Creating a Global Copy relationship

Complete this task to create a Global Copy relationship between a source volume and a target volume.

Before you begin, ensure that you have met the following conditions:

Ensure that the Remote Mirror and Copy license key is installed and enabled to allow operations to be performed.
Set up the paths between the source and the target LSSs for the Global Copy relationships. Paths are needed for communication between the volume pairs and to copy data from the source to the target. If paths are not established, this task fails.
Identify the source volumes and the target volumes for the Global Copy relationships.
Identify the LSSs that contains the desired source volumes and target volumes.

Global Copy is an asynchronous remote copy function for longer distances than is possible with Metro Mirror. With Global Copy, write operations complete on the primary storage unit before they are received by the secondary storage unit. This capability is designed to prevent the primary system’s performance from being affected by wait time from writes on the secondary system. Therefore, the source and target volumes can be separated by any distance.

You can create a Global Copy relationship between a source and target volume. Global Copy 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 use Global Copy to create a copy of a System i™ disk pool on a separate DS6000, typically in a remote location.

When Global Copy volumes are established, the status is Copy Pending. The volumes must be synchronized before the status changes to full duplex.

Perform the following steps to create a Global Copy relationship:

In the navigation, select Real-time Manager > Copy Services > Metro Mirror.
Select a storage complex from the Storage complex drop-down box.
Select a storage unit from the Storage unit drop-down box. continue to the next step.
Select a resource type from the Resource type drop-down box.
Select which resource to view from Specify (LSS, Host attachment, Volume Group, Show all volumes) .
Select Create from the Select Action drop-down box. Then click Go. The Create Metro Mirror page displays.
In the Volume pairing method page, you must specify one of the following methods by which to select volume pairs and then click Next .
1. If you click the Automated volume pair assignment, the first selected source volume is paired with the first selected target volume automatically.
2. If you click Manual volume pair assignment, you must select each specific target volume for each selected source volume.
In the Select source volumes page, select the volumes that you want to include for the Global Copy relationships.
1. Optionally, you can click the Create paths button to create a new paths. If you select this button, the Create paths page displays where you can create a new path.
In the Select target volumes page, select target volumes. Click the storage complex drop down box to change where target volumes are selected and then click Next. Consider the following guidelines:
1. If you selected the automated pairing method, each source volume that you selected is paired with a target volume.
2. If you selected the manual pairing method, you can select target volumes from different LSSs on the target storage unit. This page repeats for each of the source volumes that you selected.
In the Select copy options page, select the radio button for Global Copy. Keep the following options in mind when selecting those to apply to the volume pairs and click Next.
1. Select the Perform initial copy option the first time a relationship is created as it is needed to ensure that the entire source volume is copied to the target volume to guarantee that the source and target volumes contain the same data.
2. Select the Permit read access from target option to allow host servers to read from the Global Copy target volume. Unlike a Metro Mirror pair, the pair is not required to be in a duplex state for the host server to read the target volume.
In the Verification page, review the attributes and values 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 Metro Mirror creation process.