The purpose of this blog is to offer five (5) approaches to help a user determine the best disaster recovery option as well as provide a high-level overview of DR selections.
Disclosure: IBM i is an operating system. iSeries and AS400 are servers. I use these terms interchangeably to make it easy for folks to find this information on the web.
When disaster strikes, will your IBM i environment be ready?
Spoiler alert: There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But with the right planning—and the right technology—you can minimize downtime, protect your data, and sleep better at night.
Step 1: Know Your Recovery Objectives
Before choosing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy, you must define two critical benchmarks:
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How quickly do systems need to be back online—within hours or days?
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): How much data can you afford to lose—minutes, hours, or a full day?
These objectives vary by workload. For example, a distributor may require near-instant recovery for order entry and e-commerce but can tolerate longer delays for marketing systems.
Pro tip: The stricter your RTO and RPO, the more advanced (and expensive) your recovery solution needs to be.
5 IBM i Disaster Recovery Options — Ranked by Speed, Risk & Cost
Let’s break down your most viable IBM i disaster recovery options—from rapid response to budget-friendly backups.
Option 1: High Availability (Fastest Recovery, Highest Cost)
For mission-critical systems, nothing beats high availability (HA).
At Cloud400, we use Precisely’s replication suite—including MIMIX™, iTera™, and QEDD™—to continuously mirror your environment to a secondary site. This delivers near-zero data loss and the fastest failover possible.
🟢 Best for: Mission-critical workloads 🔴 Downside: Premium price tag
Option 2: SAN-to-SAN Replication (Fast Recovery Without HA Costs)
Need solid performance without the licensing fees?
SAN-to-SAN replication offers similar RTO/RPO to HA—without a “live” DR LPAR or third-party software. It requires matching external storage arrays on both ends.
Recovery involves a slightly longer Initial Program Load (IPL), but it’s usually within acceptable limits.
🟢 Best for: Organizations with compatible SAN infrastructure 🔴 Watch out for: Hardware compatibility limitations
Option 3: Hosted Backup (Practical, Affordable DR for Most)
This approach uses an on-premise Virtual Tape Library (VTL) connected to your IBM i server. You back up to the VTL instead of a traditional tape drive. After the backup:
- The data is deduplicated, encrypted, and
- Replicated securely to a Cloud400 data center.
In the event of a declared disaster, Cloud400 can restore your environment to an IBM i LPAR within 12–24 hours, depending on your data size.
🟢 Pro: More affordable than HA 🔴 Con: Recovery from point of last backup, not real-time replication
Option 4: Vault Backup (Budget-Friendly, But Not True DR)
This strategy mirrors your daily data changes to a secure vault in Cloud400’s data center. It’s a step up from local tape—but still not suitable for mission-critical workloads.
🟢 Best for: Archival and non-critical systems 🔴 Downside: Up to 24 hours of data loss, slow RTO 💰 Budget level: Less expensive than HA and Hosted Backup, but still limited in recovery capabilities
Option 5: Local Tape Backup (Lowest Cost, Longest Downtime)
Still using tape or disk-based backups?
While cost-effective, this option is risky and slow. Drawbacks include:
- Long recovery times
- High risk of losing a day or more of data
- Media degradation over time
- Offsite storage delays
🟢 Best for: Budget-conscious environments with minimal uptime demands 🔴 Risk: Delayed recovery, data loss, and potential media failure
Why More Businesses Are Choosing IBM i Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
You could build and staff your own DR site… but why would you?
With rising IT costs and a shortage of skilled IBM i professionals, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is becoming the go-to solution for modern enterprises.
DRaaS replicates your entire environment—apps, data, and OS—to a commercial provider’s cloud. In the event of an outage, systems are restored automatically within your defined RTO/RPO.
Key Benefits of DRaaS:
- No secondary data center required
- Predictable monthly costs
- Fully managed testing, failover, and recovery
- Guaranteed uptime SLAs
Fun fact: As of 2020, 42% of large enterprises and 38% of mid-sized businesses had already adopted DRaaS to ensure business continuity.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Let a Disaster Destroy Your IBM i Environment
Here’s the hard truth: Most businesses don’t regularly test their DR plans. Many skip backups, delay failover testing, or lack the specialized staff to act when disaster strikes.
That’s why smart IBM i organizations partner with Cloud400—to reduce risk, lower costs, and ensure their systems work when it matters most.
Ready to protect your IBM i investment?
Let’s design a disaster recovery plan that actually works when you need it most.
Need Help?
Call me at 714-593-0387 or email me at [email protected]. Let us know how we can help!
To learn more about us, and view our customer testimonials, please visit our website: www.Source-Data.com and see our other links:
1) IBM I on POWER (iSeries/AS400)
https://www.source-data.com/ibm-i-on-power-server/
2) IBM I (iSeries/AS400) Cloud Hosting
https://www.source-data.com/cloud-400/
3) IBM I (iSeries/AS400) Disaster Recovery Options
https://www.source-data.com/cloud400-disaster-recovery/
4) IBM I (iSeries/AS400) Version Upgrade
