IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.2 Delivers Replication Management

IBM Copy Services Manager 6.3.2 delivers replication management with simplified and automated replication tasks

Copy Services Manager delivers support for copy services capabilities on DS8000 systems, SAN Volume Controller (SVC), Spectrum Virtualize systems, FlashSystem A9000 series, and XIV systems. These capabilities include automating administration and configuration of these services, operational control of copy services tasks (starting, suspending, and resuming), and monitoring and managing the copy services sessions.

The product supports Metro Mirror, FlashCopy, Safeguarded Copy for cyber resiliency, and Global Mirror on the DS8000 and SVC hardware platforms. DR functions are also supported with failover/failback (planned and unplanned) from a primary site to a DR site. Copy Services Manager can monitor the performance of the copy services that provide a measurement of the amount of replication and the amount of time that is required to complete the replication operations. It also supports multitarget with practice capability for both Metro Mirror and Global Mirror.

By using Copy Services Manager on DS8000 or Spectrum Virtualize storage devices, tasks that took up to 5 steps can be accomplished in just one. Copy Services Manager also provides features across the entire replication environment, such as the ability to schedule tasks vs. Copy Service Manager sessions and the ability to set up a practice session. The practice session in Copy Services Manager enables to test your DR environment without interfering with daily operations so that you can run a practice session before you perform the actual action.

Copy Services Manager 6.3.2 offers the following improvements over the previous release:

A scheduled task action to check the DS8000 Global Mirror RPO prior to continuing with the task
Ability to clear SCSI-reservations on DS8000 FlashCopy establishes with Copy Services Manager during practice and real DR scenarios
Creation of a user role for automation
Ability to programmatically backup the Copy Services Manager server or create a log package and download the results
Ability to consistently suspend DS8000 Global Mirror sessions sharing the same consistency group on the hardware by specifying a property
Ability to programmatically recover the last successful Safeguarded Copy backup without specifying a backup ID
Enhanced support for defining custom certificates for Copy Services Manager servers
Support for installing Copy Services Manager on AIX 7.3
Support for user-defined session name on multitarget Metro Mirror – Metro Mirror sessions enabled for HyperSwap
All Spectrum Virtualize based storage systems and volumes are renamed to use Spectrum Virtualize in the name instead of the storage system type
DS8000 restore to production feature is allowed to run restore whether the Safeguarded Copy backup is running on the remote copy source or target volume
Ability to rename Copy Services Manager sessions while in certain states
Copy Services Manager CLI command to view the amount of terabytes managed by Copy Services Manager
Ability to invoke external scripts within scheduled tasks
Support for migrating secondary DS8000 storage systems to new DS8000 storage systems