Figure 4.9 Storage Replica use scenarios
The next scenario is cluster to cluster. With cluster to cluster, you must disable
automatic failover and instead fail over manually or through some kind of
orchestration solution. Once again, synchronous and asynchronous are supported.
The final scenario is outside of a cluster, and simply replicating between two servers
using either asynchronous or synchronous. The failover must be performed manually
by using PowerShell or Remote Server Management Tools.
There is a fourth, unspoken scenario, discussed only in dark corners: replicating
storage within the same server. However, this is not a focus for Windows Server 2016
and I won’t mention it again.
Behind the scenes, Storage Replica is a brand-new technology. It is not DFSR
(Distributed File System Replication) v2, and because it is replicating blocks, the
filesystem could be CSVFS, NTFS, or ReFS. Storage Replica sits underneath the
filesystem, as shown in Figure 4.10, which is a slightly updated version of Figure 4.8.