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Joe is describing our environment. We use an iSeries to run our business
(LTL trucking) -- when the iSeries is down, we're pretty much shut down
(the trucks still move, but the terminals can't do much). We schedule our
downtime and the rest of the business schedules around this. Our SQL
Server app collects data and sends it to our iSeries. When the iSeries is
down, the data just sits on the SQL Server.
We actually have tried an HA solution for our iSeries, we run on an 830 and
have an 820 as a backup machine, and we use Vision's software to keep the
two in sync. We get higher availability by backing up the 820 instead of
the 830, but we do not swap over to the 820 when we are doing maintenance
to the 830, we go down. We tried the swap once; it didn't go well and
upper management got scared, so we bailed on this. Don't ask me why, I
wanted to keep practicing until we got it right. But even if we could do
this, it would still take us 10 - 15 minutes to swap. Don't get me wrong,
that's very good (better than being down hours), but I still wouldn't
consider it truly high availability.
If we were a business that needed zero downtime (planned or otherwise),
we'd need a way to failover to another iSeries seamlessly. I don't know of
anything that can help us do that on the iSeries, and I don't know that
it's even possible on an iSeries. If it were a requirement (and I can't
say that it won't be in the future), I guess we'd need to look into other
platforms.
Mike E.
"Joe Pluta"
<joepluta@xxxxxxxxxx To: "'Midrange Systems
Technical Discussion'" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
ers.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: RE: iSeries vs.
Unix vs. SQL Server vs. Oracle
midrange-l-bounces@x
idrange.com
08/04/2003 12:02 PM
Please respond to
Midrange Systems
Technical Discussion
> From: Walden H. Leverich III
>
> >You don't need to cluster an iSeries for reliability; that's the
point.
> >You may cluster them for HA, but that's a different issue.
>
> OK, I think we're splitting hairs here, but yes, it's reliable w/o
> clustering, but it won't always be available w/o clustering -- to the
user
> it's the same thing.
Actually, no, I don't think I'm splitting hairs. I think there's a very
real difference in business requirements between HA and normal, reliable
operations. A single-machine solution like the iSeries has a
disadvantage in HA environments, simply because it's a single point of
failure. Let's face it, machines do need downtime, and so if you're
looking at HA statistics, a single iSeries is probably going to achieve
a less perfect uptime record than, say, 10 redundant SQL servers.
However, in less stringent environments where you can schedule downtime
for maintenance, PTFs, full system backups and the like, a single
iSeries may outperform several PC-based servers, to the point where the
hardware price point is pretty even, and now you're talking support
staff costs (at which point the iSeries to my knowledge beats any other
platform).
So, in reality, HA vs. "reliable" is a significant business requirement
point.
Joe
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