PowerVC

• Ensure that the storage cluster is configured with HyperSwap topology. All I/O groups, pools, and nodes have assigned sites.
• HyperSwap uses multiple I/O Groups. By default, all I/O groups that are part of the cluster will be used in the default storage template.

The replication type value "hyperswap" shows that the storage backend is configured with HyperSwap topology.
enableHyperSwap value which is set to "true" shows that PowerVC is enabled to use Storwize HyperSwap technology.

IBM Storwize HyperSwap uses the host site awareness concept to select the preferred paths for better I/O optimization. PowerVC Site details "Configure host sites" provides a PowerVC GUI interface to enable customers to assign the registered PowerVM host ports with site details.
Click Configure host sites. FC ports for all the registered hosts are displayed. Select the required ports and assign a preferred site, and then click Save.

Later when you add any hosts that use Storwize HyperSwap storage in PowerVC, you must first update the Host-site details page to assign the sites before deploying any VM.

A new storage HyperSwap template is created in PowerVC.  Check the template properties. You can see that the I/O groups now have the site details, and all of them are selected.

Storage pools will now show the site details and will also show the peer pool.

You can also create the custom HyperSwap template with the required configuration by creating a copy of the base HyperSwap template and editing the properties.

Creating HyperSwap Volume
Now, we are all set to create HyperSwap volumes using the HyperSwap template.
A single-volume created using HyperSwap template will create 2 copies of the volume in the storage backend on each site with the same UID.


In PowerVC, the new volume properties are added to view HyperSwap details.

Using Consistency Groups

HyperSwap uses custom group type: "Consistent Group HyperSwap Enabled". So in order to use a consistency group for HyperSwap volume, we should first create a group type and then create consistency group. 


PowerVC HyperSwap virtual machine (VM) Lifecycle Operations

• Supported volume operations are create volume, delete volume, resize volume, retype volume, delete volume, create volume group, create group snapshot, and delete volume group.
• All VM operations are supported except deploy VM, restore VM, and clone VM. Storwize currently 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 using a base template and when background FlashCopy is completed, then retype the volume to use the HyperSwap template.
• Zoning is done for all the IO Group ports which are participating in the cluster. So if the primary site is down, the paths for site2 will be still accessible.