DS8000 storage system

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Beginning with VM Recovery Manager DR version 1.1 Service Pack 1, the VM Recovery Manager DR solution supports the IBM® System Storage DS8000® series storage system for storage management.

IBM System Storage DS8000 series is a high-performance and high-capacity series of disk storage that supports continuous operations. The DS8000 series that are supported by the VM Recovery Manager DR solution include the following models:
DS8700
The DS8700 storage system uses IBM POWER6 server technology, which provides high-performance and high-capacity for disk storage systems. The DS8700 storage system also provides improved performance by upgrading the processor and I/O interconnection technology.
DS8800
The DS8800 storage system is an advanced high-performance and high-capacity disk storage system. The DS8800 storage system supports IBM POWER6+ processor technology to provide higher performance.

All DS8000 series models consist of a storage unit and one or two management consoles depending on high availability configuration settings. You can use the graphical user interface (GUI) or the command line interface (CLI) to logically divide storage and use the built-in Copy Services functions.

Notes:
  • The VM Recovery Manager DR solution supports only Global Mirror (asynchronous) mode of data replication across sites.
  • The VM Recovery Manager DR solution supports only a single DS8000 storage system per site, which means that all storage devices must be configured as a single DS8000 cluster per site.
  • Each host that is associated with the DS8000 series of storage devices must have VIOS 2.2.5.20, or later, installed. Additionally, the DS8000 storage system requires HMC Version 8 Release 8.6.0 Service Pack 1.

A session is a collection of disk volumes across multiple storage systems that are managed together to create consistent copies of data. All storage operations in the VM Recovery Manager DR solution are performed on a session ID that is a logical group of disks that are associated with the DS8000 series of storage array. During the discovery phase, the KSYS interacts with the HMC and the VIOS to fetch the storage disk information that is used by the virtual machines. The KSYS then creates a session in each site and adds all the disks to this session. The KSYS uses sessions to change the replication direction during a planned or unplanned recovery operation.

The VM Recovery Manager DR solution uses the DS8000 Series Command Line Interface (DSCLI) client to interact with the DS8000 storage array.

The following restrictions and limitations apply to the Global Mirror session in the DS8000 series of storage devices:
  • If the disk volumes that are replicated span across multiple DS8700 Logical Sub Systems (LSS), the same Global Mirror session identifier must be used for all LSS.
  • The Hardware Management Console (HMC) associated with the IBM DS8700 storage system that is used with the VM Recovery Manager DR solution, must be accessible by using TCP/IP on the KSYS node and both sites.
  • Latest DSCLI client must be installed on the KSYS node. The VM Recovery Manager DR solution supports DSCLI version 7.7.51.48, and later.
  • Before assigning a new replication disk, if a replication disk already exists, remove the existing replication disk from the replication session.

For more information about the installation and configuration of the DS8000 series of storage devices, see the documentation from the storage vendor.