Moving a Pod to a different FlashArray

Let's take the case of a pod called testPod that is currently hosted on a FlashArray called flasharray-m50-1:

1. Add flasharray-m50-2 to the local arrays on the source site array manager and also as a peer on the remote site array manager.
2. Stretch the pod to flasharray-m50-2
3. Connect the volume(s) to the appropriate host(s)/host group(s) on flasharray-m50-2
4. Ensure the new paths appear in the relevant ESXi host(s)
5. Disconnect the volume(s) on flasharray-m50-1 from the relevant host(s)/host group(s). The old paths will go dead, rescan the ESXi cluster(s) to clear them out.
6. Unstretch the pod from flasharray-m50-1.

   Optionally, if flasharray-m50-1 is no longer in use, you can disable any pair using it and then remove it from the source and target array managers. Let's walk through the process now.

   First add the flasharray-m50-2 to the source site array manager as a local array address (now listed in addition to flasharray-m50-1):

   

   Now add it on the remote site array manager as a peer:

   

   Next login to flasharray-m50-1 and stretch the pod to flasharray-m50-2:

   

   Choose the array:

   

   Wait for it to finish syncing:

   

   ...

   

   Next identify all of your volumes in the pod. Any volume that has a connection should be verified. I currently have one volume in this pod:

   

   Inside of vSphere, identify what datastore or RDM is using that volume, the vSphere Plugin is a simple way to verify (though manual methods can be used, or scripted methods work the best at scale):

   

   The plugin verifies that datastore podtest-01 is indeed the volume above in the pod. Click on the Configure tab then Connectivity and Multipathing. Choose a host and verify its pathing (currently will be only from one array):

   

   Now login to flasharray-m50-2. Connect the volume to the appropriate host groups. In my case, I want to connect it to a ESXi cluster called MountainView which is similarily named on the flasharray-m50-2:

   

   Choose the host group:

   

   Back in vCenter you should see the paths double (in this case 4 paths to 8):

   

   Click Refresh if they do not appear. If they do not appear after that, verify host connectivity to the array. Verify this path change on all hosts connected to the datastore. You can now safely disconnect it from the host group(s) on flasharray-m50-1:

   

   You will then see the original paths go dead:

   

   You can clear the old paths immediately with a host rescan.

   Once this has been completed for all volumes in the pod that are connected, you can then unstretch. The FlashArrays will NOT let you unstretch from an array if there are any still-connected volumes from the pod on the array you want to unstretch the pod from.

   Go to either FlashArray and remove the flasharray-m50-1 from membership of the pod.

   

   Go back to SRM and rescan for array pairs:

   

   The pair will still be valid, and the pod now lives on an entirely new FlashArray!