VMRM DR Glossary

The following glossary provides key terms and concepts essential for understanding and managing theIBM® VM Recovery Manager DR for Power Systems solution, a Disaster Recovery (DR) within the IBM VM Recovery Manager solution, ensuring business continuity and data protection in the event of a disaster.

The VM Recovery Manager DRsolution uses the following glossary:

1. Disaster Recovery (DR) : A strategy and set of procedures that enable the recovery or continuation of critical technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster.
2. VM Recovery Manager (VMRM) : A tool used for managing and automating the disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) of virtual machines (VMs) within a cloud environment.
3. Backup Site : An alternative location where critical data and services can be restored and operated from in the event of a disaster at the primary site.
4. Failover : The process of automatically switching to a standby system, database, or network upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active application, server, or system.
5. High Availability (HA) : A system design and implementation that ensures a certain degree of operational continuity during a given measurement period, typically involving redundancy and failover mechanisms to minimize downtime.
6. Site Management : The process of overseeing and coordinating the activities, resources, and systems at a primary or backup site, ensuring that they are ready to take over operations in the event of a disaster.
7. DR Readiness : The state of being fully prepared for disaster recovery, ensuring that all systems, procedures, and resources are in place and operational for effective disaster response.
8. Managed Disk : A disk that is actively controlled and monitored by the VMRM for backup, failover, and recovery operations.
9. Unmanaged Disk : A disk that is not currently under the management of VMRM and, therefore, not included in the automated recovery or backup processes.
10. Disk Policy : A set of rules and configurations applied to managed disks within VMRM, governing aspects like replication, backup, and recovery.
11. Network Information : Critical details related to the networking aspects of VMs in VMRM, such as VM Name, Network ID, and Subnet Range, necessary for maintaining connectivity during DR processes.
12. AIX and IBM i VMs : Virtual machines running IBM's AIX or IBM i operating systems, often used in enterprise environments for mission-critical applications, and included in VMRM’s disaster recovery and high availability strategies.
13. DR Operations GUI : The graphical user interface within VMRM that allows administrators to manage disaster recovery processes, including configuring, monitoring, and executing DR plans.
14. Recovery Time Objective (RTO) : The maximum acceptable amount of time that a system, application, or process can be down after a failure or disaster occurs, before recovery must be completed.
15. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) :The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. It represents the point in time to which data must be recovered after a disaster.
16. Replication :The process of copying data from one location to another to ensure that a backup is available in the event of data loss or disaster.
17. Synchronous Replication : A method of replication where data is simultaneously written to both the primary and secondary (backup) sites, ensuring zero data loss in case of a failure.
18. Asynchronous Replication : A replication method where data is written to the primary site first and then copied to the secondary site at a later time, which may lead to some data loss in case of a disaster.
19. Failback : The process of restoring operations from a backup or secondary site back to the primary site after the primary site has been recovered or restored.
20. Snapshot : A point-in-time copy of data, typically used for backups and disaster recovery, allowing for quick restoration to a known good state.
21. Recovery Plan : A predefined, documented strategy that outlines the steps to recover IT systems, applications, and data after a disaster occurs.
22. Orchestration : The automated coordination and management of complex IT operations, such as the execution of a disaster recovery plan involving multiple systems and applications.
23. Automated Failover : A process where failover to a backup system is triggered automatically by monitoring tools without requiring manual intervention.
24. Service Level Agreement (SLA) : A contract or agreement that defines the expected level of service, including RTO and RPO, that must be met in disaster recovery scenarios.
25. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) : A virtualized network environment that provides isolated resources within a public cloud, often used in disaster recovery to provide secure and dedicated resources.
26. Virtual Machine (VM) : An emulation of a computer system that runs on a physical host, used in VMRM to provide isolated and flexible computing resources.
27. Hypervisor : A layer of software that enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical machine, managing their resources and isolation.
28. Primary Site : The main data center or location where critical systems and data are hosted under normal operating conditions.
29. DR Drill : A simulated disaster recovery exercise designed to test the effectiveness of the DR plan and ensure readiness for an actual disaster.
30. Quorum :The minimum number of nodes or systems that must be online and in agreement for a cluster or distributed system to operate and maintain consistency.
31. Load Balancer : A network device or software that distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers or VMs to ensure high availability and reliability.
32. Geographic Redundancy : A disaster recovery strategy that involves placing backup systems or data in geographically separated locations to reduce the risk of a single disaster impacting all resources.
33. Runbook : A collection of procedures and documentation that provide step-by-step instructions for IT administrators to perform recovery tasks during a disaster.
34. Business Continuity (BC) : The broader strategy that ensures critical business functions can continue during and after a disaster, often including disaster recovery as a component.
35. Data Migration : The process of transferring data from one system, storage, or environment to another, often performed during DR planning to ensure data is available at the backup site.
36. Controller System (KSYS) : The controlling system, also called KSYS, is a fundamental component in the IBM® VM Recovery Manager DR for Power Systems solution. It provides a single point of control for the entire environment managed by the VM Recovery Manager DR solution.
37. Hardware Management Console (HMC) : The Controller System (KSYS) interacts with the HMC for processes that involve host, Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), and disk subsystem resources. These processes include discovery, monitoring, recovery, and cleanup.
38. Sites : Sites are logical representations of your physical or virtual locations. They are created at the KSYS level, and all Hardware Management Consoles, hosts, VIOS, and storage devices are mapped to one of these sites.
39. Hosts : A host is a managed system in the HMC that primarily runs the virtual machines carrying the workload. It can also be referred to as a server or a Central Electronics Complex (CEC). Hosts are identified by their universal unique identifier (UUID) as tracked in the HMC.
40. Workgroup : A workgroup is a logical grouping within a host group where you can add and manage virtual machines.
41. Virtual Machines : Virtual machines, also known as logical partitions (LPARs), are associated with specific Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) partitions for virtualized storage to run a workload. A single host can contain multiple virtual machines.
42. Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) : The KSYS receives information about the storage configuration of virtual machines from VIOS. VIOS facilitates the virtualization of storage and network resources.
43. Storage Agents : In a disaster recovery solution, organized storage management is crucial. The VM Recovery Manager DR solution relies on data replication from the active site to the backup site, facilitated by storage agents.