Ok, so yesterday we left our intrepid band with an empty data store at one location, and a bit better than a 1/2 TB data store just aching to be copied at the other. Now, I might have a boatload of bandwidth between offices, but it's occasionally nice to leave room for other things...email, internet access, other applications. You know the stuff that pays the bills. So, how did I get the data copied, you ask?
At this point I could regale you with tales of black magic...summoned storage demons (or is that daemons?), pentagrams on the floor of the server room, and the obligatory critter sacrifice. Instead, I'll talk of something even more mysterious, and rare. A freakin' vendor app that works exactly as promised.
The SAN manufacturer (there was originally a cutsie, insider description of this manufacturer in this parenthetical aside. Bag that, it's Dell EqualLogic) has a replication utility built into their iSCSI SANs. You set up the 2 devices (one with the data, the other the target), and tell it to replicate once. You can throttle the bandwidth usage down, so it leaves enough room for other apps, and it merrily goes about it's business. I started this replication yesterday at around 1pm, and it wrapped up today at 8am. I promoted the replica to a volume, and connected the vm to it via a software initiator. A touch of work by the PAC vendor, and we were back in business. Voila! As nifty a piece of magic as any seen in any grimoire, and a lot less messy than offering up the goat.
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