HP P9000 for Compatible FlashCopy Mirroring User Guide (AV400-96388, October 2011)

1 About Compatible FlashCopy operations
This chapter describes and provides instructions for performing Compatible FlashCopy operations.
Unless otherwise specified, the term P9000 in this guide refers to the following disk array:
• P9500 Disk Array
The GUI illustrations in this guide were created using a Windows computer with the Internet Explorer
browser. Actual windows may differ depending on the operating system and browser used. GUI
contents also vary with licensed program products, storage system models, and firmware versions.
How Compatible FlashCopy works
The P9500 is functionally compatible with Compatible FlashCopy of the IBM FlashCopy host control
functions. PPRC TSO, DFSMSdss, ICKDSF, and/or ANTRQST Macro commands are used to perform
Compatible FlashCopy operations on the P9500 storage system.
Compatible FlashCopy provides a fast data replication capability. This function allows you to copy
the source data to a targeted volume virtually or physically. A pair created by Compatible FlashCopy
is called a relationship. Once a Compatible FlashCopy relationship is created, hosts can access
data that is copied to the targeted volume.
You can also specify a range of data to be copied when you establish a Compatible FlashCopy
relationship, which is called an extent. In addition, Compatible FlashCopy allows you to make
multiple copies of data from one copy source. When you specify only a part of the volume (i.e.,
extent) as the copy source, the capacity of the S-VOL and the T-VOL can be different. However,
the specified target volume or extent must have a minimum size equal to that the source volume
or extent. You can even specify both copy source and copy target within the same volume.
Establishing a Compatible FlashCopy relationship
To establish a Compatible FlashCopy relationship, you need to specify a copy source (S-VOL) and
copy target (T-VOL) volumes. When you want to copy the data according to dataset, you specify
the copy range as an extent in addition to the copy source and copy target. The smallest extent is
a track.
Creating multiple relationships from one source is called multiple relationship. Compatible FlashCopy
allows you to establish up to 16 relationships from one extent, as shown in the following figure.
6 About Compatible FlashCopy operations