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Migration strategies for IBM i

Migration strategies for IBM i

IBM Power Virtual Server located in IBM data centers: Off-premises

IBM Power Virtual Server Private Cloud: On-premises

Learn about the various strategies to migrate your data and workloads to an IBM® Power® Virtual Server.

IBM i migration strategies

Learn about migration strategies that are specific to IBM i systems.

Recent IBM i migration enhancements:

  1. BRMS enhanced to support software data compression for tape and virtual tape
  2. 90-day software license for BRMS and ICC.

Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) and Cloud Storage (ICC)

BRMS is an IBM i product that can be used to automate activities that help define and process your backup, recovery, and media management operations. The ICC product can be integrated with BRMS to move and retrieve objects from remote locations, including Cloud Object Storage.

The following high-level steps detail how to migrate your OS and data from an On-premises system to the Power Virtual Server environment. Keep in mind that most of these steps can be automated by using BRMS and ICC.

  1. Create your IBM i VM in the Power Virtual Server.
  2. Create a virtual media and IMGCLG on the deployed VM.
  3. Create a virtual optical and IMGCLG on the On-premises system and perform an operating system save.
  4. FTP the images to the Power Virtual Server.
  5. Restore or slip the installation of the OS to get the base OS to the same level as it was on your On-premises system.
  6. Migrate your remaining data.

Refer to this documentation on migrating IBM i to the Cloud by using BRMS and Cloud Storage Solutions with FTP.

For more information, see Data backup and recovery by using BRMS and IBM Cloud Storage Solutions for i and BRMS with Cloud Storage Solutions for i considerations and requirements.

Logical Replication with Geographic Mirroring and PowerHA SystemMirror for i

GeoMirroring enables IBM i disk mirroring technology on multiple system environments and supports host-based and logical replication across geographically distant sites. Geo mirroring supports synchronous and asynchronous modes. You can integrate PowerHA SystemMirror (Enterprise Edition) for network monitoring and automated failover support.