Automatic Health Checks in GDPS Environments

GDPS is IBM’s most advanced Business Continuity solution for the zSeries platform. Its design leverages the availability of enough data processing components in multiple sites, such that IT services may continue even if one site suffers a complete failure. All critical data, disk or tape resident, is mirrored between sites using synchronous and/or asynchronous remote copy.

GDPS is about maximizing availability. However, as those in both performance and business can attest, availability is not always a binary event (such as a disaster). For example, if critical data is available on your Disk Subsystems but poor I/O response times are impacting your applications, are you meeting your availability objectives? The data storage and data replication involved in these types of environments is complex, and this is magnified by the difficulty of seeing how it is operating.

Our latest technical note, “IntelliMagic Vision in GDPS Environments” covers how IntelliMagic solutions provide visibility into this highly valuable and critical infrastructure with more built-in intelligence and predictive capabilities than any other solution on the market. Topics covered include:

• Automated Storage Infrastructure Health Check
• Synchronous Replication
• Asynchronous Replication
• Global Mirror for zSeries (zGM aka XRC)
• Inter-Site Bandwidth Requirements
• 3-Site and 4-Site Solutions
• GDPS Active-Active
• Balanced I/O Load
• Monitor Primary and Ancillary Disk Subsystems
• Monitor PPRC and XRC Links

The automatic health checks and additional metrics reduce risk and help avoid performance related outages. Customer experience with IntelliMagic Vision at GDPS sites demonstrates that the same drivers of reducing the risk of availability issues also apply to the adoption of IntelliMagic Vision.

Download the technical note, “IntelliMagic Vision in GDPS Environments” here.