RE: PowerHA for System I

Rick,

There are a couple of good Redbooks out but also don't be afraid to call IBM and open a PMR. The guys that support PowerHA are really top notch and will help you.

There are sections that talk about separating the heartbeat and replication traffic into two different LANs. They can be on the same copper but I usually split them so the heartbeat is on one network i.e.: 192.168.10.1/29 and the replication is on 192.168.20.1/29. Business traffic is on 10.10.10.1/16. (Clearly my addresses are used for example) Now the business traffic, the replication traffic and the heartbeat traffic cannot interfere with each other, and the heartbeat is able to do its job effectively.

Pay attention to the procedures to complete the back up on the target machine if you do it there. The process to suspend, backup, and restart is straight forward, but only after you understand it. That's one of the steepest learning curves. The other issue is with object that are left in *SYSBAS. PowerHA by itself does not necessarily do a good job with some of those objects so you might need the HA Assist product from Rocket. That's a cut down version of iCluster that works in conjunction with PowerHA. HAassist will take a couple of hours to set up if you need it. It's really straight forward.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rick Mason
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 8:37 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: PowerHA for System I

Thanks. We were a mimix shop but now that we are implementing PowerHA, i want to learn more about it to make sure it will be configured correctly.....i have so many questions because i keep comparing it to mimix...i know it is totally different but not finding to much on the product...especially for the system i is making the learning process difficult.
On Aug 26, 2014 9:13 AM, "DrFranken" <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have several customers running PowerHA on IBM i. I know Jim O has
the same. We also think there should be more classes and tried to get
IBM to let us take their classes but they wanted us (as sellers,
installers and supporters no less) to pay full price + T&E. Instead we taught ourselves.

The product is VERY different from the software guys (Mimix etc)
though I'm not going to say Better or Worse because it depends on your environment.

One of the best points about is that once it is set up you do
*NOTHING* to get objects to replicate. Zip, Zero, Nadda. You create a
new file, it's replicated. Data area? Got that, whatever is in the library, replicated.

Another benefit is no journal receivers to mess with. Spent three
hours on the phone yesterday with a customer who's HA partition went
down because it ran out of disk space due to Mimix Journal receiver
management getting 'unhooked'. REMEMBER: You still DO want to journal
with PowerHA. Remember the Journaling Rules: 1) ALWAYS JOURNAL. 2) If
you don't want to journal see rule 1. But with PowerHA they are not
used for replication so you can manage the receivers more easily.

PowerHA continues to get better as well. There are multiple ways to
implement the thing and we have come up with a couple that IBM
basically pointed at us and laughed about. Then some guys in Europe
actually started doing it that way and suddenly 'It's Legit'!

Sometimes I think IBM doesn't take me seriously. :-)

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 8/26/2014 8:40 AM, Rick Mason wrote:

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if you are currently using IBM’s PowerHA product
and if there are classes being offered on the product?

The one company I have found that does offer the class has canceled
it twice for low participation……..which makes me now wonder about the
product itself.



Thank you



*Rick Mason*

*Midrange Administrator*

*Information Technology*


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