In March 2026 IBM GA'd a new version of IBM Copy Services Manager
Copy Services Manager 6.3.17.0 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.
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!!!
Support for HA Snapshot on FlashSystems
IDEA CSM-I-229 - Create policies on FlashSystems for automatically creating Safeguarded Snapshots
Show used capacity on FlashSystems Snapshots
IDEA CSM-I-231 - Reconnect Storage system message on console after a disconnect
IDEA CSM-I-187 - Option for inhibit target read on DS8000 MM sessions
IDEA CSM-I-230 - Automatically create ODDs on DS8000 for certain issues
Enhancements to email notifications
IDEA CSM-I-205 - Allow for scheduling tasks on weekends or holidays
SGCSizer export recommendations feature!!!
New CSM Dashboard
IDEA CSM-I-226 - Filter and search pair table on Role Pair panel
IDEA CSM-I-236 - Show command issued in summary for external scripts on Scheduled Tasks
Support for processing z/OS Threat Detection events in CSM!!!!
Support for HA Snapshot on FlashSystems
- IBM FlashSystems recently introduced a new feature called HA Snapshots. When HA Snapshots is configured for a Volume Group setup for an HA relationship, customers can create Snapshots on the active management system and the FlashSystem will automatically mirror that Snapshot to the secondary management system, ensuring the Snapshot is available on both systems in the event that an unplanned swap occurs.
- In previous releases of CSM, the Snapshot session would use the -ignorelegacy option when creating a Snapshot, in order to allow customers to migrate from the original SGC 1.0 (FlashCopy based Safeguarded Copy) to the new SGC 2.0 (Snapshot based Safeguarded Copy). When HA Snapshots is enabled however, the -ignorelegacy option will cause a failure in the creation of the Snapshot.
- Starting with CSM 6.3.17, if the Volume Group resides in a partition, then CSM knows that SGC 1.0 relationships will not exist, and so the -ignorelegacy option will no longer be used when creating Snapshot for the Volume Group.
- If you want to manage Snapshots on FlashSystems with CSM, and you enable HA Snapshots, move to the CSM 6.3.17 release or higher.
Note that CSM can help you make your management of Snapshots in an HA configuration a LOT easier in a PBRHA setup. CSM will automatically create a PBR session and if you issue or schedule the "Create Safeguarded Snapshot" command to the PBR session, CSM will automatically determine which system in the HA configuration is the active management system....and issue the Snapshot command to that system. No need to coordinate which system to issue the Snapshot to. CSM does it for you!!!
IDEA CSM-I-229 - Create policies on FlashSystems for automatically creating Safeguarded Snapshots
- In the previous release of CSM, we started automatically creating Snapshot session for every Volume Group across all Systems that Volume Group is replicated to. This made it easier for customers, so that they simply had to create the Scheduled Task to create the frequency and retention they wanted for each Volume Group and then enable the task.
- But what if on a given FlashSystem you want ALL Volume Groups to have Safeguarded Snapshots with the same frequency and retention?!!!
- Now in CSM 6.3.17 you can do just that! When creating or modifying the connection from CSM to the FlashSystem, you can now define a Safeguarded Snapshot policy. This policy tells CSM to automatically create Scheduled Tasks for all Volume Groups it discovers with the frequency and retention you provide. In addition, if you select the Automatically Schedule the Safeguarded Snapshot Policy, as soon as the Scheduled Task is created, it will be enabled as well!!!
- Using the new Safeguarded Snapshot Policy on the connection means, you simply have to create the connection once in CSM....and from then on, and Volume Group you create on the FlashSystem will automatically start taking Safeguarded Snapshots!
- No extra steps!
- No logging into CSM!
- All automatic!
Show used capacity on FlashSystems Snapshots
- A new column has been added to the table of Snapshots on the Snapshot details panel.
- Look at the Used Capacity column to determine how much capacity each of the Snapshots is taking up on the Storage System.
IDEA CSM-I-231 - Reconnect Storage system message on console after a disconnect
- CSM requires a constant connection to each of the Storage Systems we are managing. This connection helps to make sure that we can issue any recovery actions to the hardware in the event of a disaster or cyber attack.
- In previous release, if CSM ever lost connection to a Storage System, not only would an error message appear on the CSM console, but email and SNMP alerts could be configured to alert customers to the loss in connectivity. In addition, the sessions using that Storage System would go into a Severe status.
- Customers creating automation against the message console however, requested that we start also putting a message on the console when we reconnect to the storage system. This will help them determine whether the disconnect was a minor network glitch, or a longer prolonged disconnection which requires them to page out their storage administrators for remediation.
- Starting in the CSM 6.3.17 release, the IWNH1047I message will now appear on the CSM message console when the server regains connection to the hardware.
IDEA CSM-I-187 - Option for inhibit target read on DS8000 MM sessions
There has always been a way to set DS8000 relationships for inhibiting target reads in CSM, but up til now it was always a server wide property you set on the Server->Properties panel.
In CSM 6.3.17, sessions that have Metro Mirror relationships, will not show the Inhibit reads on the target for MM sessions option in the session properties.
By selecting this option, when a Metro Mirror relationship gets established on the DS8000 through CSM, the pair will prevent reads from the secondary.
IDEA CSM-I-230 - Automatically create ODDs on DS8000 for certain issues
For awhile now CSM has provided a way to manually collect DS8000 diagnostic information on any of the DS8000s that are connected to the CSM server. But this is a manual process invoked from the Storage System panel. Often times issues arise and while CSM will automatically take it's own log package, the customer or support comes in much later to collect the DS8000 information. This leads to a lot of support cases where the logs were not taken soon enough for true root cause analysis.
Starting with CSM 6.3.17, the server will now automatically take non disruptive On Demand Dumps (ODDs) for all storage systems associated to the session, for the following error cases.
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- In the event of an unexpected suspension for Metro Mirror relationships on any session type.
- In the event of an unplanned HyperSwap on z/OS for any sessions with HyperSwap enabled.
- In the event of a failed Recover command for Global Mirror relationships on all session types.
- In the event of a failed Safeguarded Copy backup.
Enhancements to email notifications
The CSM 6.3.17 release has updated both email alert notifications and Dual Control request notifications with the following enhancements:
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- Full HTML based email notifications
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- Status icon and color-based visuals
- The documented explanation for the message
- The documented recommended action for the message
IDEA CSM-I-205 - Allow for scheduling tasks on weekends or holidays
A new scheduling option has been added to Scheduled Tasks. Now you can schedule a task to run at the start or end of a weekend or holiday. If you have a set of actions you need to run at the start of end of your business week, you can use this new option to set up that task to run automatically and allow CSM to programmatically determine when these weekends of holidays occur. No more manually enabling and disabling tasks to cover these events.
CSM provides a default list of US based holidays, but you can create your own holidays or redefine the days that make up your business weekend.
Need to run the task a 6pm the day before the holiday? No problem. Set an offset on the task to define when the task should actually run.
This new feature can be used for endless solutions....kick off an external batch script before the weekend....take a Safeguarded Snapshot on FlashSystems with a longer retention before the weekend....you name it!
SGCSizer export recommendations feature!!!
The SGCSizer session helps customers determine the backup multiplier needed for each volume when setting up an environment for SGC backups. When you setup the SGCSizer session you set the monitor interval to match the frequency that you'd like to take SGC backups. This then collects the number of changed tracks on the hardware, between each of the backups for all the volumes, in order to estimate how much data regularly changes on these volumes.
Prior to 6.3.17 though, you would then have to export all the raw data and input that into a spreadsheet in order to get the recommendations. This is time consuming and often required help from support or experts.
With CSM 6.3.17, you can now export a set of recommendations for all the volumes directly from the CSM SGCSizer session, instead of exporting the raw data and imputing it into the spreadsheet!!!
Choose the Export->Export SGC Capacity Recommendation option, and then enter the number of backups that you'd like to retain during a retention period, and CSM will export a CSV file with all the sizing recommendations for each volume. Want to try a different retention value? Simply do the export again and specify a new value!
New CSM Dashboard
A new Dashboard is now available with the CSM 6.3.17 release. New pod layout with charts for sessions status and states as well as connection status for both storage and host connections. Also new charts for volume protection and usage information, to give you greater insights into your environment!
Filter and search pair table on Role Pair panel
The pair table on the Role Pair details panel has been updated to a new dojo table. This gives you access to new columns like the source and target volume nicknames and full names. And provides key features like sorting and filtering capabilities.
IDEA CSM-I-236 - Show command issued in summary for external scripts on Scheduled Tasks
Starting with CSM 6.3.17, the popup and summary views for Scheduled Tasks will now include the first part of the command being executed on the server, to better help you see at a glance what script or command will be run on that step in the Task.
Support for processing z/OS Threat Detection events in CSM!!!!
Setup CSM in 6.3.17 to start receiving and processing Threat Detection Events from the IBM Threat Detection for z/OS product (zTD). After installing APAR OA68665, when CSM is running on a z System or connected to a z System via IP, if the System was setup with zTD, CSM will automatically start receiving the threat detection events.
Here's a list of features available when the Threat Detection event is received
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- CSM will log the event to the CSM console. If you have a remote syslog server setup for CSM, your remote syslog server can process those messages and run any actions desired by the customer....such as alerts or opening up service tickets.
- CSM can be setup to email users in the event that an alert was received.
- Run Scheduled Tasks if an alert is received. This was introduced in 6.3.16 for FlashSystems FlashCore module alerts. Setup a scheduled task that will run if an alert is received for a session or set of sessions. This can do anything from suspending replication to stopping future SGC backups until the threat is neutralized.
Here's an example of a practical solution using these events.
If you're running a cascaded GM setup (such as the one built into the 4 Site Enhanced CSM session), you can setup a scheduled task which will run on the Threat Detection event, and Stop the GC pairs for the backend GM. Because the backend GM session doesn't form consistency groups unless the front end is suspended, this action isolates the target of the backend GM to the data of the last consistency group that was formed.
With the backend isolated, you can leave the front end running and still providing you disaster recovery capability, while you analyze whether this was an actual attack.
If it wasn't....simply restart the GC pairs.
If it was....you can Recover to that target and potentially start up production from a good set of data!
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