IBM GDPS
Automate mainframe tasks and disaster recovery to achieve resiliency goals
Redbook: GDPS introduction
Isometric Illustration of a person accessing data on a screen connected to storage towers and data replication and automation modules

IBM® GDPS® is a family of disaster recovery and resiliency software for IBM Z®. It manages the storage subsystem and remote copy configuration across heterogeneous platforms, automates IBM Parallel Sysplex® operational tasks and performs failure recovery from a single point of control.

To ensure IT resiliency, you need to recover rapidly from any outages with no or minimal impact. To help achieve this, IBM offers GDPS, a collection of offerings that uses clustering, server management, storage replication and automation to minimize downtime of the IBM Z platform.

What's new

Summary of features introduced with GDPS 4.7

Benefits Achieve continuous availability

Maintain the availability of your applications by masking disk outages caused by disk maintenance or failures.

Achieve disaster recovery

Enable zero or minimal data loss in the event of a disaster with continuous 24x7 data replication.

Rapidly recover systems and data

During an outage, seamlessly move production to an alternative site with minimal human intervention.

Become cyber resilient

Automatically identify and recover your business in the event of a data breach or cyberattack.

Enable global coverage

Situate your data centers anywhere in the world to avoid reliance on a single location.

Meet regulatory compliance

Easily demonstrate regulatory compliance by moving production between data centers.

Features
Flexible architecture

Use synchronous replication, asynchronous replication or a combination of both to address your business needs.


Easy automation

Remove error-prone manual processes by automating operational tasks with simple, yet powerful, orchestration.


Resiliency monitoring

Monitor your mainframe resiliency posture in real-time from a single point of control to detect any deviations.


Logical Corruption Protection

Create secured, tamper-proof backups stored in a security-rich, isolated environment to enable automated recovery from cyberattacks or data breaches.


Multiple active data centers

Support for multiple, geographically dispersed, active data centers in an "active-active" configuration with workload balancing between sites.


Comprehensive platform coverage

Support for the full IBM Z platform, including z/OS®, Linux® on Z, z/VM®, KVM and guest virtual machines.

Solutions Pre-reqs: GDPS requires z/OS, IBM Z NetView® and IBM Z System Automation. Get more details GDPS Metro

Provides automation, synchronous replication (Metro Mirror) and HyperSwap and is tightly integrated with Parallel Sysplex.

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GDPS Global-GM

Orchestrates the recovery of systems that are using asynchronous replication (Global Mirror).

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GDPS Metro Global–GM

Combines the local near-continuous availability of GDPS Metro with the unlimited distance recovery options provided by GDPS Global.

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GDPS Continuous Availability

Near real-time replication to update data to a second instance of a workload and to manage the distribution of work across both.

See the pre-reqs
IBM Z Cyber Vault

Enables secure point-in-time copies of the critical source data and helps restore corrupted or deleted data.

Watch the video (2:15)
Support and services Qualified DWDM vendors

Find products tested and qualified by IBM for use in GDPS environment and Server Time Protocol (STP).

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GDPS services

This automated and highly customized application availability solution helps to manage the storage subsystem(s) and remote copy configuration; automate Parallel Sysplex® operational tasks and perform failure recovery from a single point of control.

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Qualification reports IBM products

View results of the qualification testing of the following IBM products:

R8.5 qualifications 
R9.0 qualifications 
R9.2 qualifications 
R9.3 qualifications 

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform™ EMC

View results of the qualification testing of Dell EMC PowerMax 8000 product.

Keep mission-critical applications up and running 24x7x365

Designed for continuous availability and rapid disaster recovery, IBM Z (with GDPS) provides industry-leading resiliency to protect your business from downtime.

GDPS LCP Manager is a core component of the IBM Z Cyber Vault solution, integrated into the backbone of your Z infrastructure.

Read about IBM Z Cyber Vault
Resources Linux on IBM Z with GDPS

Learn how to integrate Linux on IBM Z under z/VM® in a GDPS environment to provide continuous availability and disaster recovery.

Develop GDPS skills

Explore courses from IBM and LearnQuest to develop your GDPS skills. Earn a GDPS Fundamentals badge by completing the fundamentals course that provides foundational knowledge needed for on-the-job expertise.

GDPS deployment tips

Get an overview of the IBM GDPS active/active (GDPS/AA) offering and the role it plays in delivering a business IT resilience solution.

GDPS 4.7

Features of release 4.7 include the new Dual Control mode for LCP Manager, further enhancements to Role-Based Security and various enhancements to GDPS Link Management.

GDPS 4.6

Features of release 4.6 include the GDPS Reconfiguration Wizard, enhanced support for Role-Based Security and significant updates to LCP Manager.

GDPS 4.5

Features of release 4.5 include a GDPS Enterprise Portal to view multiple GDPS environments, logical corruption protection enhancements and dynamic management of PPRC links.

Disaster recovery for Linux on IBM Z

Learn about disaster recovery and high availability for Linux on IBM Z using GDPS and IBM Z System Automation.

End of service GDPS 4.4

General availability: March 2021

End of service: March 2024

GDPS 4.5

General availability: March 2022

End of service: March 2025

GDPS 4.6

General availability: March 2023

End of service: March 2026

GDPS 4.7

General availability: March 2024

End of service: March 2027

Related products IBM DS8900F

The fastest, most reliable and secure storage system for IBM Z and IBM Power® systems.

IBM Parallel Sysplex

Boost server communications with clustering technology.

IBM z Integrated Information Processor

Cost-effectively move to hybrid cloud, accelerate digital transformation and implement new workloads on IBM Z.

IBM Z System Automation

The premier high availability and automation software solution for IBM Z systems.

IBM Z NetView

A comprehensive platform for maintaining and automating complex, multi-vendor, multi-platform networks and systems from a single point of control.

IBM Debug for z/OS

Advanced debugging of composite applications for all your z/OS environments.

Next Steps

Discover GDPS. Schedule a no-cost 30-minute meeting with an IBM Z representative.

More ways to explore Documentation Support Product lifecycle IBM Redbooks® Support and services Global financing Flexible pricing Education and training Community Developer community Partners Resources
Footnotes

Installation services include: Synchronous Metro Mirror, Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC), Asynchronous Extended Remote Copy (XRC), Asynchronous Global Mirror (GM) disk data mirroring and software-based replication via IBM InfoSphere Data Replication for z/OS (for Db2®, IMS and VSAM data using the GDPS Continuous Availability solution).

Disk replication protocols: GDPS is designed to work with Metro Mirror (PPRC), z/OS Global Mirror (XRC) or Global Mirror disk replication protocols supported by the DS8000 family and made available to vendors. Some disk features require specific commands to be sent to the disk subsystem.