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 i5/OS (OS/400) 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 How many of these plans are out-of-date and don't reflect the current backup strategy?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 and couldn't be executed by just anyone on your staff?

Whenever you must manually update the documentation for an event that may never happen or is needed only for an annual disaster recovery trip, the most likely scenario is that these documents' 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 adds a lot of stress to your life and puts the whole trip in jeopardy. Many companies simply 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 an update restoration procedure 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 i5/OS 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).

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. The online process reads Robot/SAVE's internal files at the hot site and prompts you to load the correct media. You can use the guided system restoration process only after you've first restored your OS and Robot/SAVE (see Figure 2).

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 is Vice President of Technical Services for Help/Systems, Inc. He can be reached at 952.563.1606 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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..