International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. The company began in 1911, founded in Endicott, New York, as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) and was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924.
Mainframe computers or mainframes are computers used primarily by large organizations for critical applications; bulk data processing, such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning; and transaction processing. They are larger and have more processing power than some other classes of computers: minicomputers, servers, workstations, and personal computers.
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM mainframes, produced by IBM. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn followed a string of MVS versions. Like OS/390, z/OS combines a number of formerly separate, related products, some of which are still optional. z/OS offers the attributes of modern operating systems but also retains much of the functionality originating in the 1960s and each subsequent decade that is still found in daily use. z/OS was first introduced in October 2000.
XRC as a z/OS copy services solution can be compared to Global Mirror for ESS, which is a controller-based solution for either the open systems or z/Series environments. Both Global Mirror for ESS (Asynchronous PPRC) and XRC (Global Mirror for z/Series) are asynchronous replication technologies, although their implementations are somewhat different.
XRC is a z/Series asynchronous disk mirroring technique which is effective over any distance. It keeps the data time consistent across multiple ESS (Enterprise Storage Server) or HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) disk subsystems at the recovery site.
The IBM Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) or the Shark is an enterprise storage array from IBM.
XRC functions as a combination of disk (IBM ESS or HDS licensed) Microcode and application code running on a z/Series host and provides a recovery point that is time consistent across multiple disk subsystems.
The host component of the software is called the System Data Mover or SDM. The SDM ensures that no dependent writes are made out of sequence and data residing on the secondary volumes will always provide a time consistent copy of the primary volumes being mirrored.
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RAID is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both. This was in contrast to the previous concept of highly reliable mainframe disk drives referred to as "single large expensive disk" (SLED).
Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) was a serial transport protocol used to attach disk drives to server computers.
The Symmetrix system is Dell EMC's enterprise storage array.
It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s.
In computing, a file system or filesystem controls how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, information placed in a storage medium would be one large body of data with no way to tell where one piece of information stops and the next begins. By separating the data into pieces and giving each piece a name, the information is easily isolated and identified. Taking its name from the way paper-based information systems are named, each group of data is called a "file". The structure and logic rules used to manage the groups of information and their names is called a "file system".
Peer to Peer Remote Copy or PPRC is a protocol to replicate a storage volume to another control unit in a remote site. Synchronous PPRC causes each write to the primary volume to be performed to the secondary as well, and the I/O is only considered complete when update to both primary and secondary have completed. Asynchronous PPRC will flag tracks on the primary to be duplicated to the secondary when time permits.
In computing, a Parallel Sysplex is a cluster of IBM mainframes acting together as a single system image with z/OS. Used for disaster recovery, Parallel Sysplex combines data sharing and parallel computing to allow a cluster of up to 32 systems to share a workload for high performance and high availability.
In IBM mainframe computers, a Coupling Facility or CF is a piece of computer hardware which allows multiple processors to access the same data.
Global Mirror is an IBM technology that provides data replication over extended distances between two sites for business continuity and disaster recovery. If adequate bandwidth exists, Global Mirror provides a recovery point objective (RPO) of as low as 3–5 seconds between the two sites at extended distances with no performance impact on the application at the primary site. It replicates the data asynchronously and also forms a consistency group at a regular interval allowing a clean recovery of the application.
IBM Spectrum Protect is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect family.
Replication in computing involves sharing information so as to ensure consistency between redundant resources, such as software or hardware components, to improve reliability, fault-tolerance, or accessibility.
In data storage, disk mirroring is the replication of logical disk volumes onto separate physical hard disks in real time to ensure continuous availability. It is most commonly used in RAID 1. A mirrored volume is a complete logical representation of separate volume copies.
The IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a block storage virtualization appliance that belongs to the IBM System Storage product family. SVC implements an indirection, or "virtualization", layer in a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN).
Transaction processing is a way of computing that divides work into individual, indivisible operations, called transactions. A transaction processing system (TPS) is a software system, or software/hardware combination, that supports transaction processing.
FlashCopy is an IBM feature supported on various IBM storage devices that made it possible to create, nearly instantaneously,
point-in-time snapshot copies of entire logical volumes or data sets. The Hitachi Data Systems implementation providing similar function was branded as ShadowImage. Using either implementation, the copies are immediately available for both read and write access.
Since September 19, 2017, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has become part of Hitachi Vantara, a new company that unifies the operations of Pentaho, Hitachi Data Systems and Hitachi Insight Group. The company name "Hitachi Data Systems" (HDS) and its logo is no longer used in the market.
IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) is a Storage Resource Management (SRM) software offering that provides a centralized point of control for managing large-scale, complex heterogeneous storage environments. IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2.x (5608-PC1) was renamed in V5.2.8 to IBM Spectrum Control Standard Edition V5.2.x (5608-PC1).
Universal Storage Platform (USP) was the brand name for an Hitachi Data Systems line of computer data storage disk arrays circa 2004 to 2010.
Virtual Storage Platform is the brand name for a Hitachi Data Systems line of computer data storage systems for data centers. Model numbers include G200, G400, G600, G800, G1000, and G1500.
Dell EMC VMAX is Dell EMC’s flagship enterprise storage array product line. It evolved out of the EMC Symmetrix array, EMC’s primary storage product of 1990s and early 2000s.
