For many companies, saving data to tape each day is the foundation of a disaster recovery (DR) strategy. But as if there weren't enough to keep IT managers up at night, the 2005 hurricane season has made them take a hard look at their DR plans. Many in the path of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita quickly learned they could not protect themselves from the days of recovery time needed to restore their iSeries from backup tapes. On top of this, the data was only complete as of the time the last tape save was made. And this doesn't take into account companies crippled by bad or corrupted tapes.
Because of vulnerability of tape and the time it takes to restore from tape—as well as many other IT pressures that are shrinking downtime windows for tape saves—IT managers are searching for better options to improve recovery points and recovery times in the event of a disaster or failure.
One strategy IT managers have used for years is a "hot site" subscription service with access to a similarly configured system either at a protected site or site of their choice. Having this layer of insurance typically allows a company's systems to resume operations in one to three days (staying online while the company's facility and system is recovered/restored).
The problem IT managers found with hot sites during the hurricanes that ravaged the south and southeast was difficulty transporting the tapes to the hot site. Many IT managers discovered too late that airlines and delivery companies had shut down operations in the area, forcing them to hand carry tapes away from the path of the hurricane to deliver to the hot-site location. Even after arrival, it still typically took days to restore the data and make systems operational.
Given the need to more quickly and thoroughly restore data after a failure or disaster, IT managers have explored multi-system options in which a second system is located offsite (the further away the better to improve DR recovery chances) and production data is copied by some method to this secondary "backup" system.
Some iSeries shops have implemented the remote journaling capabilities of OS/400 (i5/OS) in a multi-system DR configuration. Remote journaling creates and transmits a duplicate set of journal entries from one iSeries environment to another. When coupled with other functions, it is possible to use remote journaling technology to keep a set of objects on a target system synchronized in real-time with the same objects on the primary system. However, this approach requires an IT staff with considerable knowledge of journaling, CL programming, and the intricacies of OS/400. It also takes a good amount of time to manage remote journaling. Plus, successfully moving users and processes to the backup machine after a disaster can be a perilous experience unless it's well-tested and practiced. For many companies, the time, skills, staff, and risk necessary for standalone remote journaling is unacceptable.
This is where third-party high-availability software begins to receive significant attention from even small companies. Not only do these products streamline, monitor, and automate remote journaling (or standard journaling) and other OS processes necessary for reliable replication, they also automate processes needed to move users and programs to the backup machine within minutes after a failure or disaster (switchover). In most cases, data is available up to the last completed transactions.
iTera's Echo² High Availability software takes the strengths of remote journaling and adds a host of next-generation technologies to dramatically affect the ease-of-use and reliability. The patent-pending technologies in Echo² self-heal, self-configure, and self-optimize the data replication process. Echo² also makes it an easy and reliable process to move users and jobs to the backup system in the event of failure or disaster. Plus, Echo² reduces or eliminates downtime from most system maintenance events. Best of all, this state-of-the-art DR technology can be had for a monthly cost that is not much more than a hot site subscription!
Check out iTera's offerings in the MC Showcase Buyer's Guide.
Debbie Lewis is director of marketing at iTera, Inc. a premier provider of high availability software for the IBM iSeries (System i5). For more information, call 800.957.4511 (in the U.S. and Canada) or 801.799.0300. Or email Debbie at
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