Data Protection Software

In the 8.1.13 release, IBM Spectrum Protect extended their support for #disasterrecovery and #dataavailability, if a source replication server is unavailable, by replicating the data to two target replication servers. In this case, one of the target replication servers can be converted to a source replication server. The data from the newly established source replication server can then be backed up to another target replication server to help provide uninterrupted #dataprotection.

Storage rules and subrules

The #replication operation not only copies the data to the target replication server but also communicates the metadata, such as attributes of the source server nodes and file spaces. By using storage rules and subrules you can control the granularity of what is replicated to which IBM Spectrum Protect target server.
For example, to send data from a source replication server to two target replication servers, you would define two replication storage rules. By defining multiple replication storage rules, you can schedule, configure, and run the rules independently.

IBM Spectrum Protect has introduced two different action types for these storage rules:
⦁ Replicate
⦁ NoReplicate

Along with the with the new storage rules for replication the two new action types mentioned above are used to define the storage rules for the parent rule. For example, if you use type Replicate it includes all of the nodes on that IBM Spectrum Protect server for replication.
NoReplicate excludes the nodes or file spaces or node groups that you did not want to use for replication. Then, you can do just the opposite, for example, where your parent rule had the action type equals NoReplicate and your subrules had action type equal Replicate, which in turn would include the node file spaces or node groups that you wanted to replicate.

The PROTECT STGPOOL command and the REPLICATE NODE command are for the most part no longer required.
This new feature streamlines and improves the configuration process and supports fine-tuning of replication operations. In addition, the feature supports enhanced protection of data in directory-container storage pools.

To optimize your replication with increased granularity and flexibility, see https://ibm.biz/BdfwJJ

To define a storage rule for replication, follow the instructions in https://ibm.biz/BdfwJn

To define a storage subrule for replication, follow the instructions in https://ibm.biz/BdfwJe

You can still do an automatic restore from different target servers if your primary IBM Spectrum Protect server fails. The nodes will automatically fail-over and then try sequentially the other IBM Spectrum Protect servers to restore the data.

After transitioning to replication storage rules

If you transition to replication storage rules and subrules, and you replicate all nodes and file spaces in a container storage pool, you can repair damaged extents in the container storage pool on the source replication server by running the REPAIR STGPOOL command. In this way, you retrieve undamaged copies from the target replication server. The extents are repaired even if you did not previously issue the PROTECT STGPOOL command.

Reference videos

Checkout the following videos to see the multi-site node replication feature deployed from the command line and from the Operation Center using storage rules and subrules:

⦁ https://youtu.be/iLpqsGMTBQg
In this video you will see how to use the command line implementation of multi-site node replication including replicating server 1 out to server 2 and server 3, setting up storage rules and sub-rules to replicate different nodes and different file spaces to those servers and how to run a repair of a damaged primary storage pool.

⦁ https://youtu.be/9EGmtn6E12M
In this video you will see how to use the Operation Center to set up node replication for one or more IBM Spectrum Protect server's using storage rules and sub rules, monitoring the status of the replication and troubleshooting for errors in the activity log.

Other updates in IBM Spectrum Protect 8.1.13

See What's new