PowerHA

Raul,

We just completed a PowerHA Global Mirroring implementation using 2 V7000 SAN's, a Power7 server and 2 Power8 servers.

Our configuration allows us to do a LUN switch locally, between our Production Power8 and a HA Power7 when we need to take the Production Power8 offline for maintenance ...OR... to switch the iASP to a DR Power8 located at our DR Data Center when we need to move production offsite.

One of the big "features" of our configuration is that we can also do a FLASHCOPY of the iASP mirror on the V7000 SAN in our DR Data Center, attach it to a second partition running on our DR Power8 and then backup this "point in time" FLASHCOPY to tape with no impact to our Production System users.

If you don't require offsite BU and can live with the DR system being offline unless needed in a DR capacity, PowerHA can be set up to Mirror the entire system, the iASP and *SYSBAS. I saw this done in a class I went to, but didn't pay too much attention to all the details since I wasn't going to do it that way... The people at the class who use this method seemed to love it though!

Prior to using PowerHA Global Mirror, we had been using PowerHA Geographic Mirroring between a Power7 and Power6 server. Geographic Mirror is server based instead of SAN based and does use significant server resources as it mirrors an iASP, but it is an inexpensive entry point into the world of Hardware Based mirroring. Once you get that all figured out, it is relatively easy to move up to SAN based mirroring (The main challenge being getting all the SAN and FC Switching equipment installed and configured!)

Geographic Mirroring is best implemented on iASP's up to 2TB in size. If your storage grows much above 2TB (we grew to 6TB), it is time to move away from a server based implementation of PowerHA (Geographic Mirroring) and into a SAN based implementation (Global or Metro Mirroring)...

All PowerHA implementations require that you have any data you want to mirror, in a iASP. Sometimes this can be the biggest challenge of the entire project!

There are tools in PowerHA that help keep a subset of objects that reside in *SYABAS replicated across the cluster (like User Profiles, Job Descriptions etc.), but it isn't a way to mirror *SYSBAS.

I've heard that some users use PowerHA for their iASP mirroring and a "light" version of some software mirroring product like MIMx, to replicate DB objects that reside in *SYSBAS.

Anyway, when everything is up and running though, it is really slick!

Good Luck !

Reply or Forwarded mail from: Kenneth E Graap


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Oberholtzer
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 1:32 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: [External]RE: PowerHA