These days I spend a fair amount of my time working with IBM i clients of all sizes to enhance their backup strategy. Or in some cases just crafting a solid backup strategy that they could actually recover from. Recoverability remains the most important driver for point in time backups. Unfortunately, due to a lack of knowledge, demands for uptime, outdated hardware, or just simply a lack of care for business resiliency, some organizations fall into a reality where they have little faith in their recoverability.
I cannot stress how important your backup strategy is and will be, as we operate in a world of ransomware and cyber-attacks.
We have noticed a major uptick in IBM i shops that have business operations taken down due to cyber-attacks. I am going to try not to get on my Security soap box here and stick with point in time backup strategy. So I will keep the security talk brief. One of the best things you can do to protect your organization from a security threat, is have a solid backup. Sure, there are many things we can do to position ourselves well for preventing an attack. Having a solid backup gives you the piece of mind, that you can get back up on your feet if you ever get knocked down.
Great news is we can greatly enhance the quality and drastically reduce the impact point in time backups have on the business and its users with IBM’s FlashSystem external storage portfolio. Many IBM i shops continue to shy away from external storage due to their perception of cost and the fear of additional complexity. While I can’t argue that external storage becomes another thing to manage when you are used to internal disk and IBM i just being a rockstar at managing it, I think you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t at least look at the value it can serve up to the business before dismissing it.
One of the biggest reasons IBM i shops shortchange their backups is due to demands for uptime.
Backing up to LTO tape or even a VTL requires downtime and for shops running 24×7 operations, this becomes a major problem. With IBM FlashSystem external SAN storage and a tool called FlashCopy, which is built into the software stack called Spectrum Virtualize, you are able to get a full system save with …
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