Important Updates in Dell’s Geographically Dispersed Disaster Restart (GDDR)
Tue, 30 Aug 2022 20:53:25 -0000
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Dell Technologies created Geographically Dispersed Disaster Restart (GDDR) to provide mainframe customers a comprehensive business continuity automation product for their Dell PowerMax Storage and Disk Library for mainframe virtual tape environments. GDDR achieves this by reacting to events within your IT environment.
The three functions of automate, react, and monitor (ARM) combine to enable continuous operations across both planned and unplanned outages. GDDR is designed to perform planned data-center site-switch operations and to restart operations following disasters. These incidents can range from the loss of compute capacity or disk-array access, to the total loss of a single data center, or a regional disaster resulting in the loss of dual data centers. GDDR also provides automation to protect data from cyberattack in a separate physical vault array. For more information about GDDR, see the document GDDR (Geographically Dispersed Disaster Restart) for PowerMax 8000 and VMAX ALL FLASH 950F.
Dell’s GDDR 5.3 enhancements
GDDR introduced an exciting new feature in GDDR 5.3 called Cyber Protection Automation (zCPA) which populates a separate physical cyber vault for your mainframe environment. zCPA automates cyber protection copy creation and preservation by using Dell’s Data Protector for z Systems (zDP). zCPA automates the creation and transmission of PowerMax snapshots to a physically separate cyber vault PowerMax array. This provides a protected copy of data that can be used for testing purposes, recovery from a cyber event, or an analytical process to better understand the extent of damage caused by a cyberattack.
The transmission of data to the cyber vault leverages SRDF/Adaptative Copy. To take advantage of zCPA, customers need GDDR 5.3 with the zCPA PTF, Mainframe Enabler 8.5, and a PowerMax at 5978.711.711 or higher.
Unique benefits of GDDR zCPA types
zCPA supports air gapped and non-air gapped physical cyber vaults. Any site in a GDDR topology can be an attached cyber vault array managed by zCPA. To provide customers choice, there are three types of methods for creating zCPA vault arrays. The three zCPA types are defined by the different configuration and operational attributes that dictate how zCPA will function.
zCPA Type 1
- Type 1 is defined as an environment that has no airgap in connectivity between a data center and the cyber vault. The data copied to the cyber vault is initiated when a newly created zDP Snapset is detected. The cyber vault in Type 1 does not have to be a dedicated physical vault and could be another storage array within the production data center. This type is the default for zCPA.
zCPA Type 2
- Type 2 is an air-gapped environment between two storage environments. The data copied to the cyber vault is triggered by SRDF link online operation. GDDR monitors the SRDF Link Operation process to know when SRDF connectivity to the vault has been established and closed it when it has populated the vault.
zCPA Type 3
- Type 3 is an environment that does not provide an airgap solution. The data copied to the cyber vault is triggered by the SCHEDULE or INTERVAL parameter in GDDR.
The airgap support between the production and vault site is optional.
For more information about GDDR’s zCPA with respect to cyber, see the white paper Dell PowerMax: Cyber Security for Mainframe Storage or contact us at mainframe@dell.com.
Resources
- Mainframe Enablers TimeFinder SnapVX and zDP 8.5 Product Guide
- Data Protector for z Systems (zDP) Essentials White Paper
- Dell PowerMax: Cyber Security for Mainframe Storage
- GDDR (Geographically Dispersed Disaster Restart) for PowerMax 8000 and VMAX ALL FLASH 950F
Author: Justin F. Bastin