7.2 Base Enhancements

IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i announces several enhancements in the 7.2 release.

The IBM Announcement Letter for IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i 7.2 enhancements can be found here: PowerHA Announcement Letter.

DS8000 HyperSwap support for full system replication

A new Express Edition of PowerHA is available.  The initial technology supported within this Edition is the DS8000 HyperSwap technology.  Hyperswap allows for the almost instantaneous switching between DS8000 storage servers connected to the same IBM i instance. 

HyperSwap can be used to eliminate outages because of planned storage server maintenance.  The new commands, Display HyperSwap Status (DSPHYSSTS) and Change HyperSwap Status (CHGHYSSTS) can be used to manage which DS8000 is serving as the primary storage server.  If HyperSwap is configured, a HyperSwap switch will also be triggered if the production storage server fails or becomes unexpectedly unavailable.

HyperSwap can be used in conjunction with Live Partition Mobilty to provide a minimal downtime solution to migrate from one server/storage combination to another.  The Add HyperSwap Storage Description (ADDHYSSTGD) command can be used to define affinity between a POWER server and a storage server, so that when a Live Partition Mobility move is done from one server to another, the appropriate HyperSwap switch also takes place as part of that process.

For more information on configuring full system HyperSwap, see the Knowledge Center topic, Configuring Full System Hyperswap.

For more information on managing full system HyperSwap, see the Knowledge Center topic, Managing Full System Hyperswap.

Synchronization of object authority and ownership

Object authority and ownership can now be synchronized with administrative domain. There are four new object attributes: object owner, authority entry, authorization list, and primary group.  New monitored resource entries (MREs) added in 7.2 with the *ALL value for attributes will have these new attributes by default.  Existing MREs which were added with the *ALL attribute will start synchronizing the new attribute upon upgrade to PowerHA version 3.0.  Since PowerHA cannot determine the source node to synchronize from, the MRE will be marked inconsistent until the source node can be determined.  The PowerHA GUI has a new option to synchronize from a specific node, or the Remove Monitored Resource Entry (RMVCADMRE) command followed by the Add Monitored Resource Entry (ADDCADMRE) command can be used.

For more information on configuring an administrative domain, see the Knowledge Center topic, Configuring cluster administrative domains.

For more information on managing an administrative domain, see the Knowledge Center topic, Managing cluster administrative domains.

Increased Administrative Domain limit

The number of monitored resource entries (MREs) supported within the PowerHA Administrative Domain has been increased from 25,000 to 45,000.  In the 7.1 PowerHA release, the PowerHA GUI as well as the Work with Monitored Resources or WRKCADMRE command were enhanced to simplify the management of a large number of MREs.

For more information on configuring an administrative domain, see the Knowledge Center topic, Configuring cluster administrative domains.

For more information on managing an administrative domain, see the Knowledge Center topic, Managing cluster administrative domains.

DSPASPSTS improvements

The Display ASP Status (DSPASPSTS) command has been enhanced to preserve and display up to 64 vary histories.  There are new options to display UDFS and STATFS information, and the user has the ability to query and analyze vary history via SQL Table functions.

For more information on the Display ASP Status command, see the Knowledge Center topic, Display ASP Status command.

Reduced UID/GID processing time during vary-on

The processing time for the 'UID/GID mismatch correction' step in the IASP vary on process has been significantly reduced.  Processing time for traditional /QSYS.LIB objects has been eliminated, and processing time for IFS objects has been minimized.  It is still recommended to synchronize the UID and GID attributes of user profiles using administrative domain to eliminate all UID/GID mismatch processing during vary on.

Independent ASP assignment for consolidated backups

It is now possible to assign an existing IASP to a partition outside of the cluster device domain.  There are various reasons why this may be advantageous.

For environments with multiple production clusters, each of which utilizes FlashCopy for system backups, this capability can be used to consolidate the number of backup partitions required.  Prior to this enhancements, the FlashCopy could only be attached to a partition within the cluster device domain, such that each cluster would require a dedicated partition for attaching the FlashCopy and completing the save.  With this enhancement, one partition can be designated to attach multiple FlashCopies from different cluster environments.  The requirements for this function are that only one IASP can be attached at a time, and an IPL of the partition is required before a different IASP is attached.

Another use case for this function could be for customers replicating to a disaster recovery site using external storage replication.  It is feasible that only the external storage server is active at the disaster recovery site until it is necessary to attach that copy of the IASP to an IBM i instance.  At that point, this technology could be used to attach the IASP to that new IBM i instance.

For more information on attaching an IASP to a partition in a single system environment, see the Knowledge Center topic, Attach Independent disk pool.