Originally posted by: RandyBlea

In October, 2018 IBM GA'd the next version of IBM Copy Services Manager, version 6.2.3

Copy Services Manager 6.2.3 Download

IBM Copy Services Manager is a storage replication product that provides a single place to manage all the replication across your IBM storage environment.  With IBM Copy Services Manager customers can simplify the management of their replication solutions while providing disaster recovery and high availability to their applications.

What's New in IBM Copy Services Manager 6.2.3

As always, we're very excited to provide the following key features being released in this new version.  We develop Copy Services Manager in an agile development cycle and as such have included a number of customer requested features!!!

Synchronize z/OS Host Connection Certificates across Active and Standby

CSM allows customers to create an IP connection to a z/OS system in order to manage HyperSwap or Hardened Freeze.  In order to make this IP connection secure, SSL certificates are created and need to be imported when the connection is made.  In previous releases however, in order for a standby server to connect to the z/OS system that is defined on the active server, a customer had to manually go to the standby server an import the certificate. In 6.2.3, this will be done AUTOMATICALLY.  That means that as soon as you import it on the active server side the connection and certificate will be sent to the standby server allowing the standby server to connect to the z/OS system immediately.  No manual interaction is necessary.  This should provide faster setup for customers making the solution easier to use.

Enhancements to CSM Scheduled Tasks

In CSM 6.2.3 a few additional enhancements have been added to CSM Scheduled Tasks.  When CSM added the ability to create multiple actions in the Scheduled Task in 6.2.2, one of the top requests by customers was to be able to use this through an external scheduler or batch set of jobs.  Seems odd that a scheduler would use an external scheduler, however, what the new Scheduled Tasks allow is for customers to in essentially create the same thing they would have had to do previously using a CSMCLI script.   To this end there are two features that we now provide in 6.2.3.  The first is to no longer require a customer to set a scheduled time on the Scheduled Task.  They can choose "No Schedule" if they never intend to run it through the CSM internal scheduling mechanism.  The second is that there is now a new CSM CLI command called 'runtask'.  This command takes a task ID and executes the Scheduled Task with that ID.  This allows someone to include the runtask in a batch job etc to run along with other commands outside the scope of what CSM manages. 

Another feature added to Scheduled Tasks is the ability to stagger hourly schedules.  In previous releases, tasks scheduled with an hourly time would always run at the top of the hour.  In this release, the hourly schedules will start at the time that the task is enabled.  If you enabled a task that is set to run every hour at 12:13...then it will run at 12:13, 1:13, 2:13, etc.

Support for 4 Site Session Solution in CSM

More and more customers are finding that they not only need disaster recovery to a remote site, but they need high availability locally.  These customers have been moving to a three site configuration.  The problem is, if a disaster occurs, or they are forced to move to a remote site in a three site solution, while running at the third site they lose their high availability.  This is where a 4 site solution comes in.  In CSM 6.2.3, CSM has a new 4 Site session that provides customers with high availability and remote disaster recovery no matter whether they are running locally or if they fail over to the remote site.  The 4 site session is based of a Multi-Target MM-GM configuration and is symmetrical whether running at Site1/Site2 or running at Site3/Site4.  This could be done in multiple sessions previously, using a documented procedure in an IBM white paper, however using multiple sessions leads to a lot of extra steps and moving pairs from one session to another.  With a single session type, a customer has an easy to use interface to switch between sites, support z/OS HyperSwap, allowing practicing at the 4th site, and much much more.

Support for DS8000 Safeguarded Copy Logical Copy Protection Solution

There is an increasing fear in the market over Cyber attacks.  Attacks such as Ransomware or even internal sabotage have driven the industry to provide solutions for Cyber Resiliency.  Logical Corruption Protection is an industry term for solutions that provide this resiliency.  In DS8000 8.5, IBM has provided a solution called Safeguarded Copy.  Safeguarded copy allows customers to take up to 500 backups of their data to an allotted backup location that is secured against unauthorized manipulation or deletion.  And it provides the ability for customers to recover any of those backups to a set of recovery volumes in order to do forensic analysis or restore data from a previous time.  Through CSM customers can manually create Safeguarded backups, or use a Scheduled Task to backup on a regular schedule in order to meet their Service Level Agreements.  The Safeguarded Copy session is designed to automatically remove older backups based off of a customer provided retention period as well as prevent too many frequent backups from rolling off a non corrupted copy of the data.  Safeguarded Copy sessions can be integrated with other CSM sessions, GDPS, or DSCLI managed remote copy relationships, to provide Cyber Resiliency across either a production site or on the targets at a remote site or bunker site.  CSM and DS8000 Safeguarded copy provide a secure and efficient answer to Cyber Resiliency.

What's new in Copy Services Manager 6.2.3 Video

RFE support for Copy Services Manager

If you wish to open a new Request for Enhancement on IBM Copy Services Manager, you can now do so through the following link.
https://ibm.biz/Bd4Zxj