Enable continuous availability during an outage for business-critical workloads running on z/OS®

The Multi-site Workload Lifeline, also known as "Lifeline," is a software for monitoring and routing workloads. Its purpose is to balance critical workload transactions by distributing connections for TCP/IP workloads and messages for IBM® MQ cluster workloads across two sites, thereby ensuring near-continuous availability.

This product is available both as an independent offering and as part of the GDPS® Continuous Availability solution.

When an outage occurs, IBM Multi-site Workload Lifeline helps reduce critical workload recovery time versus traditional disaster recovery from hours to minutes. The recovery time for unplanned outages is reduced by detecting workload failures and rerouting to another site. The impact of planned outages is mitigated by switching workloads to another site with minimal disruption.

Lifeline supports these workload types:

• TCP/IP based workloads
• Linux on z Systems® workloads
• SNA workloads
• IBM MQ cluster workloads
• Db2® sysplex routed workloads

Features

• **Load balancing workloads: **Lifeline uses two tiers of load balancing for workloads targeting TCP/IP applications. Lifeline directs first-tier load balancers to route workload connections to second-tier load balancers in the selected site, which then route the connections to applications in the site. Lifeline relies on IBM MQ clusters for workloads by using messaging. Lifeline directs the cluster to route workload messages to IBM MQ queue managers in the selected site, which then make the messages available to applications.
• **Site routing recommendations: **For workloads that use two tiers of load balancers, Lifeline provides first-tier load balancers with site connection routing recommendations based on the availability and health of the workload applications, the z/OS systems and (if applicable) Linux® on IBM Z® systems across both sites. For workloads that use IBM MQ clusters, Lifeline provides the cluster with site message routing recommendations based on the availability and health of the IBM MQ queue managers and the z/OS systems across both sites.
• **Lifeline Agents: **A Lifeline Agent is started on each z/OS system and Linux on Z Management Guest where the workloads are present across both sites. The Agent is responsible for monitoring the workload applications that reside on its system and reporting this information back to a Lifeline Advisor. The Agent on z/OS is also responsible for communicating with an IBM MQ queue manager to monitor and influence IBM MQ message routing within an IBM MQ cluster.
• **Lifeline Advisors: **A Lifeline Advisor is started on a z/OS system and can be started as the primary or secondary Advisor. A primary Advisor communicates with all Lifeline Agents to determine workload availability. The Advisor provides IBM MQ message distribution rules to the Agents for the IBM MQ clusters and routing recommendations to load balancers for TCP connections for these workloads. A secondary Advisor monitors the availability of the primary Advisor and will take over primary Advisor responsibility in the event of a primary Advisor failure.

Benefits

• **Improve performance: **Route new connections of workloads to the applications, servers and systems that are most capable of processing to reduce transaction response time. System resources are used more efficiently.
• **Achieve higher availability: **Route new workload connections to other available applications during an application, system or site outages. Outages for maintenance updates or other planned events can be minimized.
• **Reduce recovery time: **Reduce response time by aligning new workload connections with the most capable applications and systems. Minimize recovery time from hours to minutes after a workload failure.
• **Increase scalability: **Add application instances on-demand. Automatically monitor and include added instances in workload routing decisions.
• **Improve workload migration, usage: **Route workloads from one site to another with minimal disruption. Connections for query workloads can be distributed to both sites simultaneously.
• **Simplify disaster recovery procedures: **Add simpler, non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery procedures by validating that workloads remain accessible on the recovery site without requiring an outage of the production site.