error results in real time.

General Features

SAN StoreSafe Manager includes the following major features.

StoreSafe Alerts

A StoreSafe alert is a mechanism by which the MCP informs the system administrator, monitoring programs, and even user applications that the required number of mirror copies of data for a particular disk is no longer available.

The administrator can choose the desired level of integration as follows:

In addition, SAN StoreSafe Manager is integrated with SAN Spare Disk Manager. The selection of SAN Spare Disk Manager spares ensures that replacement mirrors are selected in such way that the failure of a mirror at a particular disk site name is replaced by a spare that has the same disk-site name.

Disk-Site Names

System administrators can assign disk-site names to the disk members of a mirrored set. A disk-site name is an identifier that is meaningful to the site administrator. For example, one application might be to assign an ID that reflects the geographic location of the member of the mirrored set. In this case, the system administrator can require that at least one online mirror of certain data be available at multiple site locations (for example, in a disaster recovery configuration).

When access is lost to the last disk member of a mirrored set at a particular disk-site name, the MCP posts a StoreSafe alert to allow for operational recovery to take place as specified by the site.

Manual Synchronization of Mirror Audits

When a mirrored disk goes offline, the MCP maintains a mirror audit so that when the offline mirror comes back online, the amount of required synchronization is reduced.

Previously, mirror audit application started automatically when the offline mirror was accessible again. This feature enables the site administrator to require, on a mirrored-set basis, that the operator send a confirmation before SAN StoreSafe Manager starts a mirror audit.

This capability is useful in a disaster recovery environment to ensure that audit application begins only when there is a good chance that the recovery completes successfully. Without this feature, if a switch is necessary to a backup host while the mirror audit is being applied, it will not be possible to use the mirror with a partially applied mirror audit.

Ordering Information

Source code is not available for this product.

Product Information

Refer to the System Operations Guide (8600 0387) for more information.