If you have a boot from SAN server, you will be able to easily clone it for a backup or deployment purpose using the native DS8000 FlashCopy. As mentioned earlier FlashCopy is an optional feature for the DS8000, which means it will require an additional license to enable. The SAN administrator can initiate a FlashCopy of Boot from SAN Disk using the DS8000 Storage Manager GUI or using the DSCLI.

Creating a FlashCopy on the DS8000 can be as easy as running the following command on DS8000 DSCLI, where 6100 is the source LUN & 6101 is the target LUN.

mkflash -seqnum 01 6100:6101

After creating a FlashCopy of a certain LUN in case you need to restore the server to its original state all you have to do is shutdown the server (shutdown will be required if it’s the boot LUN only) & Map the FlashCopy Target LUN in the place of the FlashCopy Source LUN.

In case you are using FlashCopy for OS deployment, you will just map the FlashCopy Target to the new server. Then power up the servers, which will boot up using the new cloned LUNs. If you are using FlashCopy for OS deployment for windows machines, you would need to use a utility like newsid or sysprep to generate a new security ID for each server in your environment after the FlashCopy operation has been completed.

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Back to: IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager Tutorial Index