IBM To Add Full System Replication And FlashCopy To PowerHA
August 18, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM will be adding a pair of new technologies to PowerHA SystemMirror in the near future, including Full System Replication (FSR) and Full System FlashCopy (FSFC). The technologies are currently offered through the PowerHA Tools group of products via IBM Expert Labs (formerly Lab Services), but will become part of the mainstream PowerHA offering soon.
FSR and FSFC have been available for years via IBM Expert Labs toolkits, where they have provided IBM i shops with additional forms of data and application protection above and beyond what they get with BRMS and PowerHA, both of which are still required with FSR and FSFC.
The FSR toolkit from Expert Labs provides application protection and is designed to help automate and manage DS8000 and Storage Virtualize replication and switches for IBM i LPARs. FSFC, meanwhile, provides additional data protection and was created to automate the execution of backups with minimal impact to production systems.
The key differentiator between FSR/FSFC and traditional PowerHA capabilities is what it replicates. With traditional PowerHA and FlashCopy, data in the independent ASP (IASP) is targeted for replication. With FSR/FSFC, the entire partition, including the operating system, applications, and data, is replicated from one location to another. The advantage of the FSR/FSFC is that it provides a comprehensive copy of the system, which hopefully provides a more rapid recovery to a consistent state.
Steve Finnes, the IBM product manager in charge of PowerHA, discussed the upcoming support for FSR and FSFC during a recent webinar on PowerHA in VS with Dan Sundt, another product manager.
“This is where we’re heading,” Finnes said. “There’s the PowerHA with independent ASPs. That’s the traditional, the most robust cluster. And then what we’re going to do is have an option which would be PowerHA full system replication. The idea behind that is it will be a native capability.
“What we’re really focused on is we want to have it customer-installable and ease of use,” he added. “So an integrated function generally is more robust, let’s say. It’s all intrinsic to the product. And hopefully we get the capability so our customers can install it on their own. That’s really where we want to get to.”
As an Expert Labs product, FSR and FSFC currently require consulting engagements with IBM experts to implement. By making it a supported part of the product, that requirement for IBM consulting to come on site (or in the cloud) to install it would go away.
While FSR replicates the entire production partition, it doesn’t work in a standalone fashion. According to IBM documentation, it requires PowerHA to be used. In an FSR setup, a controlling partition communicates with the partition’s Hardware Management Controller (HMC), the production partition, and the storage, such as the DS8000 or SAN Volume Controller V9000, V7000, V5000, or V3700. The FSR replication is monitored, managed, and switched from the controlling LPAR using commands and menus. In the event of an outage, an administrator can switch the controller over to the target site. IBM notes that the switch is not automated but requires manual intervention.
The FSFC toolkit, meanwhile, works with SVC and DS8000 lineup of external storage. IBM describes the FSFC offering like this:
“With this toolkit, a full system backup in restricted state can be performed with the users experiencing a pause for (typically) less than 30 seconds,” IBM says on its webpage for FSFC. “This is achieved using a combination of the HMC to manage the partitions, the ability of IBM i to pause database transactions on a commit boundary, and the FlashCopy function of external storage to create a copy of the production LPAR, from which the backups are taken.”
Like FSR, FSFC also does not work at the IASP level, but instead flashes the full system ASP, IBM says. “This powerful and flexible toolkit provides additional functions to assist with automation and management of FlashCopy via a set of commands you can use to create a point in time copy of a full system for the purposes of performing backups,” IBM says.
There are a number of benefits to using FSFC, according to IBM, including:
- The capability to fully automate the power off or quiesce of the production system
- The creation of the FlashCopy (warm flash/cold flash ) within an external storage unit
- Support for Storage Virtualize CSM
- Co-existence with HyperSwap and live partition mobility (LPM)
- The capability to automatically power up the production system
- The capability to automatically power up the backup IBM i partition for save operations
- Providing an exit point to submit backup jobs
- The capability to run full system backups without ending user jobs
- The capability to have single command automation
- And Integration with SafeGuarded Copy to protect against ransomware
Both FSFC and FSR are coming to PowerHA, IBM said. In a statement of direction made with the IBM i 7.6 announcement this spring, IBM stated: “IBM intends to offer Full System Replication automation and Full System FlashCopy orchestration capabilities as a product option in PowerHA SystemMirror for i via IBM Power Virtual Server and on-premise.”
Considering that IBM is already offering PowerHA at a relatively low price, the addition of FSR and FSFC capabilities makes PowerHA even more compelling. IBM is selling subscriptions of PowerHA for $1,915 per core per year for the small size (which applies to every Power server but the 1180) and $2,687 per core per year for the medium size (which only applies to the Power 1180). Alternatively, the small size can be rented for $155 per core per month, or $4,624 for a non-expiring license, while the medium size goes for $220 per core per month, or $6,489 for the non-expiring license.
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