Hi Im putting together a document which should outline options for DB2 AESE continous availibility.

Currently we have some stuff on 8.2 which atm cannot be upgraded; and we have other stuff on DB2 9.7 which does have the option to be upgraded.

We have two main sites which we would like to ensure complete synchronicity; the two sites are over 700km apart at approx 14ms round trip latency.

What options are available to ensure continuous availibility?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "continuous availability". There are many ways to skin this cat, including:
- storage replication with OS active-passive clustering;
- DB2 HADR;
- DB2 Q Replication;
- InfoSphere Change Data Capture;
- log shipping.

In the attachment I have outlined the existing set-up.
Machine's 1 and 2 exist. 3 and 4 are what we want.

Is it possible to do 'sync' from machine 1 to 2,3,4 without 'any' data loss whatsoever in the event of machine 1 failure using HADR on DB2 9.7 ?

This is what i mean by continuous availibility:
Continuous availability (CA) is defined as high availability extended to 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. CA combines the characteristics of continuous operations and high availability, to mask or eliminate all planned (scheduled) and unplanned (unscheduled) outages from the end user.

Firstly, DB2 9.7 only supports one standby instance. You'll need to upgrade to DB2 10.1 to have 3 standby instances.

Secondly, "no data loss whatsoever" implies that you would want to use SYNC or NEARSYNC mode, not ASYNC, which with 14 ms network latency will surely affect performance on the primary database.

If you have money to spare, you can also take a look at this:

Configuring geographically dispersed DB2 pureScale clusters

About multiple standbys:

"All of the HADR sync modes are supported on the principal standby, but the auxiliary standbys can only be in SUPERASYNC mode."

HADR multiple standby databases

I appreciate your help. This is the most likely scenario we will go with. We were hoping for a remote SYNC, however without a Dark Fiber setup it will not be possible. Local continuous availability with HADR for remote site's seems to be the best option for our situation.