IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX – Spectrum certified by IBM
Highlights of PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX 6.1
* Introducing PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Standard Edition and PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Enterprise Edition.
* PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Standard Edition is the IBM Power Systems data center solution that helps protect critical business applications from outages; planned or unplanned.
* PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Enterprise Edition includes the Standard Edition plus advanced capabilities such as failover to backup resources at remote locations.
* PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition supports High Availability and Disaster Recovery with EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility) deployments.
* GLVM configuration wizard enables PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition clients to set up a two-node cross site configuration for disaster recovery.
* PowerHA SystemMirror deployed in DLPAR (dynamic logical partitioning) environments enables managed utilization of resources on a secondary node in the PowerHA SystemMirror cluster for POWER5™ and later processors.
* PowerHA SystemMirror product is compliant for IPv6 environments.
Other enhancements include: Improved SMIT interfaces and File Collections enhancements
The need for robust high availability and disaster recovery solutions
High Availability is a key component of Business Resiliency. It’s widely documented that outages increase the total cost of IT ownership as well as causing potential damage to client relationships and loss of revenue. Although hardware has become very reliable, research shows that unplanned outages occur and typically result from operator error, software bugs, environmental conditions and other non hardware related situations—problems that reliable hardware cannot prevent. Planned outages for application and system maintenance also impact business performance and businesses are aggressively shrinking the time allotted for this type of activity. Increasingly IT shops are moving away from outsourced DR operations to in-sourced DR operations based on continuous data replication between geographically dispersed locations. Modern DR solutions require both geographic dispersion and recovery point objectives as close to zero as possible. Increasingly, IT shops are being asked to prove that they can indeed recover operations at a remote facility. The simple fact is that owning your own DR solution is not only economically sensible but it gives you greater control over your environment. Finally, the IBM Power Systems™ strategy is to not only deliver more advanced functional capabilities for business resiliency but to enhance product usability and robustness through deep integration with AIX® and affiliated software stack technologies. PowerHA™ SystemMirror™ is architected by, developed by, integrated by, tested and supported by, IBM top to bottom.
IBM’s premier availability solution
PowerHA™ SystemMirror™ for AIX® V6.1 is the next generation of the popular PowerHA for AIX V5.5 and is available in one of two packages; the PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Standard Edition, and the PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Enterprise Edition. This offering approach was developed to give more price/value granularity as well as to enable clients to choose between a solution with a data center focus or a more advanced solution capability that includes the Standard Edition function plus extensions that enable cross site deployments.
The IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Standard Edition helps you to protect your critical business applications from outages in the data center (single site solution), planned or unplanned. The Standard Edition provides reliable monitoring, failure detection and automated recovery of business application environments to backup resources, exploiting IBM’s suite of disk storage solutions which provide the core data resiliency foundation. IBM developers continuously invent, deploy, integrate and test to refine the usability and robustness of PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX.
PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX Enterprise Edition
The PowerHA™ SystemMirror™ for AIX® Enterprise Edition includes all of the capabilities of the Standard Edition and more. The Enterprise Edition package enables you to extend your data center solution across multiple sites and with V6.1 of PowerHA SystemMirror, the Enterprise Edition expands the HA/DR support to EMC SRDF replication environments. V6.1 also provides for many usability enhancements including a “wizard” to configure and deploy host based mirroring solutions (GLVM configuration wizard).
The Enterprise Edition supports ESS/Metro-Mirror and Storage System 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. The Enterprise Edition, in combination with Metro-Mirror, manages a clustered environment to allow mirroring of critical data to be maintained at all times.
PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition 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.
IBM AIX Power Systems™ customers who deploy their storage via EMC SRDF are now able to take advantage of the V6.1 PowerHA SystemMirror solution to manage and automate their HA/DR operations. Most common SRDF replication configurations are supported. PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition V6.1 uses the EMC SRDF interfaces to discover and manage the replication the Symmetrix SRDF volumes in multi site HA deployments. Customers can use the PowerHA SystemMirror SMIT or WebSMIT interfaces to specify the EMC SRDF volumes as cluster resources and manage them as part of failover operations. The PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition supports EMC device groups, composite groups, SRDF Synchronous and Asynchronous replication and consistency groups (SRDF/CG) for both. You will need to refer to PowerHA SystemMirror and EMC documentation to ensure that you have the necessary EMC software components for EMC SRDF to be deployed in the PowerHA SystemMirror cluster.
GLVM (geographic logical volume manager) is the AIX host based mirroring over IP network solution that enables clients to set up geographically dispersed PowerHA SystemMirror clusters. The PowerHA SystemMirror host based mirroring solution could lower your total cost of acquisition by eliminating the need to purchase high end storage solutions. The introduction of GLVM async mode support with PowerHA SystemMirror V5.5 enabled clients to extend the PowerHA SystemMirror cluster in cross site configurations with virtually unlimited distance between the primary and secondary nodes. With V6.1, Enterprise Edition clients will be able to set up two-node cross site configurations on their own via the GLVM configuration wizard (included in the Enterprise Edition package).
PowerHA FAQ
Question: What hardware and software is supported by PowerHA?
Answer: All PowerHA supported hardware and software is listed in the Sales Manual. Hardware requirements are located under the Technical Description topic.
Question: Does PowerHA SystemMirror work on different operating systems?
Answer: PowerHA SystemMirror is tightly integrated with the AIX operating system and Power Systems servers allowing for a rich set of features which are not available with any other combination of operating system and hardware.
Question: On which AIX levels is PowerHA SystemMirror supported?
Answer: PowerHA requires one of:
AIX V5.3
AIX V6.1
PowerHA will support future releases of AIX as they become available. To find the latest fixes available for PowerHA and AIX, refer to the TechSupport web site.
Question: What applications work with PowerHA?
Answer: All popular applications work with PowerHA including DB2, Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, etc. PowerHA provides Smart Assist agents to let you quickly and easily configure PowerHA with specific applications. PowerHA includes flexible configuration parameters that let you easily set it up for just about any application there is. If you are interested in using PowerHA with a new application, you can find out more under the topic What kinds of applications are best suited for a high availability environment?
Question: Does PowerHA support dynamic LPAR, CUoD, On/Off CoD, or CBU?
Answer: PowerHA supports Dynamic Logical Partitioning, Capacity Upgrade on Demand, On/Off Capacity on Demand and Capacity Backup Upgrade. See Announcement Letters 204-298 and 105-056.
Question: If a server has LPAR capability, can two or more LPARs be configured with unique instances of PowerHA running on them without incurring additional license charges?
Answer: Yes. PowerHA is a server product that has one charge unit: number of processors on which PowerHA will be installed or run. Regardless of how many LPARs or instances of AIX that run in the server, you are charged based on the number of active processors in the server that is running PowerHA. Note that PowerHA configurations containing multiple LPARs within a single server may represent a potential single point-of-failure. To avoid this, it is recommended that the backup for an LPAR be an LPAR on a different server or a standalone server.
Question: Does PowerHA support non-IBM hardware or operating systems?
Answer: Yes. PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX supports the hardware and operating systems as specified in the Sales Manual. For more information about non-IBM storage attachment, see EMC and Hitachi storage subsystems.
Question: Does PowerHA support EMC or Hitachi storage subsystems when connected to Power Systems servers?
Answer: The storage subsystems supported by PowerHA are those documented in the Sales Manual. New additions are announced via Flash. Current information can be retrieved from the online Sales Manual for PowerHA on AIX. PowerHA supports those IBM devices that have passed IBM qualification efforts, and for which IBM development and service are prepared to provide support.
With the PowerHA SystemMirror Enterprise Edition, clients using EMC storage with SRDF can take advantage of the PowerHA SystemMirror capabilities for HA/DR operations. EMC clients may also deploy PowerHA SystemMirror Standard Edition for data center operations.
There is a group, associated with development, that tests non-IBM storage subsystems for attachment to AIX systems and PowerHA. There are also cooperative service agreements in place with certain non-IBM storage vendors.
If a client has an PowerHA cluster containing storage hardware other than that supported by PowerHA, and they report a problem, IBM Service will address the problem as follows:
* If the problem is unrelated to that hardware, it will be addressed the same as any other problem.
* If the problem is related to that hardware, and the hardware is covered by a cooperative service agreement with the storage vendor, the problem will be forwarded to the storage vendor.
* If the problem is related to hardware for which no cooperative service agreement is in place, the client will be asked to refer the problem to the hardware manufacturer.
Question: Where do I find out about hardware or software not listed in the Sales Manual?
Answer: Inquiries related to non-IBM products should be directed to the specific vendor. For more information on newly announced IBM hardware and software products that are not listed in the Sales Manual, see Why does PowerHA support often come out after the hardware or software announcement?
Question: Why does PowerHA support often come out after the hardware or software announce?
Answer: PowerHA tests all new hardware and software in an PowerHA environment prior to announcing support. We do this because PowerHA exercises features and interfaces in unique and stressful ways which may not be exposed outside of an PowerHA environment. We don’t simply assume new hardware or software works—we bring it into our lab and run it through a qualification test. Sometimes problems are found or take time to resolve which means PowerHA cannot announce support at the same time as the hardware is announced.
Question: What is PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX? How does it differ from HACMP?
Answer: IBM PowerHA SystemMirror represents a new name for the IBM High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMP) product. The renaming is to align HACMP with the new IBM Power Systems Software initiative. PowerHA for AIX V5.5 is the follow-on release to HACMP 5.4. And PowerHA SystemMirror is the follow-on release to PowerHA for AIX 5.5.
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