Hi Tim,
I would advise anyone very strongly against the partnership approach.
It falls into the paper recovery trap that many shops including one I
worked at allowed to occur in the past. Documentation such as a letter
indicating a reciprocal agreement could be produced which might satisfy
the auditors but the hardware, carbon based units, and real access to
back it up was never there. It was the most dangerous of constructs an
illusion of safety without a real safety net.
Does the partner have enough spare capacity to run your entire business
critical workload on a few hours or even a days notice for weeks till
other arrangements are made? Do they have an LPAR defined ready and
waiting? CPU capacity available as 'spare' or more likely inactive but
installed capacity? Do you pay for the feature to allow them to
dynamically activate capacity? Who pays for tests? Do they have enough
spare DASD capacity? Have their auditors and security administrators
and senior management all concurred? That partnership probably won't
get you past the security guards on a Saturday morning do you have
escalation procedures? Is the sizing reviewed when business process
changes occur or at least annually?
A partnership implies that both partners incur very real costs or have
approximately the same size expendable workload equal in size to the
partner production workload that they are willing to totally sacrifice
and allow the other party to process almost on demand.
Business Recovery Providers are not free but to get a DR plan that will
keep you employed after it's executed I think you need to get skin in
the game. You either $build or $buy but I don't see DR instituted as a
reciprocal agreement (free beer) as something suitable for most
businesses.
Best Regards,
Sam Knutson, GEICO
Performance and Availability Management
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(office) 301.986.3574
All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss.
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-----Original Message-----
Another way is to form a partnership with another mainframe shop in your
general vicinity. It works best if you find another company with
roughly the same problem -- there probably is at least one -- and you
simply agree to provide DR coverage for each other on your production
systems. There's probably no money that changes hands in either
direction (because you're mutually helping each other more or less
equally). Check with IBM on any implications (and possible
suggestions), but it should be quite doable.
- - - - -
Timothy F. Sipples
Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries IBM Japan, Ltd.
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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