Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex™ (GDPS®) is the primary disaster recovery and continuous availability solution for a mainframe-based multi-site enterprise.

GDPS automatically mirrors critical data and efficiently balances workload between the sites. GDPS also uses automation and Parallel Sysplex® technology to help manage multi-site databases, processors, network resources and storage subsystem mirroring. This technology offers continuous availability, efficient movement of workload between sites, resource management, and prompt data recovery for business-critical mainframe applications and data. With GDPS, the current maximum distance between the two sites is 100km (about 62 miles) of fiber, although there are some other restrictions. This provides a synchronous solution that helps to ensure no loss of data.

There is also GDPS/XRC, which can be used over extended distances and should provide a recovery point objective of less than two minutes (that is, a maximum of two minutes of data would need to be recovered or is lost).