Creating partnerships for Metro Mirror configurations

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If you are setting up IBM Spectrum Virtualize 3-Site Orchestrator with Metro Mirror configurations, you need to establish three partnerships between systems that are at the sites. Both Fibre Channel and IP partnerships are supported in IBM Spectrum Virtualize 3-Site Orchestrator for Metro Mirror configurations.

For this configuration, three fully configured partnerships must be configured:

One partnership between the system at the master site and system at the auxiliary-near site. This partnership facilitates Metro Mirror (synchronous) copies between the system at the master site to the system at the auxiliary-near site. To be a fully configured partnership, a partnership must be configured on both systems.
One partnership between the systems at the auxiliary-near site and the auxiliary-far site. To be a fully configured partnership, a partnership must be configured on both systems.
One partnership between systems at the master site and the auxiliary-far site. To be a fully configured partnership, a partnership must be configured on both systems.

Using the management GUI

To create a fully configured partnership between the system at the master site and the system at the auxiliary-near site, complete these steps:

IP Partnerships

To create an IP partnership, complete these steps:

Create a portset

Select Settings > Network > Portsets.
Select Create Portset.
On the Create Portset page, enter a name of the portset, and select Remote Copy for the portset type.
Select the ownership group for the portset. An ownership group defines a subset of users and objects within the system. You can create ownership groups to further restrict access to specific resources that are defined in the ownership group. Only users with Security Administrator roles can configure and manage ownership groups. Restricted users are those users who are defined to a specific ownership group and can only view or manage specific resources that are assigned to that ownership group. Unrestricted users are not defined to an ownership group and can manage any objects on the system based on their role on the system. When you define an ownership group for portsets, you can limit, and restrict users to view and manage only specific portsets.
Click Create.

Assign IP addresses to the portset

Select Settings > Network > Ethernet Ports.
Right-click the port and select Manage IP addresses.
On Manage IP Addresses page, select Add IP Address. Enter the following information for the IP address that you are adding to the selected port:

IP address

Enter the IP address to associate with the selected port.

Type

Select the IP protocol version of the IP address.

Subnet Mask or Prefix

Enter the subnet mask for the IPv4 addresses or enter the prefix for IPv6 addresses.

VLAN

Enter the corresponding VLAN tag that this IP address belongs to.

Portset

Select the name or ID of the portset and ensure that portset type matches the traffic type that is assigned to the port.
Click Back to return to the Ethernet Ports page. Verify that the port displays the Configured state. Select another port and add more IP addresses to corresponding portsets.
Right-click the port and select either Modify Remote Copy, Modify iSCSI hosts, or Modify Storage Ports. The traffic type for the port must match the traffic for the portset that you created.

Create the IP partnership

Select Copy Services > Partnerships and select Create Partnership.
Select 2-Site Partnership and click Continue.
On the Create Partnership page, select IP.
Enter the following information to configure the partnership:

Partner System IP Address or Domain Name

Select the IP address or Domain Name of the partner system. If you specify a domain name, a DNS server must be configured on your system. To configure a DNS server for the system, select Settings > Network > DNS. You can also use the mkdnsserver command to configure DNS servers.

Link Bandwidth

Enter the amount of bandwidth used for replication between systems in the partnership.

Background Copy Rate

Enter the maximum percentage of the link bandwidth that can be used for background copy operations.

Partner System's CHAP Secret (Optional):

Specify the CHAP secret for the partner system if you plan to use Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) to authenticate connections between the systems in the partnership.

Compression enabled

Select this option if data on the local system is compressed before it is sent to the partner system. To fully enable compression in an IP partnership, each system must support compression.

Portset Link 1

In single link configurations between partnered systems, select the portset that provides IP addresses for replication traffic.

Portset Link 2 (optional)

In dual link configurations between partnered systems, select the portset that provides IP addresses for replication traffic. Dual links provide redundancy for connections between systems.

Upload Certificate

To secure the connection between the systems in the partnership, upload the certificate. Both CA certificates and self-signed certificates are supported.
Repeat these steps on the remote system in the partnership.

Using the command-line interface

You can also use the command line interface to create partnerships between the systems at each of the sites. To create a fully configured partnership between the system at the master site and the system at the auxiliary-near site, complete these steps:

Fibre Channel partnerships

On the system on the master site, enter the following command to create a Fibre Channel partnership:
```
mkfcpartnership -linkbandwidthmbits bandwidth_in_mbps 
-backgroundcopyrate percentage_of_available_bandwidth remote_cluster_id
```
where bandwidth_in_mbps specifies the bandwidth (in megabits per second) that is used by the background copy process between the systems, percentage_of_available_bandwidth specifies the maximum percentage of link bandwidth that can be used for background copy operations, and remote_cluster_id is the ID of the of the remote system at auxiliary-near site.
On the system at the auxiliary-near site, enter the following command:
```
mkfcpartnership -linkbandwidthmbits bandwidth_in_mbps 
-backgroundcopyrate percentage_of_available_bandwidth remote_cluster_id
```
where bandwidth_in_mbps, percentage_of_available_bandwidth are the same values that you specified in step 1. The remote_cluster_id is the ID of the of the system at master site.

Verify the partnership status is fully_configured by entering the lspartnership command on either the system at the master site or the system at the auxiliary-near site. The following results display for each system:

Results for the system at the master site:

lspartnership
id               name       location partnership      type cluster_ip event_log_sequence
000001002FC000E6 Master     local
0000010035200208 AuxNear    remote   fully_configured fc

Results for the system at the auxiliary-near site:

lspartnership
id               name       location partnership      type cluster_ip event_log_sequence 
0000010035200208 AuxNear    local
000001002FC000E6 Master     remote   fully_configured fc

After you verify the partnership between the system at the master site and the system at the auxiliary near site, repeat these steps to create two more partnerships. The first partnership is between the auxiliary-near site and the auxiliary-far site and the second partnership is the master site and the auxiliary-far site. One of these partnerships is used as the active link where data is replicated to the auxiliary-far site. The other partnership is used as the standby link to provide redundancy if the active link becomes unavailable.

IP partnerships

On the system on the master site, enter the following command to create a IP partnership:
```
mkippartnership -clusterip ip_address_or_domain_name -chapsecret chap_secret linkbandwidthmbits bandwidth_in_mbps -backgroundcopyrate percentage_of_available_bandwidth -link1 portsetid1 | portsetname1 -link2 portsetid2 | portsetname2 
```
where bandwidth_in_mbps specifies the bandwidth (in megabits per second) that is used by the background copy process between the systems, percentage_of_available_bandwidth specifies the maximum percentage of link bandwidth that can be used for background copy operations, and ip_address_or_domain_name is the IP address or domain name of the remote system at auxiliary-near site. The optional parameter -chapsecret specifies the Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) secret of the partner system.
On the system on the auxiliary-near site, enter the following command to create a IP partnership:
```
mkippartnership -clusterip ip_address_or_domain_name -chapsecret chap_secret linkbandwidthmbits bandwidth_in_mbps -backgroundcopyrate percentage_of_available_bandwidth -link1 portsetid1 | portsetname1 -link2 portsetid2 | portsetname2 
```
where bandwidth_in_mbps specifies the bandwidth (in megabits per second) that is used by the background copy process between the systems, percentage_of_available_bandwidth specifies the maximum percentage of link bandwidth that can be used for background copy operations, and ip_address_or_domain_name is the IP address or domain name of the remote system at auxiliary-near site. The optional parameter -chapsecret specifies the Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) secret of the partner system.

Results for the system at the master site:

lspartnership
id               name       location partnership          type cluster_ip          event_log_sequence link1         link2       link1_ip_id  link2_ip_id
0000020423408524 Master     local
000002006981FE3D AuxNear    remote   fully_configured     dns  auxnear.example.com                    portset1      portset2    0            1

Results for the system at the auxiliary-near site:

lspartnership
id               name       location partnership          type cluster_ip          event_log_sequence link1         link2       link1_ip_id  link2_ip_id
000002006981FE3D AuxNear    local
0000020423408524 Master     remote   fully_configured     dns  master.example.com                     portset1      portset2    0            1

After you verify the partnership between the system at the master site and the system at the auxiliary near site, repeat these steps to create two more partnerships. The first partnership is between the auxiliary-near site and the auxiliary-far site and the second partnership is the master site and the auxiliary-far site. One of these partnerships is used as the active link where data is replicated to the auxiliary-far site. The other partnership is used as the standby link to provide redundancy if the active link becomes unavailable.