IBM PowerHA/XD for AIX (HACMP/XD)

Highlights

PowerHA/XD (Extended Distance), an optional feature of PowerHA for AIX now offers GLVM asynchronous mode and also support for SVC Global Mirror. Both options extend failover to backup resources at remote sites with minimal impact on performance in the production application environment (a consideration with synchronous replication methods which are optimized for campus level distances). PowerHA/XD also provides support through transparent integration with campus level failover for Enterprise Storage Server® (ESS), IBM System Storage™ (DS6000™ and DS8000™), and SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Metro-Mirror peers and failover for IP-connected peers using the native synchronous mode LVM AIX mirroring technology. When PowerHA for AIX detects a failure, it can quickly and automatically take action to restore the application, restarting it on a remote redundant system.

PowerHA/XD is essential for clients who must protect themselves from site-wide failures or large-scale disasters by mirroring business-critical data across sites while enabling failover to these remote sites. This applies to businesses of any size with multiple sites, regional operations or wherever decentralization of data is desired. PowerHA/XD offers multiple technologies for achieving long distance data mirroring, failover and resynchronization.

• PowerHA/XD’s Geographic Logical Volume Manager (PowerHA/XD:GLVM) component now provides remote asynchronous data mirroring and enables failover to remote sites using the mirrored data. GLVM’s IP-based mirroring automatically maintains a data replica across geographically remote sites and completely manages data replication during production, failover and recovery. Users already deploying base PowerHA for AIX function in their environment can readily extend it with PowerHA/XD to deploy a highly resilient geographically dispersed environment. You can now economically deploy your own in house disaster recovery solution.
• PowerHA/XD supports ESS/Metro-Mirror and System Storage 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. PowerHA/XD, in combination with Metro-Mirror, manages a clustered environment to allow mirroring of critical data to be maintained at all times.
• PowerHA/XD 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.

This is "rule of thumb" guide, each environment should be individually assessed to determine which technology approach is the best fit.