I just read an article in the IT Jungle which made me smile to myself, basically it was stating how a competitor of our High Availability Products had a secret weapon with their simulated role swap process. Firstly its not secret, they use it to sell against their competition so its a feature.
The fact that it is showing the feature off as being one that no one else has is fine, but to then go on and trash someone else’s idea (Focal Point Solutions new Flashcopy process) stating that theirs is better made me take a closer look at the content of the “Story”. A few points really stuck in my mind as being a little misleading so I though I would give my own perspective on what is being said.
The main point is really that people who invest in High Availability hardly every test that it works as it should and so fail to deliver on the expectations the solution should provide. Having just been involved with a client who was running a competitive product of ours and not the one mentioned I fully agree with that statement, had this client actually bothered to test the environment at all they would have identified a number of significant issues prior to needing to use the backup system. The client actually failed to switch over correctly and lost a lot of time and data in the process. None of this was the fault of the High Availability Solution but simply that the client had failed to maintain the environment at all and the processes required to make the switch effectively were just ignored.
The next statement made me think, they say that this very important feature! yet it is only available in the Enterprise version? If its so important and so effective why is it only important for Enterprise level clients to get the use of this feature? The point that they are trying to enforce is that High Availability users need to test regularly, but in the next statement they state it is only available in their premier product? Surely it should be available in all their levels of product?
Simulated roleswap? Because they do not switch actual production processing to the target system, that means they are expecting the client to decide what to run on the target system to determine if the switch would actually work in the event a roleswap would be needed. So it won’t be running a real production environment which means they may not run everything that would run in a true production environment. This is normal and not something that should be a concern, but what is the difference between that and just turning off replication while a test is run and then creating a recovery position to start the replication again? Maybe its because it is automated. The point is that if it is not running a REAL production environment all that you are doing is testing the test you have developed runs! Roleswaps which have the actual PRODUCTION run on the system are the best way to check that everything is going to work as it should. Running a simulated roleswap is just a backstop to test new features and that the scripts which have been written to carry out the roleswap are going to work.
The Focal Point Solutions offering does allow the same level of testing that this simulated switch does, the comment about it not being a valid approach because the environment used to do the test is not what the client will eventually use is absolute bunkum! The biggest benefit the Focal Point Solutions has over this offering is that the Recovery Time Objective is not affected at all during the time any testing takes place. Their recovery position is totally protected at all times and if the client needs to switch mid way through testing they can do it without having to reset the target environment and then catch up and PRODUCTION changes which have been stored while the test was being set up and run. To me that is a far better solution than having to switch over to the target system for testing. Our LVLT4i product also offers a similar approach because we just take the backup and use it for testing and I see no additional benefits a simulated roleswap will offer? With the LVLT4i approach the comment made about not testing on the same machine you will use is also mute, the target system is only a backup for the iASP data, when a switch is required the data will be migrated to another system for the client to access and use. I have not dug to deep into the Focal Point Solutions offering but if it gets the High Availability Clients to test more, it has to be a better offering than one which does not provide such opportunities.
With all of that being said, a test is a test is a test is a test! If you really have to switch due to a disaster the roleswap will be put under a lot more pressure and a lot of the testing you have carried out may not perform as it did during the test. No matter what type of testing you do its better than doing nothing, stating one method better than another is where you have to start looking at reality. We encourage everyone to take a look at the new products and features out there. High Availability is changing and peoples requirements are also changing, the need for Recovery Time Objectives that are in the minutes range are not for everyone and very rarely ever met when disaster strikes. Moving the responsibility for managing the High Availability Solution off to a professional organization that specializes in providing such services to clients may be a lot better and a lot cheaper than try to do it all yourself.
If you are interested in discussing your existing solution or want to hear about one of our products let us know. We are constantly updating our products and offerings to meet the ever changing needs of the IBM i client base.
Chris…
I have removed the word ‘advertorial’. It was not meant to imply that ITJ were paid to publish the article.