XIV Storage System

Edit online

Beginning with VM Recovery Manager DR Version 1.3 Service Pack 2, or later the VM Recovery Manager DR solution supports the IBM XIV Storage System.

The XIV Storage System provides grid architecture and copy functions that can be used for various data protection scenarios, such as disaster recovery, data migration, and online backup. These functions provide point-in-time copies, known as snapshots or full volume copies. The XIV Storage System also includes remote copy capabilities in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. In the VM Recovery Manager DR solution, you can configure both synchronous and asynchronous mirroring for the XIV Storage System.

The VM Recovery Manager DR solution creates a mirror snapshot group on the source site. The mirror copy of the snapshot group has the same name as the consistency group. With each discovery operation, the VM Recovery Manager DR solution deletes older snapshot groups and creates another set of snapshot groups.

Requirements
  • The XIV Storage System and IBM FlashSystem A9000 are supported only with VIOS Version 3.1.0.21, or later.
  • The XIV Storage System and IBM FlashSystem A9000 require HMC Version 9 Release 9.1.0, or later.
  • The XIV Storage System is supported only with XIV Storage System command-line interface (XCLI) Version 4.8.0.6, or later.
Limitation
  • You cannot modify the snapshot disk on the target storage system.
  • If you are performing a failover rehearsal, after you change any configuration settings for asynchronous mirroring, you must run the DR discovery operation, and then run the DR test-discovery operation. The configuration changes do not take effect if you do not run DR discovery operation before the DR test-discovery.
  • XIV Storage System supports up to 128 VMs per host group.
  • Based on the version of XIV Storage System firmware, a maximum 128 to 512 of the disks can be added to a consistency group.
  • For a VM that is configured with vSCSI disks, before performing asynchronous failover rehearsal, run the cfgmgr command.
  • For asynchronous mirroring in a VM that is configured with vSCSI disk, after first DR-test (DR rehearsal) you must manually map snapshot logical number units (LUNs) from the target SAN to the target VIOS.

The following figure shows the IBM XIV Storage System architecture with the VM Recovery Manager DR solution.

Figure 1. IBM XIV Storage System architecture
IBM XIV Storage System architecture