I only have 1 LPAR that can handle the remote tapes at the production site. I do not think that doing it in a virtual machine would be helpful in that it would be the VM CP handling the I/O requests, not the bare iron. I will have to schedule an outage some weekend to try it. How easy that will depends on whether it will take manual intervention at the DR site to mount the tape. The operators there are stretched thin due to a pending data center move.
If a tape that is mounted and at load point will survive a SHUTDOWN, I can do something like this: 1. Log on to the non-dr system 2. Have VMTAPE mount the stand-alone tape 3. DETACH ... LEAVE the tape 4. SHUTDOWN 5. IPL the s/a tape. 6. Following the experiment, IPL the VM system. Here, the only operator intervention would be the two IPLs - I do not have access to the HMC to do them. That operator is not at the center being moved, and it doesn't involve abnormal processes (opening the silo and manually mounting a tape), so it is much easier to schedule. Regards, Richard Schuh ________________________________ From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of O'Brien, Dennis L Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 12:57 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Remote Drives Richard, You could test it by IPLing a standalone utility on a DR tape drive from your production center. Try it in a virtual machine first. If that works, hopefully you have a test LPAR that you can try it on. Dennis O'Brien "If I'd only followed CNBC's advice, I'd have $1 million today, provided I'd started with $100 million." -- Jon Stewart ________________________________ From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 11:38 To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: [IBMVM] Remote Drives The 3270 will be at the end of a different 1000 mile wire. The move to the DR site will be as you describe. The assumption is that we are moving there because our normal center has been destroyed (used as a set for an episode of 24, perhaps). The move to the DR site will have local tapes and 3270s on a 3000 mile wire. After f few months, when the normal center as been reconstructed, it will have brand new everything. One way to accomplish the move might be to do a reverse DR using tapes that are located at the normal DR site. Might is a key word here. If the stand-alone utilities can be IPLed from there, there would be no physical transport of tapes, something that our powers-that-be are rightfully paranoid about. Alternatively, we could find some way of creating any needed S-A utilities at the new center. Regards, Richard Schuh ________________________________ From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Imler, Steven J Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 10:56 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Remote Drives I don't know for sure. I can tell you in our old building (back in the Sterling era) we had remote tape drives in Reston going to our datacenter in Sterling (probably about 15 miles) and I personally did this with that configuration. That being said, admittedly for 99% of customers doing remote DR exercises it's the "3270" that is at the end of the 2000 mile wire, not the tape drive ... the tape drive is local (channel attached) to the CPU. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Sustaining Engineer Tel: +1-703-708-3479 steven.im...@ca.com<mailto:steven.im...@ca.com> From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 01:41 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Remote Drives Do any of the customers who have done/do this done it over a 2000 mile wire? Regards, Richard Schuh ________________________________ From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Imler, Steven J Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 4:28 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Remote Drives I know customers have done/do this. Alternatively, you can place the HiDRO MODULE on your PARM disk and IPL it stand-alone in the LPAR via the HMC (but you would obviously have to have a PARM disk restored to do that ... implying you would need to restore at least one volume via stand-alone tape IPL). JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Sustaining Engineer Tel: +1-703-708-3479 steven.im...@ca.com<mailto:steven.im...@ca.com> From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 06:48 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Remote Drives Has anyone ever ipled a stand-alone program, Hidro in particular, from a remote tape drive? Is it even possible? Regards, Richard Schuh
