The new product is well it test now and we are very pleased with the results. Because HA4i Multi-Node product allows multiple replication processes to be set up between one or more systems we have had a chance to set it up with JT4i our job tracking solution in a number of ways.
JT4i allows the tracking of jobs through their life cycle and store all of the data required to allow those jobs to be re-submitted should it be required. The need for the product came out of discussions we had many years ago with people who were implementing High Availability solutions and recognized that there were some significant gaps in the solutions should a system failure occur. The problem was NONE of the High Availability Solutions offered the ability to recover the content of the job queues should the production system not be available. In most cases the recovery in terms of High Availability would be lost because the job queues could not be reloaded effectively and the data which had been applied by the High Availability Solution would be hard to remove to allow the application restart position to be defined.
HA4i Multi-Node will allow that content to be sent not only to the High Availability Node but also to a Disaster Recovery Node so if the system failed you had the ability to recovery no matter what the disaster was. We have set up tests to show how the data is sent from the production system to multiple nodes, one for HA, one for DR and one for analysis. The analysis part is early days but we are looking at what we can do with the data we are collecting.
Switching either planned or unplanned needs to take into account the fact that the data we have been transmitting is only relevant to the data source so we needed to be able to say that this particular data process is only one way, even if other objects and data within the same application can be switched in terms of direction the JT4i part did not require it. HA4i Multi-Node now has the ability to set at the Environment (all data and objects) or the journal level (user journals) whether a switch request will affect the direction of the replication processes.
HA4i Multi-Node adds a lot of complexity to the configuration and management so there was a lot of effort put into making it as simple as possible. Users should not need a specialist to come in and configure the product so it ws important to add as much self awareness and self help into the product set up and management. Lots of new commands and additional tools have been added to help make things simpler such as automated Remote Journal builds and automated status checking and recovery.
We are hoping to have a demo version available soon, lets us know if you want to set up a demo and take a look. We will keep looking for improvements and features to add to the product and we need your input for that.
Get in touch, this is a product that competes with all High Availability Solutions on an equal footing.
Chris.