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Abstract
IBM i Migrate While Active provides the capability to safely and easily migrate an IBM i partition. A new instance of the IBM i partition, otherwise known as the copy node, is established and maintained by Migrate While Active until such time that a client decides to finalize the migration.
This wiki page aggregates resources and enhancements for IBM i Migrate While Active.
Content
IBM i Migrate While Active orchestrates the migration of an IBM i logical partition (LPAR) to a different location. That location can be within the same server, same data center, or to a remote location such as IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM Cloud.
The process starts with taking a source LPAR at IBM i 7.4, IBM i 7.5, or higher, making a copy of that LPAR, and migrating data from the source to the copy. While the source node is still active, changed data will be continuously migrated to the copy node. When the two nodes are "in sync", a cutover to the new node can be performed, which completes the migration.
Migrate While Active includes multiple technologies that can be used to process the migration of the IBM i. The Migrate While Active content is organized such that these migration methods are found in separate chapters.
Available in IBM i 7.4, migrating using partition mirroring uses host-based storage replication technology to copy SYSBAS from the source node to the copy node. The following figure shows Migrate While Active using partition mirroring method. This method has several key advantages:
- No initial outage on the source node is needed because the creation of install media or a full system save is not necessary.
- The host-based storage replication occurs below the technology-independent machine interface (TIMI) so there are no locking considerations or conflicts with on-going production workloads.
- Test mode is available, which allows the user to freely and fully evaluate the copy node before finalizing the migration.
- The status and progress of partition mirroring is easy to observe, monitor, and estimate from within the Db2 Mirror GUI.
To understand Migrate While Active using partition mirroring, start here: Migrating using partition mirroring.
As shown in following figure, migrating using assisted save and restore technology approaches the migration differently than partition mirroring.
An initial outage on the source node facilitates the creation of install media and user data save media, which are used to provision the copy node. Afterwards, IBM Db2 Mirror for i and Migrate While Active technologies are used to continuously synchronize changes made to objects after the creation of the media. This is ultimately followed by a final migration and cutover to complete the migration to the copy node.
To understand Migrate While Active using assisted save and restore, start here: Migrating using assisted save and restore.
See IBM i Migrate While Active updates by PTF Group and year for a description of the Migrate While Active enhancements and improvements.
IBM Documentation
- IBM i Migrate While Active for i 7.6 Documentation
- IBM i Migrate While Active for i 7.5 Documentation
- IBM i Migrate While Active for i 7.4 Documentation
IBM Group PTF information
IBM Product Information
Technical Notes & Related Information
IBM Technology Expert Labs
- Comments, questions, and requests for assistance can be made by sending an email to iessspt@us.ibm.com , which is the email address for IBM's Technology Expert Labs (formerly Lab Services).
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Modified date:
30 June 2025
UID
ibm17172591