How can I reduce initial synchronization time for my HA cluster?
Last modified date:
2025-06-24
Applicable Products
- QuTS hero h5.3.0 or later
- High Availability Manager
Scenario
When creating an HA cluster, the system syncs all data from the active node to the passive node. If the active node contains a large amount of data, the initial synchronization process may take a long time, especially if network, storage, or system resources are limited.
Solution
To reduce the initial synchronization time, you can take the following actions before you create the HA cluster:
- Use a high-speed network interface for the heartbeat connection
- Ensure you choose the interface with the highest bandwidth on both nodes for the heartbeat connection.
We recommend a minimum speed of 10 GbE. - Use a matching high-performance network cable connected directly between the two nodes.
Do not use any intermediary switches for the heartbeat connection.
- Ensure you choose the interface with the highest bandwidth on both nodes for the heartbeat connection.
- Use high-performance disks
- Use high-performance HDDs or SSDs to increase the data transfer speed.
- If the NAS model supports SSD cache, enable SSD cache to accelerate read/write operations during the synchronization.
- Enable data reduction features on shared folders
- Enabling data reduction features such as compression and deduplication on your shared folders can significantly reduce the amount of stored data in these folders, thereby also reducing synchronization time.Important
- Changes to the compression and deduplication settings only affect newly added files. Existing files are not affected.
- To apply compression and deduplication to existing files, move the files to another shared folder with compression and deduplication already enabled.
- To enable data reduction settings on a shared folder, see Configuring compression and deduplication.
- Enabling data reduction features such as compression and deduplication on your shared folders can significantly reduce the amount of stored data in these folders, thereby also reducing synchronization time.
- Remove unnecessary data to reduce used space
- Before creating the cluster, check if the active node contains temporary files or unused backup data that can be deleted or offloaded.
- Reduce NAS system load during synchronization
- The initial synchronization process can heavily consume CPU and memory resources. Avoid running other resource-intensive tasks at the same time.
- Pause unnecessary background applications, scheduled jobs, or heavy access activities to ensure stable performance during the initial synchronization.
