Creating remote FlashCopy transactions

Complete this task to create a remote FlashCopy at a target (remote) site using remote FlashCopy commands.

About this task

Remote FlashCopy® operations can only be processed using the DS CLI and not the DS8000® Storage Management GUI. (Part of the Remote FlashCopy operation requires that you create paths and volume pairs first. You can issue those requests using either the DS8000 Storage Management GUI or the DS CLI.)

To establish a FlashCopy relationship at the target site, remote FlashCopy commands are issued to a source volume of a remote mirror and copy volume pair on a source (local) storage system and sent across paths (acting as a conduit) to a target storage system. This eliminates the need for a network connection to the target site solely for the management of FlashCopy relationships.

Limitation: Remote FlashCopy commands establish a FlashCopy relationship at the target (remote) site when a network connection to the target site is lost. The Remote FlashCopy operation is not supported through the DS8000 Storage Management GUI, because network connections to both the source and target sites are required. If the network connection to the target site is lost, the DS8000 Storage Management GUI cannot connect to the target site. Whether you use the DS8000 Storage Management GUI or DS CLI for Steps 1 and 2, you must do Step 3 from the DS CLI.

Note: You can do all steps from the DS CLI. The details are described in "Processing Remote FlashCopy (inband) transactions."

The following example illustrates the required steps for creating a remote FlashCopy operation.

Procedure

Create paths between the source LSS and the target LSS. For example, IBM.2107-1300861 and IBM.2107-1300871
You need to know which volumes are available for use before you can issue the request to establish the path.
Create Metro Mirror volume pairs from the source LSS to the target LSS. For example, volume 2200 (IBM.2107-1300861/2200) from LSS22 and volume 2A00 (IBM.2107-1300871/2A00) from LSS22.
Enable a Remote FlashCopy operation at the target site using volume B as the source volume and volume C as the target volume. Assume that the target site network connection is lost. You can create the FlashCopy relationship from volume B to volume C (both volumes at the target site). However, you cannot use the DS8000 Storage Management GUI for this step because connections to the target site are lost.

Example

Assume that you do Step 1 and Step 2 from the DS8000 Storage Management GUI (connections to both storage systems at the source and target sites were available at that time) and the Metro Mirror relationship between the volume pair still exists. To create the Remote FlashCopy operation, you must do Step 3 from the DS CLI using the following command as an example. (You must be logged in to the DS CLI in interactive command mode.)

Note: Use LSS 22 on the local site as a conduit LSS for the new remote FlashCopy relationship on the remote storage system that will use volume 2A00 as the source. The target can be any other volume on the remote storage system (in this example 2A01)

dscli> mkremoteflash -dev IBM.2107-1300871 -conduit IBM.2107-1300861/22 2A00:2A01

Where:

-dev: Specifies the storage image ID, which includes manufacturer, machine type, and serial number.
-conduit LSS_ID: (Required) Identifies the source LSS of an existing remote mirror and copy relationship that is used as a conduit for communicating with the target storage image. The source volume IDs that are specified in source_volume_ID:target_volume_ID must be the target volumes in a remote mirror and copy relationship in which one of the conduit LSS volumes acts as a source volume. You can specify a fully qualified LSS ID, which includes the storage image ID.
source_volume_ID:target_volume_ID: (Required) Establishes a remote FlashCopy relationship for the source and target volume pairs with the specified IDs. You can specify fully qualified volume IDs, which include storage image IDs, or a shortened version without storage image IDs if the -dev parameter is specified. Separate the IDs of the FlashCopy relationships with spaces.

This report is displayed if your command input is correct.

FlashCopy Pair ID 2A00:2A01 successfully initiated. Use the lsremoteflash command to determine copy completion.

Verify that the transaction has processed successfully by issuing the following command:

dscli> lsremoteflash -dev IBM.2107-1300871 -conduit IBM.2107-1300861/22 2A00:2A01