The importance of business continuity and disaster recovery remains at the forefront of thought for many executives and IT technical professionals. This IBM® RedpaperTM describes the lessons learned from recent disasters and how IBM storage technology can help businesses address many of the issues related to protecting their storage infrastructures and business-critical IT applications. Two principal disaster recovery metrics, Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective, are defined and, along with the associated cost tradeoffs, are discussed from the vantage point of various IBM storage technology solutions. Two IBM Business Continuance/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) automation solutions, known as GDPS/PPRC with HyperSwap® and GDPS/PPRC HyperSwap Manager, are described and shown how they can help an installation move closer to attaining a goal of continuous operationGDPS/PPRC with HyperSwap operates in z/OS® environments. For z/OS installations operating two or more sites, in the event of a storage subsystem, host, network or communications facility failure, a switch to processing at an alternate site can be made in almost real time by using GDPS/PPRC with HyperSwap. Additionally, many Clustered Open Systems that are integrated with IBM Remote Copy technology can be configured to switch to a second site in almost real time. In these situations, when a site switch is executed, applications that have been cloned at both sites can continue running with minimal impact to the user.

A disruption to your critical business processes could leave the entire business exposed. Today's organizations face ever-escalating customer demands and expectations. There is no room for downtime. You need to provide your customers with continuous service because your customers have a lot of choices. Your competitors are standing ready to take your place. As you work hard to grow your business, you face the challenge of keeping your business running without a glitch. To remain competitive, you need a resilient IT infrastructure. This IBM Redbooks publication introduces the importance of Business Continuity in today's IT environments. It provides a comprehensive guide to planning for IT Business Continuity and can help you design and select an IT Business Continuity solution that is right for your business environment. We discuss the concepts, procedures, and solution selection for Business Continuity in detail, including the essential set of IT Business Continuity requirements that you need to identify a solution. We also present a rigorous Business Continuity Solution Selection Methodology that includes a sample Business Continuity workshop with step-by-step instructions in defining requirements. This book is meant as a central resource book for IT Business Continuity planning and design. The companion title to this book, IBM System Storage Business Continuity: Part 2 Solutions Guide, SG24-6548, describes detailed product solutions in the System Storage Resiliency Portfolio.

This IBM Redbooks publication is a companion to IBM System Storage Business Continuity: Part 1 Planning Guide, SG24-6547 . We assume that the reader of this book has understood the concepts of Business Continuity planning described in that book. In this book we explore IBM System Storage solutions for Business Continuity, within the three segments of Continuous Availability, Rapid Recovery, and Backup and Restore. We position these solutions within the Business Continuity tiers. We describe, in general, the solutions available in each segment, then present some more detail on many of the products. In each case, the reader is pointed to sources of more information.

The superabundance of data that is created by today's businesses is making storage a strategic investment priority for companies of all sizes. As storage takes precedence, the following major initiatives emerge: Flatten and converge your network: IBM® takes an open, standards-based approach to implement the latest advances in the flat, converged data center network designs of today. IBM Storage solutions enable clients to deploy a high-speed, low-latency Unified Fabric Architecture. Optimize and automate virtualization: Advanced virtualization awareness reduces the cost and complexity of deploying physical and virtual data center infrastructure. Simplify management: IBM data center networks are easy to deploy, maintain, scale, and virtualize, delivering the foundation of consolidated operations for dynamic infrastructure management. Storage is no longer an afterthought. Too much is at stake. Companies are searching for more ways to efficiently manage expanding volumes of data, and to make that data accessible throughout the enterprise. This demand is propelling the move of storage into the network. Also, the increasing complexity of managing large numbers of storage devices and vast amounts of data is driving greater business value into software and services. With current estimates of the amount of data to be managed and made available increasing at 60% each year, this outlook is where a storage area network (SAN) enters the arena. SANs are the leading storage infrastructure for the global economy of today. SANs offer simplified storage management, scalability, flexibility, and availability; and improved data access, movement, and backup. Welcome to the cognitive era. The smarter data center with the improved economics of IT can be achieved by connecting servers and storage with a high-speed and intelligent network fabric. A smarter data center that hosts IBM Storage solutions can provide an environment that is smarter, faster, greener, open, and easy to manage. This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides an introduction to SAN and Ethernet networking, and how these networks help to achieve a smarter data center. This book is intended for people who are not very familiar with IT, or who are just starting out in the IT world.

An information infrastructure is comprised of software, servers, storage, and networks, integrated and optimized to deliver timely, secure, and trusted information throughout the organization and to its clients and partners. With the explosive growth in data and information—coupled with demands for projects with rapid ROI—IT infrastructures and storage administrators are reaching a breaking point. IBM® can help with the changes needed to manage information availability, security, and regulatory and compliance requirements on a tighter budget. And because the health of any business often depends on its ability to take advantage of information in real time, a sound, intelligent information infrastructure becomes critical to supporting new growth initiatives. IBM offers an innovative approach to help you manage information growth more effectively and mitigate risks with a dynamic infrastructure that efficiently and securely stores and protects information, and optimizes information access. You can control, protect, manage, and gain new intelligence from your information with the IBM leading-edge Information Infrastructure products, services and integrated solutions, supported by world-class expertise and access to top experts from around the world. This IBM Redbooks® publication provides an overview of the IBM Information Infrastructure solutions that are designed to help you manage the information explosion and address challenges of information compliance, availability, retention, and security. This will lead your company toward improved productivity, service delivery, and reduced risk, while streamlining costs.

This publication is intended to facilitate the deployment of the hybrid cloud business continuity solution with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and IBM® block CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver plug-in for IBM Spectrum® Virtualize on Public Cloud AWS (Amazon Web Services). This solution is designed to protect the data by using IBM Storage-based Global Mirror replication. For demonstration purposes, MySQL containerized database is installed on the on-premises IBM FlashSystem® that is connected to the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) cluster in the vSphere environment through the IBM block CSI driver. The volume (LUN) on IBM FlashSystem storage system is replicated by using global mirror on IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on AWS. Red Hat OpenShift cluster (OCP cluster) and the IBM block CSI driver plug-in are installed on AWS by using Installer-Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI) methodology. The information in this document is distributed on an as-is basis without any warranty that is either expressed or implied. Support assistance for the use of this material is limited to situations where IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud is supported and entitled, and where the issues are specific to this Blueprint implementation.

This document is intended to facilitate the deployment of Red Hat Ansible for IBM® FlashSystem. The document showcases the automation and orchestration of storage provisioning and copy services, such as Global Mirror, Global Mirror with change volumes, Metro Mirror for IBM FlashSystem® in hybrid cloud environments. The Ansible-based automation and orchestration for managing high availability environments by using HyperSwap for IBM FlashSystem storage also is described. To complete the tasks that are described, you must understand IBM FlashSystem and Red Hat Ansible. The information in this document is distributed on an "as is" basis without any warranty that is either expressed or implied. Support assistance for the use of this material is limited to situations where IBM FlashSystem storage devices are supported and entitled and where the issues are specific to a blueprint implementation.