Simplifying storage processes and ensuring business continuity and high availability IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 GRID Solutions for Business Continuity The risks are even greater for companies that operate in the 24/7 global environment. In such an aggressive marketplace, data availability and business continuity offer a vital competitive edge that is key to business success. Organizations from finance and healthcare to transportation and retail must adopt proven business continuity and recovery management strategies and storage technologies to successfully address operational risk, availability Highlights Helps ensure business continuity with advanced features designed to meet today s disaster planning and data availability challenges Facilitates maintenance and system upgrade planning by helping to ensure uninterrupted services for customer applications Available in a wide range of configuration options to meet your From minor server blips to major hurricanes, keeping data safe and ensuring business continuity are mission-critical responsibilities for IT departments today. Organizations that suffer downtime or business interruptions face astronomic costs not just from lost time and productivity, but from indirect consequences such as reduced customer confidence, damage to brand reputation and litigation arising out of non-compliance with government regulations. and security challenges. IBM TS7700 delivers cost-effective data protection As data centers and data stores grow, tape operations become more complex. This growth can also lead to increased tape processing times, high management overhead and skyrocketing costs. To help organizations ensure business continuity and cost-effectively protect vital data and business processes, IBM has designed the Virtualization Engine TS7700. specific requirements for high availability and disaster recovery
The IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 (TS7700 Virtualization Engine) is a mainframe virtual tape solution with advanced management features built to optimize tape processing. The IBM TS7700 enables you to implement a fully integrated tiered storage hierarchy of disk and tape and leverage the benefits of virtualization. This powerful combination designed with automated tools and an easy-to-use Web-based GUI for management simplification enables you to store data according to its value and how quickly it needs to be accessed. Customers may experience significant operational cost savings compared to traditional tape operations while improving overall tape processing performance. GRID configurations help eliminate downtime For high availability and disaster recovery, the IBM TS770 can be deployed in a number of GRID configurations. Each configuration is optimized to help eliminate downtime from planned and unplanned outages, upgrades and maintenance. The IBM TS7700 includes a GRID communication feature that supports the connection of up to three TS7700 Virtualization Engines in a GRID configuration. This functionality is similar to IBM TotalStorage Metro/Global Mirror with advanced copy services support for IBM System z customers. Because each TS7700 can reside in a different location, even a remote location, the configurations detailed below help keep data available even if one of the sites experiences an outage. This enables you to plan for maintenance, service or system upgrades without interrupting business operations, and helps avoid the risks and costs associated with transporting cartridges in the event of a disaster. Flexibility improves business responsiveness In addition, advanced replication techniques and policy can help improve business agility. Data replication techniques provide a real-time (synchronous) or delayed (asynchronous) copy of data on one or more peer TS7700 Virtualization Engines. If the TS7700 at the primary location fails, clients can be redirected to one of the peer TS7700 systems with minimal disruption. The synchronous data replication technique supports a Recovery Point Objective of end of job, so when a job completes, the peer TS7700 has a current copy of data available to help safeguard against failure. The IBM TS7700 includes multiple modes of synchronous and asynchronous replication. Replication modes can be assigned to data volumes via IBM DFSMS policy, providing flexibility in implementing business continuity solutions so you can simplify your storage environment and optimize storage utilization. With increased storage flexibility, your organization can adapt quickly and dynamically to changing business environments. Configuration options address multiple types of recovery scenarios A TS7700 GRID may be configured to provide a high-availability environment, a disaster recovery environment or both. One- and two-site configurations improve high availability There are three options for configuring a GRID for high availability. All require a host attachment for each TS7700 system to maintain access to the data. Figure 1: two-site GRID configuration for high availability In Figure 1, two TS7700 Virtualization Engines are interconnected and located in the same site via a local area network (LAN). Both TS7700 systems are attached via FICON to IBM System z hosts. Production workloads are written using the virtual tape device addresses in both of the TS7700 systems, and data written to one TS7700 is replicated to the other. In the event of a failure or the need to service one of the TS7700 systems, customer applications may continue to access all logical volumes through the remaining operational TS7700. The operational TS7700 is enabled for ownership takeover, giving it the capability to access and modify any of the logical volumes owned by the unavailable TS7700.
Disaster recovery sites provide shelter from damaging outages Figure 2 shows a typical two-site GRID disaster recovery configuration. One TS7700 is located at the production site and another is located at the disaster recovery site. The TS7700 Virtualization Engines are connected through a wide area network (WAN). Production workloads are written using the virtual tape device addresses in the TS7700 located at the production site and replicated to the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site. Figure 3: two-site DR GRID configuration for HA and Three-site GRID configurations expand disaster recovery capabilities The IBM TS7700 can be deployed in three-site GRID configurations to expand on the disaster recovery capabilities of the two-site GRID configuration previously discussed. Figure 2: two-site GRID configuration for disaster recovery In the event of a disaster that takes down the production site, production applications can resume on the disaster recovery host at the secondary site, thereby helping business operations continue. Prior to starting the production runs on the disaster recovery host, the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site is enabled for ownership takeover. This allows it to access and modify any volumes that were owned by the production site when it became unusable. Figure 3 shows a two-site GRID disaster recovery configuration which also supports high availability. One of the TS7700 Virtualization Engines in the GRID configuration is located at a production site and one is located at a disaster recovery site. The TS7700 systems are connected through a WAN. Production workloads are written to the TS7700 located at the production site and replicated to the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site. If the TS7700 at the production site requires maintenance or suffers a failure, access to the replicated data at the disaster recovery site can quickly and easily be established. Access is facilitated by extending FICON channels between the production hosts and the TS7700 located at the disaster recovery site. When necessary, the virtual device addresses in the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site are varied online to the production hosts after ownership takeover has been enabled. All replicated data is now accessible through the disaster recovery site. Figure 4: three-site GRID configuration for HA and DR In Figure 4, two TS7700 Virtualization Engines are located in the same region, typically within 30 miles of one another. A third TS7700 is located well out of the region, typically hundreds of miles away. The two regional TS7700 systems are set up as a high-availability configuration with production hosts attached to both. Production workloads are written in the TS7700 located at the production site and replicated to the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site.
In the event of a disaster that leaves the production site unusable, customer operations may resume at the disaster recovery site by running production applications on the disaster recovery host. Prior to starting the production runs on the disaster recovery host, the TS7700 at the disaster recovery site is enabled for ownership takeover. This allows the system to access and modify any volumes that were owned by the production site when it became unusable. Figure 5: three-site GRID configuration supports DR for two independent data centers As shown in Figure 5, customers with two independent sites may want to replicate each site s data to a remote site for disaster recovery purposes. Three TS7700 Virtualization Engines potentially hundreds of miles apart can be easily controlled through copy policies to support this requirement. Each independent production site sends a deferred mode copy to the remote site, helping to ensure that copies are not made between the independent sites. Should an independent site become unavailable, customer operations can be restarted at the remote site using the copied data. Copies from the other independent site continue to be made to the remote TS7700 and are not affected. Powerful IBM innovation drives storage efficiency Only by implementing cost-effective yet highly responsive storage management systems can organizations hope to ensure business continuity. The TS7700 combines the power of innovative features such as virtualization and tiered storage to help achieve high availability, improve system performance and optimize storage utilization. For today s busy IT department managing a growing mountain of data, this can also translate to shortened batch processing times, reduced total cost of ownership and less management overhead freeing IT staff to focus on business related projects. IBM TS7700 is a robust business continuity solution that enables organizations to move beyond the inadequacies of onsite backup (disk-to-disk or disk-totape) that cannot protect against localized geological or social disturbances. With the TS7700, data is replicated and stored in a remote location to truly support continuous uptime. Switching production to a peer TS7700 can be accomplished in a few seconds with minimal operator skills. This enables companies to eliminate planned and unplanned downtime, potentially saving thousands of dollars in lost time and business while also addressing today s stringent government and institutional data protection regulations.
For more information To learn more about the IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following Web sites: ibm.com/servers/storage/ virtualization ibm.com/servers/storage/tape Copyright IBM Corporation 2008 IBM Corporation Integrated Marketing Communications Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 Produced in the United States January 2008 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, DFSMS, FICON, System z, TotalStorage and Virtualization Engine are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. A full list of U.S. trademarks owned by IBM may be found at: ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This document was developed for products and/or services offered in the United States. IBM may not offer the products, features or services discussed in this document in other countries. The information may be subject to change without notice. Consult your local IBM business contact for information on the products, features and services available in your area. All statements regarding IBM future directions and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only. IBM hardware products are manufactured from new parts, or new and used parts. In some cases, the hardware product may not be new and may have been previously installed. Regardless, our warranty terms apply. Photographs show engineering and design models. Changes may be incorporated in production models. Copying or downloading the images contained in this document is expressly prohibited without the written consent of IBM. This equipment is subject to FCC rules. It will comply with the appropriate FCC rules before final delivery to the buyer. Information concerning non-ibm products was obtained from the suppliers of these products or other public sources. Questions on the capabilities of the non-ibm products should be addressed with the suppliers. All performance information was determined in a controlled environment. Actual results may vary. Performance information is provided AS IS and no warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by IBM. Buyers should consult other sources of information, including system benchmarks, to evaluate the performance of a system they are considering buying. When referring to storage capacity, 1 TB equals total GB divided by 1000; accessible capacity may be less. TSS03014-USEN-00