EMC VPLEX Metro Storage clustering with vSphere has been getting a lot of interest lately. Many companies are interested of building a Disaster Avoidance & Across Site Availability scenarios where EMC VPLEX with vSphere stretched cluster might seems to be the easy solution to do it. Ok,  if you told me this about a year back I would told you about all the draw backs about this approach and all kind of deadly loop holes that could made the solution a disaster like if the links between the two sites failed or a full site failure. The good news that EMC & VMware has already addressed most of these with the vSphere 5 & the new EMC VPLEX 5 (Is it a conscidence that both products are at version 5 or was it a good planning between the two companies I really don’t know the truth on that).

If you are planning to create such a setup take my Advice and upgrade to vSphere 5 & the latest version of the VPLEX available. Further, make sure to go with the verified and supported configuration from VMware with a VPLEX Witness to eliminate all the flaws that were earlier in there with the system. I am not using this post in here to discuss all the old problems and the setup, but just to point you out to the supported configuration by VMware document that was just released, though I promise to have another post soon where I put more details on this as many many people are asking daily about it. The good part with the update KB of VMware it really match almost to the point with the EMC implementation Guide for vSphere stretched Cluster with VPLEX.

The following is the link to the VMware Guide: Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) using EMC VPLEX

The following is the link to the new EMC Guide: VPLEX Architecture Deployment techbook (Require EMC PowerLink to access it)

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One final note although the EMC document has mentioned vSphere 4.1 and later for usage with the VPLEX witness in a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster, the only supported & tested configuration by VMware is when you run vSphere 5.