In March 2020 IBM GA'd a new version of IBM Copy Services Manager
Copy Services Manager 6.2.9 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!!!
Provide Warning on Metro Mirror relationships when only a single logical path is established
In
RFE 112047, the customer requested that the Copy Services Manager session provide a warning when Metro Mirror relationships only have a single logical path established. When a session is started, CSM will only establish a single logical path if no paths have been established prior to the Start and no port pairing was defined in the CSV file. It is highly recommended to have multiple logical paths in enterprise environments for redundancy.
CSM will now periodically check to see if only a single logical path exists for relationships running in Metro Mirror mode. A new
IWNR2767W status message will appear on the session and in the console when only a single path is detected, and the session status will show as Warning.
When the message is seen, a customer can manually establish a second path, or modify the port pairing CSV and reissue the start the session to clear the warning.
If any customer chooses to ignore the recommendation and wishes to use a single logical path, they can disable the feature by adding the following property to the CSM server properties
com.ibm.csm.server.disablePathWarning=true
Enhance failure message if user password expires on connected DS8000
In
RFE 128226 a customer requested that CSM produce a better message when a DS8000 is disconnected from the CSM server because the password has expired. Message IWNH1650E provides a set of possible reason codes indicating why the DS8000 is in a disconnected state, but today reason code 3 actually covers multiple reasons including when a password expires.
In 6.2.9 three new reason codes have been added to provide better insight as to the reason for the disconnect. This will allow customers to self diagnose the reason for the disconnect and fix the issue without having to contact support.
31 - There was an authentication failure. The username or password that was used to connect to the cluster is invalid.
32 - There was an authentication failure. The username that was used to connect to the cluster does not exist.
33 - There was an authentication failure. The account is locked or the password has expired and needs to be reset.
Added command to discover existing DS8000 FlashCopy Relationships
In
RFE 139330 the customer requested the ability to discover existing FlashCopy relationships. CSM has not automatically discovered FlashCopy relationships in the past as it cannot confirm consistency across all the discovered relationships in the session. But discovering relationships may be necessary in some scenarios.
For example a customer may use remote pair FlashCopy with Incremental, which causes the DS8000 to automatically create FlashCopy relationships at the remote site. When this occurs, CSM does not have a session defined for those relationships and creating a new session to manage those pairs after failing over to the remote site leads to a full FlashCopy undoing the incremental setting. By allowing CSM to discover the relationships, customers can failover to the remote site and reverse direction of the copy managing the FlashCopy at the remote site, despite the fact that the relationships were originally created by the DS8000.
To discover existing relationships, a new "Discover" command is now available on FlashCopy sessions in CSM. When you issue the command any Defined pairs that find an existing hardware relationship will move to the Target Available state and be marked consistent. Customers should be careful though as consistency is still not confirmed and thus it is up to the customer to ensure that they don't discover inconsistent relationships.
Include all necessary files when creating a backup of the Copy Services Manager server
When backing up a CSM server today, only the database is backed up. Any other files that were modified on the server do not get backed up and need to be copied or updated if the backup is used to migrate or restore a server.
Starting with the 6.2.9 release, all necessary files should now be included in the backup zip that is created when the customer manually backups the server, or in the autobackup performed by the server. These files include property files, jvm.options, authentication files, and certificate files.
Only the Distributed installer has the option to use a backup file during installation. The 6.2.9 installer is designed to be able to handle a backup zip that has the extra files, or a backup zip from a version of the product before 6.2.9. Only backups created at the 6.2.9 level however will have all the necessary files included in the zip.
Support disabling Metro Mirror mode on sessions that should only run Global Copy
In
RFE 142392, a customer requested the ability to disable Metro Mirror starts on a session to avoid accidentally issuing the wrong start command. A lot of customers use the Metro Mirror Failover/Failback for migration and other purposes where they run the session only in Global Copy mode as the distance between the source and target are too great for Metro Mirror. If the source is a production volume accidentally issuing the start for Metro Mirror can cause a performance application impact.
In CSM 6.2.9, we have enabled the ability to disable Metro Mirror starts on Metro Mirror Failover/Failback session types. By adding the following property for each desired session in Server Properties, the Start H1->H2 and Start H2->H1 commands will no longer display and cannot be issued. Only StartGC H1->H2 and StartGC H2->H1 will be visible.
In the Server Properties add the following property
csm.disable.mm.mode.sessionname=true where session_
name is the name of the session where all spaces are replaced with "_”
Example:
csm.disable.mm.mode.My_MM.=true
where 'My MM' is the name of the session that I want to disable MM mode on
Replace all spaces with "_" in session name. Property is case sensitive!!!
Support allowing a session to display Normal status when in Global Copy mode
In
RFE 142321, a customer requested the ability to have a session running in Global Copy mode actually display in Normal status. Today a session running in Global Copy mode will always show a warning status as the session will never be considered consistent. Customers that are doing a migration and constantly keep the session in Global Copy mode though think that this is the normal state of the session and thus should display Normal status helping them to distinguish when there is an actual issue.
In CSM 6.2.9, it will be possible to define a threshold for the percent complete on Global Copy sessions, that indicates when a session running in Global Copy mode can go into a Normal status. If the session is below that threshold the session will show Warning but if it is above the threshold it will show Normal. For example, if we set the property to 90, once the session's percent complete is above 90 it will begin displaying Normal. Note that the property is at a server level and affects all Metro Mirror Failover/Failback sessions running in Global Copy mode when set.
csm.percent.complete.warning.threshold=80
Externalize REST API
In
RFE 139014, customers have requested the ability to use the CSM REST API.
A RESTful (Representational State Transfer) API is a platform independent means by which to initiate create, read, update, and delete operations to the Copy Services Manager server. These operations are initiated with the HTTP commands: POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE.
In CSM 6.2.9, the KnowledgeCenter for CSM will formally provide documentation for the CSM RESTapi in the form of Swagger interactive documentation
By using the RESTful API for CSM, customers can automate actions to CSM sessions or scheduled tasks integrated in RESTful actions to other products/systems in the environment
Support –synchronous option on CLI runtask command
It is possible today to use a Scheduled Task to run a set of actions on a CSM server through an external product or batch job but using the CSM CLI runtask command. The issue with using this command though is that because Scheduled Tasks are designed to potentially run long, the runtask command actually kicks off the task to run asynchronously. This means that the runtask call completes to the caller but the actual actions in the task may have not yet been issued or completed. If a batch job or script is waiting for the actual actions to complete it has to query the task status or the session states to determine when it can move to the next step.
In CSM 6.2.9, an additional parameter was added to the runtask command. If the call specifies '-synchronous' the runtask will not return as complete until the task has finished running through all the actions, or has failed in executing the actions. This allows a caller to script the next steps of their batch job without having to do additional queries. When using the parameter, please note that depending on what is defined in the Scheduled Task, the call may take a very long time to complete.
Support 'Stop when Drained' command
In
RFE 142440, a customer requested a new command that would force the session to query the hardware until it determined that there were no pairs with out of sync tracks and then suspend the pairs. There is an action for Wait for Percent Complete now on Scheduled Tasks, however the action does not query the hardware during the check but bases the call on the currently known percent complete which is queried at an interval on the server. When working with scenarios such as needing to create a consistent point of a Global Copy target which is cascaded off an Metro Mirror or Global Mirror target, it is necessary to query the hardware after the Suspend to the primary replication relationships has completed. The new 'Stop When Drained' command can be issued or added to a Scheduled Task to ensure that a query to the hardware did determine that no pairs had any remaining out of sync tracks.
Support SVC/FlashSystem consistency protection feature
In
RFE 117871, customers have requested official support for the SVC/FlashSystem consistency protection feature. The consistency protection feature uses Change Volumes for Metro Mirror or Global Mirror relationships, to create a consistent point at the remote site, prior to starting a resynchronization of the relationships after a suspension. In the event of a disaster before the pairs are fully resynchronized, a recover to the remote site automatically uses the consistent point created on the change volume when resynchronization was started.
In CSM 6.2.9, a new Metro Mirror w/ Change Volumes session type has been added to allow customers to defined a session with Change Volumes for the H1 and H2 volumes. Once the change volumes are associated to the H1 and H2 volumes, the hardware automatically support consistency protection. When consistency protection is invoked on the hardware, the consistency group is automatically considered consistent which causes CSM to display a Prepared status indicating that a recovery could be issued to the remote site with consistent data. However, since the pairs aren't synchronized yet the data at the remote site isn't current and does not meet the 0 RPO required for a Metro Mirror session. While the session is resynchronzing, the session will remain in a Warning status with a status message IWNR2751W indicating that the volumes are not synchronized. When synchronization completes the session will automatically go into a Prepared/Normal state.
For Global Mirror w/ Change Volume sessions, consistency protection is already supported today, however, it's possible that the session will be in a Prepared/Normal state given that Global Mirror always has a non 0 RPO. When consistency protection is running for a Global Mirror session, the RPO will continue to increase until consistency groups are once again forming at the remote site. RPO warning and severe thresholds can be set on the session to force the session in to a Warning or Severe status if the RPO reaches a warning or severe level.
Officially support FlashSystem 9200 systems
Starting with CSM 6.2.9, FlashSystem 9200 storage systems are officially supported. This means that when attaching CSM to a FlashSystem 9200 or 9200R the storage system will display as a FlashSystem 9200. CSM supports all SVC/Spectrum Virtualize/FlashSystem products. Officially supported products will display the correct storage system name. If the product is new it may display as SVC but it is still officially supported by CSM based on the SVC level of the storage system.
CSM 6.2.9 What’s New 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