Creating a FlashCopy relationship

Complete this task to create a FlashCopy^® relationship between a source and target volume that enables a point-in-time copy of a source volume onto a target volume.

When you create FlashCopy relationships between source and target volumes, the size of the target volumes must be equal or greater than the size of the corresponding source volumes. Any mismatch causes the task to fail.

You can create a FlashCopy relationship between a source and a target volume that enables a point-in-time copy of a source volume onto a target volume. FlashCopy functions run on the DS6000™ storage units and are supported on many operating systems. For example, if you set up and configure your DS6000 to use i5/OS^®, you can create copies of System i™ disk pools within a single DS6000 using FlashCopy. After the FlashCopy function completes, you can immediately access the target point-in-time copies by associating another System i™ or logical partition.

When you issue a FlashCopy command with the background copy option, the FlashCopy relationship is established but it is put in a queue for background copying. The time difference between the submission and actual start time of the task depends on the number of FlashCopy relationships that are currently copying in the background or waiting in the queue. When the copy processing starts, the status displays as "background copy running" for that FlashCopy volume pair.

How long actual physical copy processing takes can depend on the amount of data being copied and other activities that are occurring on the storage unit.

Perform the following steps to create a FlashCopy relationship between a source and target volume:

In the navigation, select Real-time Manager > Copy Services > FlashCopy. All storage complexes that are listed in the drop-down menu are based on the storage complexes that you added during the configuration process. If you have added a 2105 Copy Services domain, it is listed as a storage complex. All relationships that are displayed can be either source or target volumes from the selected domain.
Select Create... from the Select Action drop-down menu, and click Go.
Select the type of relationship to create (single source volume with a single target or single source volume with multiple targets), and click Next.
On the Select source volumes page, select the source volumes for the FlashCopy relationships, and click Next.
On the Select target volumes page, select your target volumes. You can change the LSS from the Resource type drop-down menu to select target volumes. For single source and target volume selections, you must select the same number of target volumes as you did source volumes.
When you have finished selecting your target volumes, click Next.
On the Select common options page, select any (or none) of the following copy options, and click Next.
- Initiate background copy copies all tracks from the source to the target volume as a background task.
- Enable change recording and Make relationship persistent allow a relationship to be refreshed later. If you click Enable change recording, Make relationship persistent is automatically selected.
- The Permit FlashCopy to occur if target volume is online for host access allows the target volume to be online for host system access. This parameter applies only to count key data volumes.
- The Establish target on existing Metro Mirror source allows the FlashCopy target volume to be a remote mirror and copy source volume.
- The Sequence number for these relationships is used for Global Mirror functions.
On the Verification page, review the attributes and values that you selected to verify that they are correct.
If the attributes and values are not correct, click Back as appropriate to return and then specify the correct values. Otherwise, click Finish to complete the create FlashCopy relationship task.
Note: You can monitor when the copy processing completes by viewing the Properties selection from the FlashCopy action drop-down menu.