PowerHA 7.4 HA 4.0.1 with PTF SI71412 provides automated setup, increased capacity, and simplified management of the administrative domain along with streamlined recovery from data center outages in a HyperSwap with LUN-level switching environment.

Administrative Domain Enhancements

The administrative domain in PowerHA is used for automatically synchronizing security-related and configuration-related objects, such as user profiles, system values, and device descriptions, between nodes in a PowerHA cluster. A change to a resource on one node results in the same change occurring on the other nodes in the cluster.

Automated Setup

Previously, initial configuration and setup for the administrative domain in PowerHA required adding individual resources into the administrative domain one at a time, or using additional utilities provided by IBM Lab Services. With the 7.4 PTFs available December 2019, the Add Cluster Administrative Domain Monitored Resource Entry (ADDCADMRE) command has been enhanced to support *ALL and wildcards on the monitored resource and library parameters. In addition, an omit parameter has been added. These new options are supported for user profiles, authorization lists, classes, job descriptions, and subsystem descriptions. Now, many resources can be added to the administrative domain with a single command, simplifying administrative domain setup.

For additional information see: Adding Resources to the Administrative Domain

Increased Capacity

PowerHA previously had a limit of 45,000 resources that could be monitored by the administrative domain. However, environments continue to increase in size, and very large environments with more than 45,000 resources may require additional independent solutions to manage the additional level of resources, which increases the complexity of managing the entire environment. With 7.4 PowerHA 4.0.1, the administrative domain's monitored resource entry limit has increased by over 340% to support up to 200,000 monitored resource entries, enabling support for the largest environments.

Simplified Management

As the number of resources monitored and synchronized by the administrative domain has grown, the challenge of finding specific resources of interest in the administrative domain also has increased. PowerHA has improved the Work with Cluster Administrative Domain Monitored Resource Entries (WRKCADMRE) command to provide fast and easy searching, filtering, and sorting of resources. This enables administrators to find monitored resource entries of interest with a few keystrokes.

The WRKCADMRE command is enhanced with new parameters that enable filtering based on several criteria, including monitored resource, library, resource type, and global status. These filters can be combined and support generic wildcards.

For additional information see: Managing resources in the Administrative Domain

Additional Administrative Domain Enhancements

• Support for replicating encrypted passwords set with the QSYSUPWD API. Previously, the use of the QSYSUPWD API caused the user-affected profile to be marked as inconsistent within the administrative domain.

• Simplified implementation by eliminating the need to change user profile passwords after changing the value of the QRETSVRSEC system value from 0 to 1.

• Improved control over changing the synchronization option for an administrative domain using the CHGCAD command. Previously, all nodes in the administrative domain had to be active in the cluster to change the synchronization option. The synchronization option can now be changed even when some nodes in the administrative domain are inactive. When combined with the source node parameter on the STRCAD command, this gives full control over how monitored resources are synchronized throughout the administrative domain, both when starting the administrative domain and when starting cluster nodes.

• The WRKCADMRE command has been enhanced to work even when clustering is inactive. With this function, users can view monitored resources within an administrative domain on a local node even during maintenance windows.

Enhancement Availability

HyperSwap with LUN Switching Integrated Recovery