In Part 1 of our “When the System Goes Down” video series, Senior Solutions Architect at ProActive Solutions Aaron Brown explained how unexpected outages trigger anxiety and disbelief for companies that don’t have plans for disaster recovery or business continuity in place.
In Part 2, Aaron recounts an outage that took place over a holiday which spurred the impacted company to move beyond tape backups. Aaron remembers “It was painful. But that pain drove real action.” In response, that business committed to robust HA solutions and prioritized failover planning to avoid future outages.
“[Recovering from tape] was painful. But that pain drove real action.”
--Aaron Brown, Senior Solutions Architect at ProActive Solutions
Watch the brief video to get actionable insights on failover planning as a high availability strategy for long-term IT resilience.
Watch our 2.5-minute video and explore:
Designing and implementing high availability (HA) environments takes time and can be complex because of the level of integration that is required. However, the business value of achieving high availability is worth the time and effort. In Aaron’s experience, the integration ultimately delivered a repeatable 90-minute failover rate. His team was able to conduct recovery exercises and DR testing multiple times a year with the same results, confirming a consistent failover window.
Regular DR testing and simulated recovery builds confidence in your plan and avoids unpleasant surprises during a real emergency. ProActive recommends setting a cadence for testing failover. Conducting drills validates the recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) set by your company before a true outage occurs.
By highlighting the current disk replication and integration features of IBM i, Aaron shows how the system supports high availability, debunking the myth that IBM i is outdated. IBM i still runs critical Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms and financial systems and has evolved to provide them with modern DR support. IBM replication technologies, such as PowerHA and policy-based replication, can create redundant copies of data to support system recovery and minimize downtime.
To achieve high availability, companies need to monitor the performance of replication and backup processes. ProActive Solutions recommends conducting routine recovery exercises and health checks to refine disaster recovery plans and strengthen your organization’s IT resilience.
ProActive Solutions uses our consultative approach to take your company from disaster recovery to high availability. To that end, we are offering a free consultation.
Get expert advice on making high availability solutions part of your disaster recovery plan.
Request a free consultation with ProActive Solutions.