Hardware requirements

There are hardware requirements for the Db2® Mirror environment.

Power servers

Db2 Mirror requires two Power® servers. The Power servers are not required to be the same make or model.

Db2 Mirror can be configured and run on a single Power server, but that diminishes the goal of continuous availability if the server has an outage.

Table 1. Minimum required firmware levels
Power System	Minimum firmware level required
Power10	FW1010
POWER9™	FW930
POWER8®	FW860.60

Note: The minimum requirements for Live Partition Mobility of a Db2 Mirror node is POWER9 and FW940. Live Partition Mobility also requires SR-IOV virtualized network adapters.

Network adapters

Db2 Mirror requires a fast network with low latency and high bandwidth between the nodes. Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) networking technology is used to achieve this.

Adapters that support RDMA must be installed in both nodes.

The maximum physical distance between the two Power servers depends on your choice of RDMA protocol and adapter. The RoCE v1 protocol is non-routable, therefore the adapters must be directly cabled together or connected using two cables and a single switch. The maximum distance for RoCE v1 is 200 meters unless you use adapter FC EC78 and LR Transceivers (NVIDIA MMA1L10-CR Optical Transceiver 100GbE QSFP28 LC-LC LR4) which can support up to 10 kilometers. The RoCE v2 protocols are routable, therefore the adapters can be connected through multiple switches or routers. The maximum distance for RoCE v2 and encrypted RoCE v2 is 10 kilometers.

Some adapters can be virtualized using SR-IOV while others must be used as a dedicated resource.

Note: If using SR-IOV, be sure to modify the RoCE adapter physical port Maximum SR-IOV Logical Ports options setting from the HMC to allow RoCE logical ports.

The following tables list the supported RoCE adapters. A 100Gb adapter is recommended. For cable and slot planning, follow the links to the adapter documentation.

Table 2. Power10 RoCE adapters
Adapter	Documentation link	SR-IOV capable	Supported RDMA protocols
PCIe3 2-port 25/10 Gb NIC & RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC2T and FC EC2U; CCIN 58FB)	PCIe3 2-port 25/10 Gb NIC & RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC2T and FC EC2U; CCIN 58FB)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC66 and EC67; CCIN 2CF3)	PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC66 and EC67; CCIN 2CF3)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe4 2-port 25/10/1 Gb RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC71 and FC EC72; CCIN 2CF9)	PCIe4 2-port 25/10/1 Gb RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC71 and FC EC72; CCIN 2CF9)	Yes	RoCE v1 RoCE v2
PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC75 and EC76; CCIN 2CFB)	PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC75 and EC76; CCIN 2CFB)	Yes	RoCE v1 RoCE v2
PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE with Crypto x16 adapter (FC EC77 and EC78; CCIN 2CFA)	PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE with Crypto x16 adapter (FC EC77 and EC78; CCIN 2CFA)	No	RoCE v1 RoCE v2 Encrypted RoCE v2
PCIe4 x16 4-port 25/10/1 GbE RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EN24 and FC EN26; CCIN EC2A)	PCIe4 x16 4-port 25/10/1 GbE RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EN24 and FC EN26; CCIN EC2A)	Yes	RoCE v1 RoCE v2

Table 3. POWER9 RoCE adapters
Adapter	Documentation link	SR-IOV capable	Supported RDMA protocols
PCIe3 2-port 10 Gb NIC & RoCE SR/Cu adapter (FC EC2R and EC2S; CCIN 58FA)	PCIe3 2-port 10 Gb NIC & RoCE SR/Cu adapter (FC EC2R and EC2S; CCIN 58FA)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe3 2-port 25/10 Gb NIC & RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC2T and FC EC2U; CCIN 58FB)	PCIe3 2-port 25/10 Gb NIC & RoCE SFP28 adapter (FC EC2T and FC EC2U; CCIN 58FB)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE NIC & RoCE QSFP28 Adapter (FC EC3L and EC3M; CCIN 2CEC)	PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE NIC & RoCE QSFP28 Adapter (FC EC3L and EC3M; CCIN 2CEC)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC66 and EC67; CCIN 2CF3)	PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC66 and EC67; CCIN 2CF3)	Yes	RoCE v1
PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC75 and EC76; CCIN 2CFB)	PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC75 and EC76; CCIN 2CFB)	No	RoCE v1 RoCE v2
PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE with Crypto x16 adapter (FC EC77 and EC78; CCIN 2CFA)	PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE with Crypto x16 adapter (FC EC77 and EC78; CCIN 2CFA)	No	RoCE v1 RoCE v2 Encrypted RoCE v2

Table 4. POWER8 RoCE adapters
Adapter	Documentation link	SR-IOV capable	Supported RDMA protocols
PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE NIC & RoCE QSFP28 Adapter (FC EC3L and EC3M; CCIN 2CEC)	PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE (NIC and RoCE) QSFP28 Adapter (FC EC3L and EC3M; CCIN 2CEC)	No	RoCE v1

For more information about Ethernet adapters, see Ethernet input/output adapters.

Each connection between adapters corresponds to an RDMA link that is defined by the configured IP addresses of the adapter ports. Db2 Mirror supports between one and sixteen RDMA links, but only one is required.