When setting up replication between VNXe systems, I encountered the following error when verifying and updating a replication connection:
Upon troubleshooting, the error occurred due to a time difference between the Source and Destination VNXe systems; specifically, the source system was 21 minutes behind the destination.
But if you try to advance the time more than 300 seconds on a VNXe, you will be prompted to reboot the SPs and who wants to do that just to change the time? I called EMC to confirm that the SPs wouldn’t reboot simultaneously, and this is the response I received from tech support initially:
No, it reboots the entire System (Both SPs) together
REALLY!!??!! To change the time, they system will reboot the SPs together? At this point, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps I could increment the time in chunks….and decided I’d try to forward the time by 180 seconds at a time. Fortunately, this worked! Thus, I was able to forward my source system time to match the destination as well as set the appropriate NTP servers to ensure this wouldn’t happen again. Once the time was in sync on both devices, my replication connection to the remote system and the replication sessions worked without issue.
So if you’re having problems replicating VNXe systems, make sure your time is in sync! Of course, this is good advice for pretty much anything in the IT realm….
Additionally, as the conversation continued with EMC support, I was told if the code version on your VNXe is greater than 2.3.x.xxx and you advance the time more than 300 seconds, it will reboot 1 SP at a time….but if I had to do it over again, I’d still advance the time manually and save the reboot.
ballblog 