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With the ever-increasing importance of data processing in today’s business environment, business operations – and the associated data processing sequences – must be secured against every possible contingency to ensure continuous uptime. The combination of policies, processes and equipment required to achieve continuous data operations is known as business continuity management.

HP StorageWorks XP for Business Continuity Manager (BCM) software automates processes within the data handling procedures so that in the event of a failure or unplanned disruption, business operations can continue with minimal interruption.

BCM software can help you achieve the highest levels of business continuity and availability.

With the dramatic increase of data and the requirements to protect data under all circumstances, customers are calling for solutions to protect logically dependent data that is spread over more than one physical disk array.

HP Copy Services

Continuous Access

HP StorageWorks Continuous Access allows users to replicate volumes from one XP storage array to another similar XP subsystem synchronously.

To replicate data over short distances, synchronous Continuous Access is the right choice. Synchronous Continuous Access writes updates to both the local and the remote controller before the operation is considered complete.

Continuous Access Journal

HP StorageWorks XP Continuous Access Journal replicates volumes over great distances without affecting overall performance.

The consistency problem with asynchronous replication

Asynchronous replication updates the primary volume and then the secondary volume. Therefore, the secondary volume can lag several updates behind the primary volume. Should a primary volume fail, the secondary volume can be used for recovery purposes, realizing some updates may not have been applied.

Recovery can become difficult if application volumes span multiple disk subsystems. Database recovery may not be possible until all updates to all volumes are rolled forward or backward to a point in time where the secondary volumes are consistent with one another.

Solve this problem by using BCM with either Continuous Access or Continuous Access Journal.

The HP design objective is to create consistency groups that, if necessary, can span multiple XPs for replication by using BCM with either Continuous Access or Continuous Access Journal. Consistency groups are maintained at the XP hardware level and managed by BCM running on the z/OS platform.

BCM and XP Replication Monitor

To manage multi-subsystem data consistency, HP uses XP hardware-based technology to make possible a 4x4 consistency group for replication. BCM makes it possible to handle all XP array-based copy functions as one single independent entity over more than one physical array.

Replication Monitor (RepMon) integrates with BCM and allows monitoring from a single pane of glass all XP replication across multiple platforms including both z/OS and open systems. BCM copy synchronisation options are all handled from the z/OS operating system.

An HP storage specialist can assist you in determining the best way to improve your business continuity.

To find out more, read the complete white paper.