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What's New in IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.9.0

By Randy Blea posted Mon December 18, 2023 10:47 AM

In Dec 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!!!

IDEA CSM-I-144 - Remove Copy Sets Keep on Hardware defaults to true for SGC session

Customers can remove copy sets from CSM sessions at any time. If they want to keep the base relationships on the hardware though they have the option in the Remove Copy Sets wizard to select "Yes, keep the base hardware relationships on the storage system". By default though, the remove copy set wizard will terminate all relationships associated with the copy sets being removed.
A Safeguarded Copy (SGC) session though is different and should protect the backups for the volumes in the session. So, starting with the 6.3.9 release, the option to "Yes, keep the base hardware relationships on the storage system" will be selected by default when attempting to remove copy sets against a DS8000 SGC session. This will ensure that the backups will remain on the storage system for the copy sets removed, even though they are no longer managed by the CSM session. If the volumes are added to an SGC session in the future, those existing backups will be discovered and can be managed through that session.

IDEA CSM-I-143 – REST interface to create or duplicate a CSM Scheduled tasks via JSON input for programmatic creation

Today a Scheduled Task is either automatically generated for some session types like a FlashSystem SGC session, or can be created via the CSM GUI. Scheduled tasks are quite complicated as they not only contain a schedule for when to run the task, but may consist of one or more actions that need to be performed when the task runs. This makes creating a programmatic interface difficult.
There are some environments though that require the ability to programmatically create scheduled tasks. For example, FlashSystem customers that are using CSM for SGC are used to CSM auto creating the session and task based off the policy on the storage system. If a customer then decides to move to Safeguarded Snapshot support, the option to define a policy on the storage system no longer exists.
Starting with the CSM 6.3.9 release, it will now be possible to programmatically create the scheduled task via REST by inputing a json string containing the definition of the task. This format is the same format that is returned when you query a scheduled task on the CSM server. This allows customers to easily parse an existing scheduled task or programmatically build a json string with the criteria they need.

Duplicate a scheduled task in the CSM GUI

Customers are often have multiple sessions performing the same of very similar tasks, across multiple environments. For example a customer might be coordinating Safeguarded Copy backups in both a Production and Test environment. If the actions and scheduled tasks are the same across the various environments, creating the scheduled tasks an be tedious and lead to potentially defining the tasks incorrectly.
Starting with the CSM 6.3.0 release, you can now select a Scheduled task and from the Actions menu choose "Duplicate Task". This will create a new scheduled task containing all the same information and actions as the selected task. The Modify Task wizard will popup and then allow you to modify the task changing the name of the task as well as the names of any sessions in the Actions, etc.

New SGCSizer session providing data collection for SGC backup capacity sizing with minimal system resources

CSM supports an ESESizer session that helps collect data on a set of volumes that can be used to size both the backup capacity for SGC as well as for ESE FC targets. Unfortunately, due to the way this session collects the bitmaps for each volume, the processing for the session can take a LOT of system resources. This makes it difficult to run the ESESizer for most environments on the DS8000 HMC, or without modifying the server Java heap size substantially.
In the CSM 6.3.9 release, a new SGCSizer session is available. This session can be run against a DS8000 at a 9.4 level of microcode or higher, and takes advantage of a new query which no longer requires the system resources of the ESESizer session. This allows the session to run on a DS8000 HMC or on a smaller standalone server.
The SGCSizer session is specifically designed to help with determining the backup capacity multiplier for the SGC backup capacity of each volume. It does not yet collect enough data to help in sizing ESE FC target volumes. The exported data from the SGCSizer session can then be used in the following tool/spreadsheet helping you to determine the backup multiplier to use.

Ability to delete “active” CSM sessions from the GUI without touching the storage system providing easier cleanup after migrations

In the past, the Session Action to Remove the Session was always greyed out from the CSM GUI if the session was in an active state. Starting with the CSM 6.3.9 release, you can now issue the Remove Session for a session when it's in any state. The Remove Session action will remove all knowledge of the session and relationships WITHOUT touching the hardware.
This new feature can be quite useful in a lot of scenarios, such as when you're migrating between CSM servers. While the remove copy set with the keep on hardware option can be used, that command will still remove and Global Mirror or Consistency Group objects from the hardware, leaving just the base MM/GC/FC relationships. If another server has fully taken over the management of those objects on the hardware, you don't want to remove those constructs. This solution makes it far cleaner and easier to simply no longer have a given CSM session manage the relationships.

New view to view sessions by FlashSystem/SVC Volume Groups

CSM now supports SGC, Snapshot and Asynchronous Policy Based Replication (PBR) sessions for FlashSystems. These session types are all based off of a Volume Group defined on the storage system itself. The traditional CSM sessions view could be filtered to only view a certain volume group, but this can be time consuming or cumbersome to do each time.
Starting with CSM 6.3.9 you can now click on Sessions->Sessions By Volume Group in the Navigator to bring up a new view designed to show you all sessions associated with a FlashSystem Volume Group. Each Volume Group is listed for the FlashSystems the CSM server is connected to, and under that are the sessions associated to that Volume Group. This can help you validate that a given volume group has both a Snapshot session and a PBR session, etc.

Added support for FlashSystems/SVC Prepare Snapshot and Prepare Safeguarded Snapshot

CSM now supports both a Prepare Snapshot and Prepare Safeguarded Snapshot command for FlashSystems Snapshot sessions. These new commands can be run prior to running the Create Snapshot or the Create Safeguarded Snapshot commands, in order to allow the hardware to create all the internal structures necessary so that when the Create command is issued, the time to take the snapshot is much faster.

New Multi-target Global Mirror Global Mirror session type

The DS8000 9.4 level of microcode released support for a Multi-Target Global Mirror Global Mirror configurations, where a source volume can have two targets in Global Mirror mode. The new CSM Global Mirror Global Mirror session type in CSM 6.3.9 supports this new feature and allows customers to start both role pairs in either GC or GM mode.
All features of managing a GM relationship are available in the new session for both active role pairs, including, RPO History, Severe/Warning Threshold Alerting and RPO/LSS OOS graphing.
This new session type allows recovery to either site and then reversing the direction of the replication to create the GM multi target replication from the new site.

New 4 Site Replication Enhanced session type

The CSM 6.3.9 release introduces a new 4 Site Replication Enhanced session type. This solution is similar to the existing MT MM-GM with Site 4 replication session but uses journals at all 4 sites to provide a lot more capabilities to handle various planned or unplanned scenarios.
The solution is designed to be a symmetric solution managing to "regions" supported Metro Mirror or HyperSwap locally and then Global Mirroring to a remote region. This gives customers both local high availability as well as remote disaster recoverability.
In the event of a disaster a the GM target site, the solution uses the Cascaded Incremental Resynchronization feature in the DS8000 9.4 release to allow a customer to setup Global Mirror from the production site to the 4th site without a full copy. In the picture below, if the H3 box went down, the customer could setup a Global Mirror relationship from H1 to H4 without a full copy, thus regaining their GM capability, without ever losing the MM capability.
In addition, the session provides the ability to setup a Cascaded Global Mirror solution, which sets up Global Mirror from the GM target site to the 4th site. A cascaded Global Mirror solution provides customers a way to take an SGC backup (or FC flashcopy) at the remote site, while minimizing the Pause time necessary to get a consistency SGC backup. The Suspend 4th Site command, combines all the steps necessary to both suspend the replication to the 4th site consistently while also resuming the GM DR replication as quickly as possible.

CSM 6.3.9.0 What’s New Video

4 Site Replication Enhanced Session Demo

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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#copyservicesmanager
#safeguardedcopy#flashsystem

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