IBM® InfoSphere® Classic Replication Server for z/OS provides mainframe-based replication of VSAM, IMS, CA-IDMS and Software AG ADABAS data. It consists of a number of optional features that provide for a customized implementation that addresses specific data replication requirements.
The VSAM feature, IBM InfoSphere Classic Replication Server for VSAM, supports native, unidirectional replication of VSAM data. This provides a low latency mechanism for synchronizing the content of VSAM files across systems or on the same system. This is especially useful to ensure highly available VSAM data. This feature is designed to support high availability, high throughput, and business continuity solutions as well as data distribution and consolidation environments that are dependent on VSAM data.
The VSAM feature can also be used as a data source for IBM InfoSphere Replication Server’s queue-based replication features. Together, these IBM replication solutions enable low latency replication of VSAM data to z/OS and distributed relational databases. This combination can be especially useful for distributing critical VSAM data to new application data stores and business intelligence initiatives.
To support unidirectional movement of VSAM data to relational database targets, InfoSphere Classic Replication Server for VSAM shares mainframe data virtualization technology with IBM InfoSphere Classic Federation Server. This virtualization technology helps ensure that the VSAM data is reformatted into a consistent relational format, regardless of the source data format. The data reformatting is driven by metadata definitions that map the VSAM record layouts to logical relational table constructs. Based on this metadata, the non-relational source data is made to look like DB2 data before it is delivered to WebSphere MQ queues and then to the InfoSphere Replication Server apply processing mechanism.
Characteristics of the InfoSphere Classic Replication Server for VSAM feature are:
- High volume, low latency VSAM replication for business continuity, workload distribution, or business integration scenarios.
- Continuous data availability for critical applications - zero downtime for planned and unplanned outages
- Asynchronous replication that maximizes flexibility and function
- Supports data sharing configurations for VSAM, automatically merging the changes captured
- Maintains data consistency between applications and efficiently manages VSAM distribution between locations
- Using a replica, consistent, timely information can be provided to users and applications for better decision-making while reducing workload on critical on-line transaction processing environments.
- Provides multiple VSAM data capture mechanisms for broadest applicability, including: Native VSAM I/O-based capture, CICS Autojournal capture, and MVS forward recovery log capture
- Operating systems supported: z/OS