The Point-in-Time Copy feature, which includes FlashCopy, enables you to create full volume copies of data in a storage unit. When you set up a FlashCopy operation, a relationship is established between the source and target volumes, and a bitmap of the source volume is created. Once this relationship and bitmap are created, the target volume can be accessed as though all the data had been physically copied. While a relationship between the source and target volume exists, optionally, a background process copies the tracks from the source to the target volume.

Copy Services are a collection of functions that provide for disaster recovery, data migration, and data duplication functions. There are two primary types of Copy Services functions: Point-in-Time Copy and Remote Mirror and Copy.

Generally, the Point-in-Time Copy functions are used for data duplication, and the Remote Mirror and Copy functions are used for data migration and disaster recovery.

With the Copy Services functions, for example, you can create backup data with little or no disruption to your application, and you can back up your application data to the remote site for disaster recovery.

Copy Services run on the DS8000 Storage Unit and support open systems and System z environments. A subset of these functions is supported also on the previous generation of disk storage systems, the IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (ESS).

In the past few years, the speed of backup & restore has made it to most of the large enterprise CEO “to achieve” list. The problem is raising up as the amount of the data is growing exponentially, where the backup window is shrinking. Its no longer acceptable to take a database down for backup or even keep it in backup mode for few hours. The restore time is even getting more critical. Its no longer acceptable to require few hours to restore a 1TB database or an e-mail. Few hours database downtime in a financial firm can mean a loss in millions of dollars, I am not sure how would the IT department make up for that. Will they be able to get back to their desk next morning? For all that storage snapshotting technology has came into play.

Many of you who had figured out that I was away of writing on my blog for a while, I will have to tell you IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager is the reason behind it. This product which is a bit more than two weeks old, is going to replace IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services & IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for advanced Copy Services. I have been lucky to start testing the product about three weeks back even before it went GA, as we had to build a proof of concept for one of our large clients for Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for SQL on DS8000.

As more companies are virtualizing their infrastructure based on VMware ESX, more need are araising for a disaster recovery solutions supporting these enviornments. VizionCore vReplicator & Veeam backup & Replicaiton are two host based replication solutions supporting VMware.  If you are planning to build a DR for your VMware Infrastructure & Storage replication is not an option you might want to look at the following comparison: VizionCore vReplicator (esxReplicator) vs Veeam Backup & Replication. It will help you pick up the one matching your DR requirment for your VMware Infrastructure.

I hope that help you out, and leave a comment of your thoughts on the comparison as ITComparison team will be following this post as well the comments on their blog at: VizionCore vReplicator vs Veeam Backup & Replication Blog Post

If you have been using IBM Blades for a while, you would know that currently IBM does not offer any Intel four socket blades. The only four socket blades offered by IBM at the moment is an AMD blade. IBM Has not offered a four processor intel blade for over 2 years, since HS40. If you were hoping to get a four socket intel blade into your IBM Chassis then read below.

As part of his keynote address today, Sean Maloney, General Manager at Intel, disclosed that IBM will soon have a 4 socket blade using the next generation Intel® Xeon® processor. The blade is based on IBM’s next generation of X-Architecture, eX5. This new blade extends IBM’s influence in the fast growing high-end x86 marketplace, and opens up a range of new application environments for clients.

My colleague has been facing a problem installing Windows 2003 R2 SP1 as boot from SAN on IBM HS22 connected to IBM Storage DS4700 for over 2 days. The new HS22 is using the Qloigc QMI2572 with IBM Part#46m6067. Windows was accepting the driver, but when ever it try to start setting up windows the following error used to popup:

The file ql2300.sys is corrupted. press any key to continue.

Please see the image below illustrating the error message.

(hs22 Qlogic QMI2572 boot from san error snapshot)

The IBM Systems Director 6.1 has the feature to deploy its common agent remotely, though it seem the problem facing most people is when they try to deploy the agent using the wizard provided they get an error saying  it cannot proceed because the package has to be imported. It is a pretty annoying error. What makes it worse if you go and try to read the IBM System Director 6.1 manual you will find it say to resolve this you will need to download the tcdriver packages, but never refer to where you can get it at. After a long search on the internet & talking to IBM support I found the tcdriver packages download link to be as below:

As IBM Director 6 has been released few months back & with all the publicity IBM has made about its enhancement. I thought I will try it out. Although I had a quite good experience with IBM Director 5.2, I found it a bit tough to start with IBM Director 6 without returning to the manual. It seems IBM has totally rebuilt the product from scratch with a totally new interface & new terminology.

After catching the important terminology changes from IBM Director 5.2 to IBM Systems Director 6 life has become way easier with the new Systems Director. For that reason I have decided to share these new Terminology with all of you IBM Director 5.2 admins & gurus to have a nicer start with IBM Director 6 than what I had.

I have heard it often of TSM administrators wondering why the TSM reclamation process is slow & clumsy process. The good part most of these administrators is that they understand the importance of reclamation & how it help their backup become more efficient & save on tapes, though they still wonder why it takes too longs. I had decided to give my point of view on this.

1- One of the main reasons for the reclamation process to be slow is that you don’t have enough tape drives. If you have only one tape drive into your library then you can have a seriously slow & none efficient reclamation process, as each time you need to reclaim a tape, TSM will have to copy the full tape to the disk, then reclaim the volume on the disk to another tap. So you are basically repeating the reclamation process twice.