Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   IT Service Continuity Management
  •   Execute IT Service Continuity Plan

Details

The IBM® TotalStorage® Productivity Center (TPC) user interface allows storage administrators to launch IBM TotalStorage Open Software Family products. These products support the storage volume lifecycle, device configuration, performance, replication, storage network fabric, data backup, data availability, and data recovery, as well as enterprise policies. They also help in managing host, application, database, and file system data.

Figure 1. TPC is divided into four components

The TPC four main components are:

• TPC for disk – designed to provide a single point of control for managing networked storage devices (from IBM and non-IBM vendors) that implement the storage management initiative specification.
• TPC for data – helps discover, monitor, and create enterprise policies for your disks, storage volumes, file systems, files, and databases.
• TPC for fabric – a standards-based, comprehensive solution used to manage heterogeneous storage area networks (SANs) through discovery and monitoring all your SAN fabric components.
• TPC for replication – the most important of these components for a business continuity plan. It provides simplified and automated storage replication, including the ability to ensure that data on multiple related volumes across storage subsystems remains consistent.

Data replication is the core function required for data protection and disaster recovery. It provides advanced copy services functions for supported storage subsystems in the SAN. The Replication Manager administers and configures the copy services functions and monitors the replication actions. Its capabilities consist of the management of two types of copy services: the continuous copy (also known as Peer-to-Peer, PPRC, or Remote Copy), and the point-in-time copy (also known as FlashCopy).

Figure 2. Keeping sites synchronized

The job of the Replication Manager is to provide a single point of control for all replication activities. This role is filled by TPC for Replication. Given a set of source volumes to be replicated, the Replication Manager will find the appropriate targets, perform all of the configuration actions required, and ensure that the source and target volumes relationships are set up. If given a set of source volumes that represent an application, the Replication Manager will group these volumes in a consistency group, give that consistency group a name, and allow you to start replication on the application. Replication Manager will start up all replication pairs and monitor them to completion. If any of the replication pairs fail, meaning that the application is out of sync, the Replication Manager will suspend them until the problem is resolved, re-sync them, and resume the replication. The Replication Manager provides complete management of the replication process.

TPC for Replication is designed to solve the many challenges with managing and utilizing point-in-time and continuous copy services. It is worth noting that these services are extremely valuable for enhancing business continuity, cloning applications for application testing, and other day-to-day activities. However, the fact that their implementation is generally unique to a given vendor and they are difficult to configure and use has prevented many customers from taking advantage of them.

For example, an IT manager might be interested in providing a continuous copy of a large application to a remote site. For the administrator, simply identifying all the right source volumes and assigning them all to target volumes at the remote site can be a daunting task.

Replication Manager organizes volumes into source groups and target pools. By defining groups of volumes, the storage administrator can do single action management actions across a large set of storage resources with a single drag command.

Replication Manager tasks include:

• Automating the setup of the replication sessions. A group of volumes to be replicated can be automatically matched to volumes that are selected from the target candidate pool.
• Creating the session pairs that match up the source and target volumes.
• Providing the ability to start, stop, pause, and resume a copy operation across the group of volumes, with a single command.
• Managing and tracking the state of all the copy operations, assuring that the disaster recovery site receives all the data required.
• Providing management events and actions if the copy operation fails, allowing the storage administrator to capture consistent data at the source site and to easily suspend and resume copy operations.

For more information

For more information about this tool, go to the IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center page.