SRDF Question

Can you clarify what you mean by "guest domain", "io domain", and "remote operations server"?

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Sorry The Remote Operations Server is the SRDF Remote Operations Server

This is a Sun cluster so the guest domain is an LDOM and the I/O Domain would be the control domain.

In general, you'll have to configure SRDF from the I/O domain. This is because commands are issued from host control software (e.g. SYMCLI) to the Symmetrix via SCSI syscalls on special gatekeeper devices on the array. The host running SYMCLI must have direct/physical access to those gatekeepers in order for the syscalls to pass through to the array. The IO domain has direct/physical access to storage, so by running SYMCLI on the IO Domain, and presenting gatekeepers to the IO domain, you're ensuring that syscalls will be passed through directly to the VMAX.

It would be possible to run SYMCLI in the guest domain in client/server mode -- in this case, you'd install a SYMCLI client in the guest domain, and point it to a SYMCLI server with direct gatekeeper access. In this case, the guest domain does not need access to the array at all; it just needs network access to the SYMCLI server.

If you can present gatekeepers in raw/physical/passthrough mode to a guest VM, which I think may be an option in Solaris 11, then it may be possible to run SYMCLI standalone within a guest VM -- but I don't think EMC currently supports this.