This section provides considerations for using copy services with
VMware ESX Servers.
Copy Services are only available for the VMware ESX Console
OS
IBM supports FlashCopy and Remote Mirror and Copy between different
VMware ESX Servers with the following limitations:
- Copy Services are only available for the VMware ESX Console OS.
- The source and target volumes must exist on separate physical machines.
- Remote Mirror and Copy read from secondary option is not supported.
- Rescan of LUNs might be required.
IBM does not support “system LUN/disk” for the virtual machine.
Therefore, you must use VMFS 1 or 2. The locking mechanism of VMFS might get
confused when performing copy services on the target volume. To prevent this,
it is mandatory that no virtual machine using a copy target volume is running
during the copy process.
The source and target volumes must be on separate physical
machines
VMFS file system uses a label mechanism and if it encounters
2 volumes with the same label, only one remains accessible.
Remote Mirror and Copy read from secondary option is not supported
“Read
from secondary” allows a target volume to be opened in read-only mode during
a Remote Mirror and Copy operation. VMware ESX Server does not open volumes
in read-only mode and therefore is not able to access a Remote Mirror and
Copy target while a copy is in progress.
Rescan of LUNS might be required
VMFS is able to
manage (without any “umount”) changes on a hard drive at the file system level.
It can manage a copy as long as the system knows that there is a VMFS file
system to look for:
- If the copy target volume was discovered at boot time without a VMFS file
system on it, you must perform a rescan operation for the changes.
- If it knowns that there is a VMFS file system, the server can use the
new information immediately without any intervention.