GDPS and HyperSwap take resiliency to another level
The challenge of ensuring application availability becomes even greater in multi-site environments. Enter IBM's GDPS® technology. With GDPS, you can have total confidence that your key business applications will be up and running when your employees, partners and customers need them.
With advanced automation techniques, GDPS is a multi-site or single-site end to end application availability solution that provides the capability to manage remote copy configuration and storage subsystems (including IBM System Storage DS family TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server), automate Parallel Sysplex operation tasks and perform failure recovery from a single point of control.
GDPS helps automate recovery procedures for planned and unplanned outages to provide near-continuous availability and disaster recovery capability. GDPS supports the Linux environment and popular System z transaction managers like CICS, IMS and WebSphere, and database managers such as DB2, IMS and VSAM.
HyperSwap, a software technology that can substitute Metro Mirror (previously called peer-to-peer remote copy (PPRC)) secondary devices for PPRC primary devices, is managed exclusively through GDPS. As its name suggests, HyperSwap is designed to swap a large number of devices and to do it fast so there is minimal impact to application availability. (With HyperSwap, such disruptions typically are under half a minute, measured in seconds rather than hours). The HyperSwap function may be performed even if the primary disk subsystem is not operational, so you can survive a primary disk subsystem or even a complete site failure without recycling your systems. In business terms, that means continuous access to data if such a failure were to occur.
Ensuring the integrity of data in heterogeneous environments
IBM has extended GPDS/PPRC technology to be able to manage heterogeneous environments with z/OS and distributed Open Systems data using the IBM System Storage DS family TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Servers. This can have tremendous significance for enterprises seeking to simplify infrastructure complexities with System z. If installations share their disk subsystems between the z/OS and distributed Open System platforms, they can utilize GDPS/PPRC to manage the Metro Mirror PPRC and FlashCopy® functions for distributed Open Systems storage providing disaster recovery capability for their distributed open systems data.
GDPS/PPRC is also designed to help maintain data consistency across both z/OS and distributed Open Systems data saving recovery time in case of a disaster. Extending GDPS/PPRC technology to heterogeneous environments helps customers to simplify application and storage infrastructures and to reduce cost of operations and management.
GDPS®/Global Mirror extended distance disaster recovery
GDPS/Global Mirror is a new Services offering available from IBM Global Services that uses IBM System Storage TotalStorage® Global Mirror remote copy function available on IBM System Storage DS family TotalStorage ESS and DS8000 family storage control units. Global Mirror is designed to enable a two-site disaster recovery and backup solution for System z and distributed open systems environments. Global Mirror code runs within each disk subsystem and operates over high speed communication links using asynchronous technology. It is designed to maintain a consistent and restartable copy of the data at a recovery site, that can be located at virtually unlimited distance from the application site.
GDPS/Global Mirror executes in both the application and the recovery sites. It manages the Global Mirror remote copy function and automates the restart of the workload in the recovery site in case of a disaster in the application site. GDPS/Global Mirror has the capability of managing multiple Global Mirror sessions. The multiple sessions could be the data mirroring of multiple sysplexes or open systems or even single image z/OS® systems.
GDPS/Global Mirror allows a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) between one to two hours, with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) less than two minutes, typically 3-5 seconds.
DPS®/XRC extended distance disaster recovery
GDPS/XRC helps manage the z/OS Global Mirror (previously called Extended Remote Copy [XRC]) to provide a combined hardware and z/OS software asynchronous remote copy solution. All critical data is mirrored between the primary and secondary sites. Consistency of the data is maintained via the Consistency Group function within the z/OS System Data Mover (SDM). GDPS/XRC includes automation to manage remote copy pairs and automates the process of recovering the production environment with limited manual intervention, including invocation of CBU. The technology provides significant value in reducing the duration of the recovery window. New is the ability to run the SDMs in a System z10 zIIP processor to improve price/performance.
GDPS/XRC also supports an RTO of between one to two hours and an RPO of less than two minutes, typically three-to-five seconds.
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