What's New in IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.6.0

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What's New in IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.6.0

By Randy Blea posted Mon March 27, 2023 06:39 PM

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In Mar 2023 IBM GA'd a new version of IBM Copy Services Manager

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!!!

RFE CSM-I-78 – CSM Operator should be able to managed Scheduled Tasks

In previous releases, Scheduled Tasks could only be created and modified by a user with the Administrator role. This meant that anytime someone with a session Operator role needed to make a change to a Task, they would need to get an Administrator to make the change.
Starting in CSM 6.3.6, session Operators will now be able to create and modify tasks containing session Actions which apply to sessions they have authority to manage. If Scheduled Task includes an action for a session the Session Operator does not have authority to, the Operator will not be able to see nor modify the task. When creating a Scheduled Task, Operators can choose any action that requires a session, and setup that action for sessions that they can manage.
Operators can also create and manage actions not tied to sessions such as the Run External Script action.

RFE CSM-I-85– Enhancements to DS8000 path viewing in CSM GUI

Managing logical paths on DS8000 requires managing the connections at an LSS pairing level. On DS8000 systems with a lot of LSSs, this can become overwhelming to try to manage and monitor.
Starting with the CSM 6.3.6 release, there have been some enhancements to aid in viewing and monitoring paths on the CSM GUI.
- Ability to use a filter on the table in order to filter by Box, LSS or even the Port
- Added the ability to customize the columns you see or the order the columns are displayed
- Extended the size of the table to fit the entire screen so that more paths can be seen without scrolling
- Added the ability to export the table contents to a CSV file to externally save or view path status

RFE CSM-I-107– Display number of good DS8000 paths on Topology Details panel

CSM provides the ability to view the current topology of all replication defined on the server, in the direction that it's currently defined. Storage->Topology Details provides a table showing all the role to role mappings which for DS8000 correspond to LSS pairings.
Starting in CSM 6.3.6 a new column called "Path Count" is now visible on the Topology Details panel. For DS8000 relationships, this column displays the number of logical paths currently defined on the hardware between the two LSSs, which are currently in a "good" state.
This now allows customers to validate at a glance that the right number of logical paths were setup between two LSSs to ensure proper performance for their replication needs. The table also allows customers to export to a csv file to keep track of the number of paths defined.

RFE CSM-I-115– More granularity for email addresses on email events

CSM has the ability to define multiple users or email addresses for each type of alert category in CSM. When multiple email addresses or users are defined to the same category, CSM in previous releases, would send a single email copying all email addresses that needed to be notified of the alert.
An RFE was opened however, indicating that the mass email was preventing them from creating automation based of a single email addresses due to a given CSM alert. Starting in CSM 6.3.6, individual emails will now be sent to all users/email addresses when an alert is sent. This should aid in the ability to automate while keeping email addresses for those notified private.

REST API Support for adding/removing z/OS Host connections

Starting with the CSM 6.3.6 release the REST API will now support the ability to add z/OS Host connections. The pyCSM python library and CSM Ansible Collection have also been modified to support the new REST call.

Enhancements for Spectrum Virtualize Snapshot sessions

The following enhancements were made for Spectrum Virtualize Snapshot sessions.
- When a CSM Scheduled task creates a Snapshot or Safeguarded Snapshot, the task ID or Name will be used as part of the snapshot name defined on the hardware. This allows customers to easily distinguish which snapshots were created from which scheduled task. Customers might define more than one Scheduled task for a given Volume Group in order to create snapshots at different frequencies, retentions or different Safeguarded vs. non-Safeguarded states.

- Customers can now define a Snapshot Pool to use which will be used for all volumes in the Volume Group in order to take a snapshot. By default the snapshot will be created in the source pool but this value lets you define a common child pool for all the volumes in the Volume Group which can be used for the Snapshots. The hardware at the time of this blog, only supports creating the Snapshot in the source volume's pool, or a child pool of the source volume's pool.

https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/IMWUC/UploadedImages/d5d5d759-cab6-4adb-ae53-b03967a4252d/CSM628/line.png

Idea/RFE support for Copy Services Manager

If you wish to open a new IDEA (formally called a Request for Enhancement) on IBM Copy Services Manager, you can now do so through the following link.
https://ibm-sys-storage.ideas.ibm.com/ideas?project=CSM

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