Reduce your data loss to a few minutes, in case of a crash or disaster

RECOVER for i

Description

The purpose of the ‘RECOVER for i’ product is to reduce your data loss to a few minutes, in case of a “crash” or a “data incident” on your Database.

The ‘RECOVER for i’ product manages and automates each operation:

If they don’t already exist, create database Journals
Detach database Journals (receivers) every N minutes
Send them to an external FTP/NFS server
Store them on this ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’ server

In case of “crash” or a “data incident” ‘RECOVER for i’ will:

Import the Journals on the rescue IBM i partition where your Database has been FULLY restored (or Cloned)
Ask you the hour/minute/second where you want to recover your data (a few minutes before the crash or the incident)
Apply the data changes on all the restored (or cloned) Database
Allow you to follow all operations, through real-time dashboards
Provide at each step the right information to your monitoring solution (and why not to our product ‘CONTROL for i’ …)

Use cases

In any situation where a loss of data would be critical.
- - Of course if you don’t have any HA/DR solution
  - THE BEST COMPLEMENT of a “Cold Backup” solution
If you have HA, and if the HA Database is also corrupted or/spoiled
- - you could restore the last tape Backup on the HA partition
  - and use ‘Recover for i’ to update the restored Database
If your Prod Disks (and Prod DB) are Cloned (with a FlashCopy/SnapShot solution as ‘Flash for i’)
- - you could use ‘Recover for i’ to update the Cloned Database

RECOVER for i

Objectives

The purpose of the ‘RECOVER for i’ product is to reduce your data loss to a few minutes, in case of a crash or a “data incident” on your Database.
The objectives are:

To recover your whole Database, all your Files and your last Data at the status they were 5 minutes
– before a disaster or a disk crash
– before a “data incident”.

Note : a “data incident” might be caused by many events:

inadvertent or malicious deletion of tables,
data errors because of a hidden bug,
loss of integrity or corruption of the database,
malware/cryptovirus spoils

No more stress in case of corruption, damaged file, table deletion, crash, crypovirus …

RECOVER for i

CORE TECHNOLOGY

Recover for i back-up every N minutes the changed data of your Database.

RECOVER for i

Clarifications

RECOVER for i is a “Data-driven” product

A single objective: REDUCE DATA LOSS TO A MINIMUM (= improve the RPO)

based on DB2 for i native « Journals »
- Note: it is possible to use existing Journals, but if necessary, ‘Recover for i’ can create new ones.
useable on internal and external disks
the external server can be used with FTP or NFS protocol (Windows, Linux, Appliance, …)
this external server can be in-site, off-site or in the Cloud (FTP component)
previous backup Database has to be fully restored (from LTO tape or Virtual tape or from a Clone of the production partition)

Manage automatically the RECOVERY of your Data.

RECOVER for i

Operations mode:

Every N minutes:
Recover for i’ automatically detaches the database Journals.
Recover for i’ sends and stores them securely on a local or remote FTP server (or in the Cloud).

At this stage all the modifications made on the database are externalized from the ‘Prod’ server and reusable.

In case of an “incident” (crash, disaster, deletion of tables, database corruption, loss of integrity, …) :
Restore the FULL database from the last backup (LTO tape or VTL)
Recover for i’ automatically imports the Journals (from the FTP server where they are stored)
Recover for i’ reapplies the changes made to the database after the last backup (up to a few minutes before the crash or the incident that corrupted the database).

RECOVER for i

More informations ? Click here !

RECOVER for i

Added values:

Reduced Data Loss (RPO):
the Journals are detached at regular intervals of a few minutes (the frequency can be set as little as 5 minutes).
you can choose to reapply the changed data up to a few minutes or seconds before the “incident”
(we can speak about “Incremental Recovery” …).

Low disk size on the FTP server:
90% size reduction of the exported journals (compression activated if needed)
automatic purge of the DB journals (activated if needed).

Securing modified data:
the Journals are sent toward an external FTP or NFS server, on-site or off-site or in the Cloud.

Full automation of operations:
Journals detach and export
Journals retrieve and import
Data changes applies on the restored Database.

Reporting :
Dashboards for follow-up operations
Probes available for monitoring tools (e.g. Nagios or our ‘Control for i ‘ product or …).

Some limitations

‘Recover for i’ is not a High Availability product:
No real-time replication
No treatment done on IFS or DLOs
Many objects (Programs, system objects, user profiles, audit Journals, … are not supported, or only partially (e.g.: exported only once a day).

The Database structure must remain stable (no daily addition / deletion / modification of table structures)

The Database must be entirely restored (with the same name) in a new LPAR (or in the damaged/corrupted LPAR) before that ‘Recover for i’ applies the data changes contained in the Journals

Download the brochure

Combined with ‘Flash for i’

‘RECOVER for i’ can be combined with ‘FLASH for i’.

Thus, instead to apply the data changes (from the Journals) on the restored Database, ‘RECOVER for i’ will apply them on the last Clone of the Database generated with a Flashcopy/Snapshot of the IBM i Production partition disks.

Thanks to a product like ‘FLASH for i’ and to External storage units (FlashSystem, SVC, Storwize, DS8xx, EMC vMax, PureStorage, etc…).

This “duo” will considerably reduce the length of the restart time (RTO) and the granularity of data recovery (possible unit recovery of each table or library).

Reduce your data loss to a few minutes, in case of a crash or disaster

RECOVER for i

Description

Use cases

RECOVER for i

Objectives

RECOVER for i

CORE TECHNOLOGY

RECOVER for i

Clarifications

RECOVER for i

Operations mode:

RECOVER for i

RECOVER for i

Added values:

Some limitations

Download the brochure

Combined with ‘Flash for i’

IBM i

IBM i5-OS | AS/400

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