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Minimal disaster recovery options

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  • Minimal disaster recovery options

    We are trying to get our company to move forward on some sort of disaster recovery solution for our Power9 server. We have strict no cloud, no off-property polices. I have presented the CBU option. I am being pushed to find a lower cost option. They asked me to investigate getting a used Power8 and just storing it somewhere safe. I have explained that IBM licensing requirements would make that a more expensive choice.

    What alternative options have you seen or used to get something in place for system down situations? Thanks in advance.

  • #2
    No suggestions, just a question. You say "no off-property" and "storing it somewhere safe". Do you have another office that's far enough away that a single natural or manmade disaster won't affect them both?

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    • #3
      Like jtaylor said... it seems unlikely that you'll be completely safe if your backup media/equipment cannot leave the building. What if there's a fire that destroys the building completely? Or tornado, earthquake, insert-disaster-here...

      The next question is what sort of solution are you looking for? A lot of this depends on the RTO/RPO and costs that you decide on with your management. If there's a disaster how quickly do you need to recover (RTO)? How much data can be lost since the last time you saved it (RPO)? Of course, everyone would love for both of those to be "zero", meaning no down time and nothing lost... but implementing that level of disaster recovery is expensive. (And is generally now referred to as "high availbility")

      The thing is... there are a LOT of different approaches used by a LOT of different companies. The number of choices is pretty overwhelming... but if you start with the RTO/RPO/cost you can at least narrrow down your options.

      If you decide you do need high availability, there are only like 7 or 8 options, so it's not too hard to look into them. But this is going to be expensive, I really doubt that using an old/used Power8 box would really save you anything significant over a new Power9. In fact, you might find the Power9 to be cheaper. But by comparison to the amount of money for the HA software, and the amount of time/effort to maintain it, the cost of the hardware won't be real significant.

      There's always the old DR technique of saving your system to some sort of backup media (there are a million options for that), and restoring it when something fails. This obviously has higher RPO/RTO, but is much cheaper.

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      • #4
        In our case we have a tape library at a facility about 3 miles away connected with dedicated Fiber. We backup to that device. Once a month we duplicate a tape to another tape that - those tapes we keep for 2 years.

        Essentially all of our backups are offsite. Our Recover Point Objective is up to 24 hours but our organization deems that acceptable. Our expected natural disasters are minimal - tornades tend to be somewhat localized and the main equipment is in the basement. Not likely to take out both facilities. A small chance of an earthquake that obviously could take out both facilities. We are not in a high risk area for that to happen. Technically there are risks to terrorism but for it to affect both areas I suspect that system recovery is the least of our concerns.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by dangdarl View Post
          They asked me to investigate getting a used Power8 and just storing it somewhere safe.
          What a strange DR plan that would be. In my opinion, you don't have an effective DR plan unless the equipment is off site. Years ago, we had a subscription with a company that would provide a backup machine in a trailer they brought to your office location (or where ever you wanted it, CEO's house, parking lot or whatever) that you would have to hook up to power and network and restore your system on that machine. They also had offsite facilities about 60 miles from our office you could take your back up to and set up there. This was quite expensive and there was a daily charge if you actually used the service. Later, we purchased a used iSeries and stored that machine in one of our other offices, thousands of miles away, out of state. I seem to remember that the license for the back up machine wasn't expensive as it wasn't a production machine, I think.

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