Re: DR realtime replication -- MIDRANGE-L

We have 2 locations-- one is a mirror of our production facility. All main storage is in V9000 SANs.

The SANs talk to each other using Global Mirroring with Change Volumes. The iSeries machines don't do anything-- the mirror is 100% between the V9000s.

When we first set up the link we were using SANs with spinning disk. The backup site had fewer, larger disks, even though the capacity between HQ and the backup systems matched. The backup system, with fewer arms, couldn't keep up with the production system. We implemented Change Volumes and we were able to link the systems with 15-30 minute latency.

Now, with V9000s and 100% solid-state memory, latency is 5-10 minutes.

Metro Mirroring is synchronous. That depends on the bandwidth of the link between the systems.

We don't do any switching to the backup site; we do clone the copy at the backup site (flash copy again) and fire that up to make sure the data is really there!

In addition to the mirroring to our 2nd location, we also clone our production data to a backup using flash copy in the V9000 at HQ. We use IBM's Copy Services to clone the data via the HMC and V9000. Except for a brief (2 minutes or so) freeze on the partition being cloned, there's no interruption to the data being cloned.

We run an Option-21 backup every night from a copy of our production data-- something we never had the time to do with spinning disks inside the iseries box itself.

--Paul E Musselman

.

At 2:05 PM +1300 3/18/20, Laurence Chiu wrote:

Not in the US but it's not relevant now given global travel restrictions.

I did have a session with a storage SME with IBM and it seems like the
Spectrum V5030 product might meet our needs.

It has Metro Mirror and encryption so nothing needs to be installed on the
Power server. And using this basic configurator I came up with numbers
that were not too bad

https://www.ibm.com/products/flashsystem-5000/pricing

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 12:17 AM Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What part of the world are you?
You really probably should go to something like the following:
https://powerup2020.sched.com/overview/type/High+Availability+Resilience
I picked a link targeted to your questions.
However if you're under a travel ban I can see that being an issue.
There are some sessions in there like:
Evaluating IBM H/A options

If you can't make it to COMMON go down the list of sessions at the link I
provided and see if someone there would like to talk to you off line. You
might be able to find them on LinkedIn, etc.

Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Laurence Chiu
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2020 5:23 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: DR realtime replication

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know
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I've been looking at this scenario also with two Power servers about 40km
apart doing real-time replication (mirroring), My background is IBM
mainframe and we do this using IBM DS8K SANS and Copy Services Manager
running on the SANs. Ironically the DS8K SANs run two Power 8 servers each!

Anyway digging around came across this IBM SAN product

https://www.ibm.com/products/flashsystem-5000/details

The software supports remote mirroring according to this Red Book

https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248162.pdf

While the Power 8 systems we have don't have lots of data, it's mission

> critical and need to be protected

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 7:32 AM <vforbes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> We use QuickQEDD.
>
> I find it easy to use and faster the other software. We do "Role swaps"
> when we need to do upgrades & have very few problems.
>
> Vincent Forbes
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Norm
> Dennis
> Sent: March 5, 2020 7:22 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Subject: Re: DR realtime replication
>
> Have a look at Maxava:
>
>
>
https://www.itsolutions-group.com/maxava-high-availability-and-disaster-reco
> very-solutions/
> <

https://www.itsolutions-group.com/maxava-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery-solutions/
>
>
>
> Norm Dennis
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "iseriesstuff" <iseriesstuff@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Friday, 6 Mar, 2020 At 05:06
> Subject: Re: DR realtime replication
>
> changes to DB's is all we are looking for at this time. I can sync
programs
> and other objects manually as they are changes/deployed to production.
>
> On 3/5/2020 3:25 PM, Nathan Andelin wrote:
> > You use the term "realtime" in your subject line, but I wonder if
> > you're referring to database events (add, change, delete) or any
> > updates to IFS directories and stream files as triggering events for
> > replication? Or would a daily snapshot suffice?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 12:57 PM iseriesstuff <iseriesstuff@xxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> We have a prod and DR box located off-site. Looking for some DR
> >> suggestions/solutions. We would like to replicate our database from
> >> our prod box to the DR box along with some IFS paths. Replication is
> >> only needed 1 way (prod to DR).
> >>
> >> Any suggestions on either packages or in-house solutions?
> >>

> > >> --