IBM i Migrate While Active orchestrates the migration of an IBM i logical partition (LPAR) to a different location. That location can be within the same server, data centre, or remote location such as Cloud.
IBM i Migrate While Active builds upon the continuous availability technology of IBM Db2 Mirror for i.
Traditional Db2 Mirror is a bidirectional continuous availability solution where a two node cluster uses Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capable hardware adapters to keep the two nodes “in sync” by synchronously replicating Db2 for i data, replication-eligible object types, and security attributes. The two IBM i nodes frequently have different IBM i PTF levels and perhaps even have different IBM i operating system levels.
Migrate While Active creates a copy node that has the same operating system level, matching PTF levels, and other matching capabilities and settings that are captured during the save of the operating system on the source node.
Instead of relying on RDMA capable hardware adapters, Migrate While Active uses TCP/IP as the communication protocol between the source and copy nodes.
Whereas Db2 Mirror replication-eligible object types are a subset of the entirety of IBM i object types, Migrate While Active will migrate all save-eligible object types found in *SYSBAS, regardless of whether those objects reside within libraries or the integrated file system. Data within an independent ASP (IASP) can be migrated outside of Migrate While Active using IASP replication technologies found in the IBM PowerHA® SystemMirror® for i (5770-HAS) product.
Another important difference is that traditional Db2 Mirror uses synchronous replication and Migrate While Active uses asynchronous replication. At any point during the migration process, the Migrate While Active user can examine the remaining amount of migration needed before the copy node will be in sync with the source node.
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