Getting started with DR Automation for Power Virtual Server

Set up HA and DR Automation for IBM® Power™ Virtual Server (DR Automation) to automate disaster recovery processes for virtualized environments and ensure business continuity with minimal manual intervention. Deploy DR automation from the IBM Cloud catalog, which provides an intuitive interface for selecting and configuring recovery services. The solution automates the recovery of virtual machines (VMs) and workloads, synchronizing data, and managing replication between sites to protect critical operations.

IBM Power Virtual Server Public Cloud officially supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), IBM i, and IBM AIX® operating systems for creating virtual servers and configuring them as managed virtual machines to enable DR. With robust automation, DR Automation minimizes downtime, reduces manual tasks, and enhances business resilience. Using IBM Cloud's global regions, it offers low-latency failover and high availability options to effectively meet your DR requirements.

Why use DR Automation?

DR Automation for Power Virtual Server is a service that automates disaster recovery for workloads running on IBM Power Virtual Server, ensuring minimal downtime and fast failover.

“If a site failure occurs in an IBM Power Virtual Server environment, how are my virtual machines and applications recovered without manual intervention?”

In traditional setups, disaster recovery involves multiple manual steps such as data replication, VM recovery, network reconfiguration, and application startup. This process is time-consuming and increases the risk of errors and extended downtime.

DR Automation addresses this by orchestrating end-to-end disaster recovery. It integrates with replication services to keep data synchronized and uses the orchestrator (KSYS) to automate failover. During a failure, workloads are brought up at the recovery site in a defined sequence, ensuring consistency and meeting recovery time (RTO) and recovery point (RPO) objectives.

This ensures automated and reliable recovery for workloads running on IBM Power Virtual Server.

Before you begin

Complete the following prerequisites:

Create an IBM Cloud accoun: Ensure that you have an IBM Cloud account, Sign up for IBM Cloud if needed.
Configure IAM access: Configure Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. See Managing DR Automation (IAM).
Set up SSH keys or Secrets Manager: Generate a public and private SSH key or choose a Public SSH key from the Secrets Manager. For details, see Adding an SSH key.
Plan your infrastructure: Define your DR requirements and estimate costs by using the DR Automation Estimate pricing tool.

Lifecycle of Power Virtual Server DR Automation

Step 1: Set up the orchestrator

On the Manage tab, enable or disable Orchestrator HA, configure the orchestrator name, and set a password to secure access.
Provide a valid IBM Cloud API key, then complete other fields, including the DR location, DR Orchestrator networks and Public SSH key or keys from Secrets Manager.
(Optional) Expand the Advanced Orchestrator configuration to enable MFA and provide proxy details. In the DR Orchestrator sections, select the required storage tier and machine type for the Orchestrator VMs. By default, Tier 1 storage and s922 machine type are selected.
If you have enabled Orchestrator HA, Provide standby orchestrator details.
Review all settings and click Deploy Orchestrator to begin the deployment.

Next steps

After completing the orchestrator setup, you can:

Manage virtual servers that enables administrators to monitor and control the virtual server instances.

These advanced configurations help you optimize your disaster recovery setup for business resilience.