DR DFS or other options

[cshenberger]

I am looking to see if there are any better ideas,  or to get an idea of what is being used for DR when using netapp cifs shares and snapmirror.   

We have several netapp ha pairs that contain 4-6 svms each,  all of these are snapmirrored to other ha pairs in DR facilities.   Currently depending on whats accessing the systems we have DNS aliases configured and have to change about 50-60 aliases per HA pair in the event of a failover.   

We have considered using DNS but this would still require scripting enabling of some targets since they would have to be offline when normally running.   each alias would have to be a folder in DFS so still that would mean 50-60 dfs changes in the event of a failover.   

Are people using DFS or are there better ways to scale DR failovers when using cifs shares? 

[Sahana]

Hi,

Refer http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-3771.pdf

Dynamic DNS update may be useful. Refer page 22

Dynamic DNS Updates Using dynamic DNS updates can prevent errors and save time when sending new or changed DNS information to the primary master DNS server for your storage system's zone. Dynamic DNS allows your storage system to automatically send information to the DNS servers as soon as the information changes on the system. NetApp recommends enabling the dynamic DNS updates. Otherwise, you must manually add the DNS information (DNS name and IP addresses) to the DNS server when a new storage system is brought online or when existing DNS information changes. This process is slow and error-prone. In a disasterrecovery situation, manual configuration can result in long downtimes. Data ONTAP supports a maximum of 64 Dynamic Domain Name Server (DDNS) aliases. 

[cshenberger]

Sahana, 

Unfortunately I am pretty sure dynamic DNS won't help me.  I need the DNS entry on my DR netapp to be what the Primary netapp was.   Dynamic DNS would possibly work if I didn't have SVM and lifs that could move around where the same name always gets to the correct machine but i don't think that dynamic DNS can work to get DR netapp to send the name of the failed SVM, unless I was maybe doing svm failover?

[J_curl]

we have done this with DFS and it seems to work well enough.  You can set targets to the DR site shares up in advance and set them to disabled until needed.  We had to rely on this for a recent power outage at a remote site, and it worked.