IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX

PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Enterprise Edition

The PowerHA™ SystemMirror™ for AIX® Enterprise Edition includes all of the capabilities of the Standard Edition and more. The Enterprise Edition package enables you to extend your data center solution across multiple sites and with V6.1 of PowerHA SystemMirror, the Enterprise Edition expands the HA/DR support to EMC SRDF replication environments. V6.1 also provides for many usability enhancements including a “wizard” to configure and deploy host based mirroring solutions (GLVM configuration wizard).

The Enterprise Edition supports ESS/Metro-Mirror and Storage System DS6000™/DS8000® Metro-Mirror, enabling automatic failover of disks that are Metro-Mirror pairs and creating a powerful solution for clients using storage subsystems with Metro-Mirror. By automating the management of Metro-Mirror, recovery time is minimized after an outage, regardless of whether the clustered environment is local or geographically dispersed. The Enterprise Edition, in combination with Metro-Mirror, manages a clustered environment to allow mirroring of critical data to be maintained at all times.

PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition supports IBM System Storage™ Metro-Mirror for SVC, which enables true high availability within the campus or city environment, and with V5.5.0 Global Mirror for SVC is also supported for unlimited geographic dispersion. Metro Mirror deployed solutions are completely synchronous and are therefore optimized for high availability operations while Global Mirror is asynchronous and is therefore optimized for geographic dispersion.

IBM AIX Power Systems™ customers who deploy their storage via EMC SRDF are now able to take advantage of the V6.1 PowerHA SystemMirror solution to manage and automate their HA/DR operations. Most common SRDF replication configurations are supported. PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition V6.1 uses the EMC SRDF interfaces to discover and manage the replication the Symmetrix SRDF volumes in multi site HA deployments. Customers can use the PowerHA SystemMirror SMIT or WebSMIT interfaces to specify the EMC SRDF volumes as cluster resources and manage them as part of failover operations. The PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition supports EMC device groups, composite groups, SRDF Synchronous and Asynchronous replication and consistency groups (SRDF/CG) for both. You will need to refer to PowerHA SystemMirror and EMC documentation to ensure that you have the necessary EMC software components for EMC SRDF to be deployed in the PowerHA SystemMirror cluster.

GLVM (geographic logical volume manager) is the AIX host based mirroring over IP network solution that enables clients to set up geographically dispersed PowerHA SystemMirror clusters. The PowerHA SystemMirror host based mirroring solution could lower your total cost of acquisition by eliminating the need to purchase high end storage solutions. The introduction of GLVM async mode support with PowerHA SystemMirror V5.5 enabled clients to extend the PowerHA SystemMirror cluster in cross site configurations with virtually unlimited distance between the primary and secondary nodes. With V6.1, Enterprise Edition clients will be able to set up two-node cross site configurations on their own via the GLVM configuration wizard (included in the Enterprise Edition package).