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Partner TechTip: Keep Your IBM i (AS/400) Restoration Plan Up to Date

High Availability / Disaster Recovery
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Is your IBM i disaster recovery plan always current?

 

Is your disaster recovery plan always ready to go? The problem with most plans is that they are built manually. Consequently, the plan is only as good as the last time you updated it. How many of us maintain our procedures on the IBM i restore process manually? How many of these plans are out of date and don't reflect the current backup strategy? How many of these plans require specific skill sets that prevent untrained staff from executing them? Have you ever failed an internal or external audit because of inadequate recovery plans?

 

Whenever you must manually update the documentation for an event that may never occur or is needed only for an annual disaster recovery test, the most likely scenario is that the update process will lag. How often do you find yourself, or your team, scrambling to put together up-to-date recovery procedures just before you make the annual pilgrimage to the hot site? This just adds a lot of stress to your life and puts the whole trip in jeopardy. To simplify matters, many companies just do a SAVE option 21 and then go off to the hot site to test their "recovery plan." This is an unrealistic approach because your failure will never happen right after you've done a SAVE option 21.

 

There is a better way, and that is Robot/SAVE. Robot/SAVE provides a restoration procedure update process that reflects exactly what you are backing up. It even has rules to add new libraries to your backup plan automatically. Every backup executed by Robot/SAVE generates a restoration report that is your up-to-the-minute procedure on how to restore the system. You can even convert this IBM i report to PDF and send it to your hot site. The report provides a checklist for everything you need to do to restore your system (see Figure 1, which shows the top and the bottom of the report).

 

120508HELPtnt 42saverpt1.jpg

 

 

120508HELPtnt42saverpt2.jpg 

Figure 1: The restoration report is a checklist for restoring your system. (Click images to enlarge.)

 

Robot/SAVE also provides an online guided restoration process that allows you to load your media in the proper order and restores your libraries automatically. After you've restored your OS and Robot/SAVE at the hot site, the online process reads Robot/SAVE's internal files and prompts you to load the correct media (see Figure 2).

 

120508HELPtnt42save.jpg

Figure 2: Use Robot/SAVE's online Guided System Restoration to restore your libraries automatically.

 

Robot/SAVE Is Your Guiding Hand

As many of our customers have learned, Robot/SAVE provides the guiding hand you need at a hot site or in the case of a real disaster. Let us help you automate your backups and your restores. Call for your Robot/SAVE 30-day free trial. You won't be disappointed. Learn more about Robot/SAVE by clicking here. And check out Help/Systems' other offerings in the MC Showcase Buyer's Guide.

 

TOM HUNTINGTON

Tom Huntington is Executive Vice President of Technical Solutions at HelpSystems, and has been with the company for nearly 30 years. He works with business alliances, acquisitions and large customer relationships and ensures that the HelpSystems software works with other major software and hardware vendors worldwide.

Tom often speaks on enterprise scheduling, security, automation topics, IBM i technology, and the HelpSystems products, and hosts technical presentations on a variety of automation topics. He is the author of the HelpSystems IBM i Marketplace Survey and has written articles on automated operations, security, cloud computing, and business intelligence for leading trade journals and newsletters. He was named an IBM Champion in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 for over three decades of advocation and thought leadership on the IBM i platform.

Contact Tom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


 

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