This IBM® Redbooks® publication gives a broad understanding of storage clouds and the initial functions that were introduced for mainframe data to be transferred to cloud storage.

IBM Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem (DFSMS) and the IBM DS8000® added functions to provide elements of serverless data movement, and for IBM z/OS® to communicate with a storage cloud. The function is known as Transparent Cloud Tiering (TCT) and is composed of the following key elements:

This IBM Redbooks publication is divided into the following parts:

This edition applies to DS8900F Release 9.3 and covers more recent features of TCT such as multi-cloud connections, along with extra advice for high availability (HA) cloud connectivity and DFSMShsm improvements.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world:

Alexander Warmuth is a Consulting IT Specialist at the IBM European Storage Competence Center. Working in technical sales support, he designs and promotes new and complex storage solutions, drives the introduction of new products and provides advice to customers, IBM Business Partners, and sales. His main areas of expertise are high-end storage solutions and business resilience for IBM zSystems and Linux. He joined IBM in 1993. Alexander holds a diploma in Electrical Engineering from the University of Erlangen, Germany.

Nielson “Nino” de Carvalho is a Level 2 certified IT specialist at IBM Lab Services in South Africa. He has over 10 years experience of IBM mainframe computing as a customer and with IBM. Nino has extensive technical experience implementing and supporting customers on a broad range of IBM products. His areas of expertise include IBM zSystems and LinuxONE hardware, z/OS and IBM z/VM®, and high-end disk, and tape solutions, including
IBM FICON® connectivity.

Thanks to the previous authors of this publication:

Bertrand Dufrasne, Monica Falcone, Robert Gensler, and Bjoern Wesselbaum.

We also thank John Thompson, Tabor Powelson, Robert2 Gensler, Yufen Davis and Bjoern Wesselbaum for their efforts to review this publication.

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