Disaster recovery

Db2® Mirror is a continuous availability option, usually deployed within a single data center. Many environments also require a disaster recovery solution. Various technologies exist for disaster recovery solutions, such as IBM® PowerHA® SystemMirror® for i, logical replication, and full system hardware replication.

Db2 Mirror combined with IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i is one option for local availability plus disaster recovery. PowerHA replication is based upon IASP technology, which is also supported within Db2 Mirror.

As shown in the following figure, the replicated data is contained in either a database or IFS IASP and is synchronized between nodes 1 and 2 by Db2 Mirror. Nodes 3 and 4 are a separate Db2 Mirror environment at a disaster recovery location. If it is necessary to switch the production environment from nodes 1 and 2 to nodes 3 and 4, PowerHA technology would be used to make the IASPs available on nodes 3 and 4. The system environment characteristics such as user profiles can be synchronized using cluster administrative domain technology.

Figure 1. Db2 Mirror and PowerHA
Db2 Mirror and PowerHA

For more information on configuring and managing Db2 Mirror combined with PowerHA, see Disaster recovery considerations.

To further protect your data in a replication environment, it is recommended that you regularly perform backups of the primary and secondary nodes to removable media. For more information about backup and recovery using removable media, see Backup and recovery.