What’s new in DB2® pureScale Feature

By Maria Schwenger and Kamen Tsvetkov

27 September 2010

 

In our previous article on the DB2 pureScale Feature, we outlined the basics of the technology, its key design points and the when and why you would consider using it. As with every technology, DB2 pureScale has rapidly evolved in the last few months, introducing new functionality and additional support. This article outlines these new offerings and their business value.  

The most important news is that now (with DB2 9.8 Fix Pack 2) the DB2 pureScale Feature for Enterprise Server Edition is supported on IBM® System x® hardware and can be deployed on the System x servers such as x3650 M3, x3690 X5, and x3850 X5 and LINUX operating system.

DB2 9.8 Fix Pack 2 expands the list of the supported platforms giving to the DB2 customers the choice of deployment on x86-based hardware or IBM Power (Linux or AIX). Detailed information on hardware, firmware, and software prerequisites is available from the Installation prerequisites for the DB2 pureScale Feature topic in the DB2 9.8 Information Center.

The DB2 pureScale Feature is a high-availability solution, however many businesses today require disaster recovery deployments in addition to the traditional database backup, restore, and roll-forward functionality (which DB2 pureScale feature supports as primary disaster recovery solutions).

Starting with DB2 9.8 Fix Pack 2, DB2 pureScale Feature is designed to work with database replication products such as Q Replication and SQL Replication using the Change Data Capture attribute. These replication technologies provide powerful high-volume, low-latency disaster recovery solutions, which support topology changes as well as version differences between capture and apply sites. Both replication solutions are based on the new db2ReadLog API, which fields have changed to reflect the internal log record changes due to multiple logs in the cluster (one log for each member). More information on how the db2LSN structure has been replaced by a new Log Record Identifier structure (db2LRI) can be found in db2ReadLog API - Read log records topic in the DB2 Information Center.

The DB2 pureScale Feature also leverages remote disk-mirroring technologies by different vendors. “Configuring DB2 pureScale for disaster recovery using DS8700 Metro Mirror” is an article that describes the steps required to deploy a Metro Mirror disk-mirroring solution with the IBM DS8700 storage subsystem and can be found on Developer Works.

 

Figure 1 presents a high level overview of some disaster recovery scenarios featuring one DB2 pureScale cluster on each site.

 

Figure 1. High level overview of some disaster recovery solutions with DB2 pureScale Feature

 

Another offering of exceptional business value is the IBM pureScale Application System  - “an integrated system workload optimized for transactional processing by extending the reliability, speed and performance of IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM Power 770 servers with PowerHA pureScale clustering technology”. Although this is a “bundled” solution of hardware, database and application services, it provides the flexibility to buy only what is need, and only when is need it.

“This flexibility is achieved by the system's unique ability to scale up, scale out, and scale within, which ensures customers do not have to over-allocate and over-purchase hardware and software.”  The offering provides systems that are OLTP workload optimized, transparently scalable and continuously available and it is ideal for consolidating transactional workloads into a single highly available environment for easier administration and reduced redundancy.

These are some of the most popular offerings introduced in DB2 9.8 Fix Pack 2. Follow closely how DB2 pureScale Feature continue to evolve in upcoming Fix Packs and releases. The upcoming Information on Demand 2010 conference is a great place to obtain in depth information about DB2 pureScale functionality straight from the IBM architects, pose your questions and get ideas on when/why you should consider adopting this feature.

You will learn about the future plans for the feature and have to opportunity to share “first hand” experience with the participants in the Early Adoption Programs who have already participated in Proof of Technologies and/or Proof of Concepts on DB2 pureScale feature.

 

For More Information

Information about System x/Linux support could be found on the System x servers tab of the DB2 pureScale Web page.

 

Additional information is available from the Installation prerequisites for the DB2 pureScale Feature topic in the DB2 Information Center.  

 

More technical information is available on Developer Works.

 

To learn more about the IBM DB2 pureScale Application System and smarter systems from IBM, contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:

www.ibm.com/systems/smarter or www.ibm.com/software/data/purescale

 

For Early Adoption Programs:

Working with the IBM DB2 Lab provides numerous ways for you and our partners to get first hand information and explore/experience DB2 pureScale in action. To learn more about how you can try IBM DB2 pureScale for free, contact us at go_db2@ca.ibm.com or visit ibm.com/db2/pureScale. To find about the latest events on IBM DB2 pureScale, follow DB2EmergingTech (http://twitter.com/DB2EmergingTech) on twitter.com (http://twitter.com).

 

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