All good info. Currently we backup everything on 3592 nightly and the next morning they go off site for DR purposes, circa 1980’s
Dean Nai On 1/22/20, 3:15 AM, "IBM Mainframe Discussion List on behalf of Timothy Sipples" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: > EXTERNAL: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize and > trust the sender. > >Dean Nai wrote: >>We have a 3592-E07 and our leasing company is telling us >>the following. Anyone have any thoughts? We really don’t >>have the funding for a mirrored VTS and if it’s not mirrored >>then we lose our DR plan. > >How are you set up today? For example, do you simply take periodic backups >to physical tape then ship the tapes to your DR site? It's not yet clear to >me whether and why you necessarily need a mirrored VTS. > >>From leasing company. >>The first item to be withdrawn from service will be the 3592-C07 >>at the end of 2020. The C07 is the controller for the tape >>drives and is required for z/OS or z/VM to communicate with the >>3592-E07 drives. >>IBM has no direct attach tape products for z/OS, z/VM or zVSE. > >Just to editorialize here, IBM has not offered "direct attach tape >products" for those operating systems (or for z/TPF) for a LONG time. There >must be a controller in the connection path, either a "smart" or "dumb" >one, in order for z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, and/or z/TPF to use the drives. (Linux >is the exception and can work with the drives either way.) > >IBM maintenance for the last in the line of "dumb" tape controllers, the >3592-C07, is ending at the end of 2020. > >>The best option is to go with a VTS and locate a 2nd VTS at your >>DR site with replication between the two sites. There is also the >>option to have an IBM VTS with access to tape drives in a 3584 and >>then send those tapes offsite. To be able to use those tapes for >>DR you would need another IBM VTS at you DR location. > >Before suggesting "the" answer, another relevant capability is cloud object >storage. There are a couple software products for z/OS that equip z/OS to >use cloud object storage -- whether on premises, off premises (public >cloud), or both -- as virtual tape. IBM Cloud Tape Connector for z/OS is >one such example. > >The basic approach with Cloud Tape Connector for z/OS is that you'd run >your backups pretty much per normal, but the target(s) would be any cloud >object storage that supports IBM Cloud Object Storage S3 protocol, Amazon >S3, Hitachi HCP protocol, or EMC Elastic Cloud Service Protocol. These >storage pools could be public, private, or both. Storage pools can be >backed by any sort of media, including physical tape. Cloud Tape Connector >for z/OS can encrypt data before it's saved to cloud object storage, and >you really ought to do that. For example, you might decide to have one >private pool of cloud object storage at your DR site and also buy a >subscription to IBM Cloud Object Storage as another, duplicate pool. (IBM >then further duplicates your data across IBM's multiple sites. Where and >how many depends on your subscription.) Then, in a disaster, you'd need to >get at least one basic z/OS instance up and running, with Cloud Tape >Connector for z/OS fired up, connect to whichever cloud object storage pool >has survived and is reachable, restore, and you're back in business to the >last good backup point. In a dire emergency the first two steps would >typically start from USB media at the HMC these days. > >Anyway, that's the "cloud" way to do things, and there's a lot of merit in >it. It's also combinable with VTS. For example, perhaps you take backups to >both public cloud object storage (encrypted of course) and to remote (DR >site) VTS, with no local VTS. There's a lot of flexibility in all of this, >including economic flexibility, but I'd like to understand a little more >before backing a specific alternative. > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Timothy Sipples >IT Architect Executive, Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions, IBM Z & >LinuxONE >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >E-Mail: [email protected] > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
