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What's New in IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.10.0

By Randy Blea posted Fri March 29, 2024 11:00 AM

In March 2024 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!!!

Remote CLI install for Distributed Systems

CSM uses Install Anywhere for installing the server on Distributed Systems. When you install the server the CSM CLI is installed with it on that same system. But sometimes customers need the ability to use and run the CSM CLI from a remote server, such as when there may be a common server that executes automation scripts.
In previous releases, placing the CSM CLI on a remote server involved downloading the archive of the CLI and unzipping it to a location on the desired server. This method is quick, but doesn't easily handle cases like upgrades. If there were properties set on the CSM CLI this could be lost by the extraction process.
Starting with 6.3.10 the Install Anywhere installation file will now cover installing the CLI on remote system. If you bring up the graphical version of the installer the "Select Installation Type" panel has a new option to "Install CLI Only". By choosing this option, only the CSM CLI will be installed on the system and not the rest of the CSM code. Future upgrades will use the installer as well.
Remote CLI installations on z/OS will not have an installer and will remain a download of a PAX archive.
The installer can be run via silent install to install the CLI only as well. To run the silent install launch the installer with -i silent, -DLICENSE_ACCEPTED=true and -DCLI_ONLY_INSTALL=true as in the example below.

cmd /c csm-setup-6.3.x-win.exe -i silent -DLICENSE_ACCEPTED=true -DCLI_ONLY_INSTALL=true

NOTE: Downloads of the archive form of the CSM CLI will no longer be provided. Customers should download the main installer and choose the Install CLI only option.

Support for FlashSystems Snapshot Restore to Production

While CSM has supported the creation of Snapshots or Safeguarded Snapshots since their release on FlashSystems, the hardware did not yet support the ability to restore a Snapshot back onto to source volumes in the Volume Group.
Starting with CSM 6.3.10, you can now issue the Restore Snapshot to Production command on a Snapshot session and choose either a regular Snapshot or a Safeguarded Snapshot which will be used to restore the source volumes in the Volume Group.
NOTE: This command will overwrite all the data on the source volumes. It is highly recommended that you limit the use of this command by preventing session Operators from using the command and enabling Dual Control or Safeguarded Copy Dual control on the session.

Support for FlashSystems Snapshot Refresh Thin Clones

The only way to access the data off of a FlashSystem Snapshot is to create a Thin Clone or a full Clone. This creates a new Volume Group with a set of host accessible volumes.
There are some use cases though where creating a new Thin Clone every time you want to access the data in a Snapshot or Safeguarded Snapshot could be tedious. For example, if you perform regular automated testing against scheduled Snapshots, or do Cyber Vault testing on a Safeguarded Snapshot, creating a new Thin Clone means you have to attach the hosts to a different set of volumes each time.
Starting with CSM 6.3.10, the Snapshot session for FlashSystems now supports the new feature for refreshing an existing thin clone. When you issue the Refresh Thin Clone command on the Snapshot session, you will choose and existing thin clone and then an existing Snapshot or Safeguarded Snapshot. The Thin Clone you choose will then get updated with the data in the Snapshot that was chosen. The hosts do not need to attach to a different set of volumes.
HINT: Not only can you schedule the creation of Snapshots and/or Safeguarded Snapshots, but you can now create a CSM Scheduled Task to Refresh Thin Clones. When the task runs, it will find the last successful Snapshot taken and the last thin clone created, and update the thin clone with the Snapshot data. This will allow you to always have a thin clone with attached hosts to test it, without the need to find the volume group to use or to attach and reattach hosts!!

Support for FlashSystems Asynchronous Policy Based Replication Recovery Test Mode

Customers running Asynchronous Policy Based Replication on a Volume Group might want to test their recovery procedures so that in the event of a true disaster they are ensured that all their procedures will work. Doing this traditionally though meant suspending the replication between the source and target making the targets write enabled, so that hosts could connect and test the target volumes. Once the test completed, the replication could be restarted, but depending on how long the test was running, a lot of updates may have occurred to the sources and it may take awhile to complete resynchronization to get back to a fully protected state.
Starting with the CSM 6.3.10 release, if you are managing a Volume Group in CSM that has an Asynchronous Replication policy enabled, you can now enable that Volume Group to enter a Recovery Test Mode (on supported storage system levels). While in a Recovery Test Mode, the targets become write enabled allowing for testing at the target site, but replication for new updates will continue from the sources to the target site. Note though...that while replication continues, consistency group formation does not. This means that there is no disaster protection while in the recovery test mode, however, once the test completes the resynchronization time to get back to a full protected state will be much faster.
To enter a Recovery Test Mode issue the Start Recovery Test command on the CSM session. Prior to entering the recovery mode, the session will take a Snapshot of the targets at the remote site. This will provide a consistent point the volumes can be restored to in the event of a disaster during the test. When the session is in the Recovery Test Mode you will notice that the Progress column will indicate that the RPO for the session is increasing. This is to denote the fact that consistency groups are not forming while in this mode and that if a disaster occurred the time provided would be the last consistent point that the session could be recovered to.
When the testing is complete, issue the Stop Recovery Test on the CSM session. This will take the Volume Group out of the test mode, delete the Snapshot created prior to entering the mode and then resynchronize the relationships.
If an error occurs while in the Recovery Test Mode, a Failover command can be issued to the session. However, this command will indicate that the targets will be recovered to what is considered a diverged copy of the data and would contain any updates to the volumes that occurred during the testing. Customers can then choose to use the Snapshot at the target to Restore the volumes to a consistent point from before the test, or keep the diverged copy.
NOTE: In the future CSM will restore the targets automatically to the snapshot when the storage systems allows for this functionality. On current release of the storage system (at the time this blog was written) the Volume Group will first have to remove the Asynchronous Replication Policy before attempting to Restore from the Snapshot.

IDEA CSM-I-79 - Support for setting multiple times on Daily/Weekly Scheduled Tasks

Creating a Scheduled Task can be a quite powerful tool in managing your replication environment. There are a number of options for scheduling these tasks including Hourly, Daily/Weekly or even no schedule at all so that it can be invoked externally or manually.
Starting with the 6.3.10 release though, when you select the Daily/Weekly option, you can now specify multiple times to run that task on the days selected. This allows for a lot more flexibility for customers that may want a hourly kind of schedule, but do not require it to run every day.
For example, you might only need to run a Scheduled Task that takes a FlashCopy during normal business hours Monday through Friday. You would select each of the days except Saturday and Sunday and then add times the times you want the task to run such as 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm.

Associate Multiple Sysplexes on 4 Site Replication Enhanced session

Associating a System or Sysplex to a session needs to be done in order to support features like HyperSwap or Hardened Freeze. Since CSM can be setup to connect and manage this for multiple systems/sysplexes the association tells the session which system/sysplex to issue the commands to.
There are some environment though where volumes are shared across sysplexes. When using HyperSwap special consideration has to be taken to ensure that if a HyperSwap event occurs in one sysplex that any other sysplexes that share a volume in the swapped sysplex will swap as well. To do this the Hardware Reserves feature must be enabled on the DS8000 system using a poke (contact support) and a CSM session must be created for each of the sysplexes. This feature will allow the loaded configurations on each of the sysplexes, to detect the swap and perform a swap as well. This is all supported today.
When working with an environment involving the 4 Site Replication Enhanced session though, where there are shared volumes across sysplexes, using multiple sessions to manage each of these configurations can become tedious and difficult. So starting with the 6.3.10 release, for the 4 Site Replication Enhanced session, you can now associate multiple systems/sysplexes to the single session. When the Metro Mirror relationship reaches a Prepared state, the configuration will be loaded across ALL of the associated sysplexes. The Hardware Reserves feature will still be required though to ensure that a swap occurs across all the sysplexes.
NOTE: In order to associate multiple sysplexes to a single session, all of the volumes in the Metro Mirror pairs MUST be visible (aka IODEF'd) on all of the associated sysplexes. If all the volumes are not visible, the load will fail for the given sysplex.

New Flash 3rd Site and Backup 4th Site commands on 4 Site Replication Enhanced session

Customers using the 4 Site Replication Enhanced session type, will likely want to take a FlashCopy for practice purposes at the 3rd site (DR site to remote region) and a Safeguarded Copy backup for cyber resiliency at the 4th site (cascaded site in the remote region). This can be done today by creating FC and SGC sessions at each of the sites and then creating Scheduled Tasks that will coordinate the Global Mirror Pauses on the 4 site session with the Flash or Backup for the FC or SGC sessions.
But creating these Scheduled Tasks is not only complicated (a LOT of tasks would be needed), but would also require coordinating or automating the enablement/disablement of tasks, depending on which site might be the current 3rd site or current 4th site.
To help customers dramatically simplify the practice flash and SGC backup, two new commands were added to the 4 Site Replication Enhanced session. Flash 3rd Site and Backup 4th Site can now be run directly on the 4 Site session, which will find the correct associated session based off it's current production site and Global Mirror configuration. This means, only a single "Flash 3rd Site" Scheduled Task and single "Backup 4th Site" Scheduled task needs to be created. This task would not need to be enabled or disabled and would run the same steps based of the current mode.
Perform the following steps to Setup the Flash 3rd Site command:
- Create a FlashCopy session at all sites which may require a Practice Flash
- Associate the FlashCopy session to the 4 site session (new for 6.3.10!!!)
The following steps occur when running the Flash at 3rd Site command:
- The session Validates that the RPO for the GM replication to the 3rd site is below 10 secs. This is to prevent the Flash from causing delays when the RPO is too high.
- Pauses the GM replication to the 3rd site with consistency
- Once paused the session finds the associated FC session for the role that is currently considered the 3rd site and Flashes the session
- After the Flash the GM to the 3rd site is automatically resumed.
Perform the following steps to Setup the Backup 4th Site command:
- Create a SGC session at all sites which may require an SGC backup
- Associate the SGC session to the 4 site session (already supported for SGC restore)
- Ensure that Global Mirror is running from the 3rd to 4th site
The following steps occur when running the Backup 4th Site command:
- The session Validates that the RPO for the GM replication to the 3rd site is below 10 secs. This is to prevent the Backup from causing delays when the RPO is too high.
- Issues Pause with consistency to the GM to the 4th site
- Issues Pause with consistency to the GM to the 3rd site
- Using the cascaded GM solution, once the GM to the 4th side is paused, the session can immediately resume the GM to the 3rd site. This helps to minimize the time that GM is paused to ensure constant DR protection
- Once DR is resumed the session finds the associated SGC session for the role that is currently considered the 4th site and issues the Backup command to the session
- After the Backup completes the GM to the 4th site is automatically resumed.
NOTE: There may be times during the failover to various sites when the Scheduled task with the new commands would fail. However, once the session is back in a full 4 site configuration, it should automatically start working again.

CSM 6.3.10.0 What’s New Video

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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