Trader's Ramps Up for '06 with Support for V5R4, New Partners

Published: January 3, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Trader's last month started shipping a new version of its high availability software suite that supports OS/400 V5R4 ,which is due in late February. In addition to V5R4 support, Quick-EDD/HA 6.0 brings an improved way to conduct synchronization checks for the IFS, among other enhancements. Trader's, which is based in France and has been enjoying success in Europe, has also landed two new business partners in the United States, one in Southern California and the other in Pennsylvania.

One gets the feeling that Theirry Roux, the general manager and co-founder of Trader's, is not a huge fan of remote journaling, the IBM technology that led to a new group of OS/400 high availability software vendors and helped make all high availability solutions--even those not based on remote journaling--more affordable.

While Quick-EDD/HA can use remote journaling as the underlying data transportation method connecting two iSeries servers, it seems doubtful that many of Trader's 320 Quick-EDD/HA customers around the world are using it. Instead, they are using Quick-EDD's local journal scrape method, which is the same basic technique used by the first generation of high availability software vendors.

But Roux says there is a feature that separates Trader's product from the more established products, namely the way that Quick-EDD/HA ensures that the source and the target machines are in synch. Basically, instead of managing a bunch of different journals on the source machine as if they were separate entities, and then putting them back together in the right order on the target machine, Quick-EDD treats the journals as a single entity, therefore eliminating problems related to sequencing.

"We don't build the product by using the journals as a master of how to work with replication. We see all the journals as if it's only one," Roux says. "You don't have to manage journal links, you just see a bunch of entries, and [Quick-EDD] doesn't care if its database entry one, two, or three. They're just entries. So it means we replicate based on the journals themselves, and in the right sequence."

Roux says synchronization is an issue with asynchronous remote journaling because the remote journal basically functions as a type of temporary space where changes and updates stay before being applied to the target machine. Using synchronous remote journaling--where the target machine sends a message back to the source machine signaling that the update has been made and to send the next update--eliminates this problem, but consumes 15 to 20 percent more CPU power, and is therefore not in widespread use. (Quick-EDD/HA also sends back messages acknowledging receipt of updates as part of its four-part Sequence Integrity Process.)

Likewise, Roux says the established HA vendors, while they typically avoid remote journaling, are not immune to file- and object-synchronization issues because they employ one-to-one links between their journals and their send and apply processes. "They have as many links as journals," he says. With Quick-EDD/HA 6.0, the company is now able to apply this same sort of built-in integrity checking when it comes to replication of IFS files.

Coming to America

While Roux has shown that he is not afraid to mix it up with the big guys of HA, his company is just beginning to make a dent in the United States, the largest and most competitive market in the OS/400 software industry.

In 2004, Trader's established a partnership with Integrated Information Solutions (IIS), an iSeries consultancy in Missoula, Montana, which led to the first two Quick-EDD/HA customers in North America: Whitefish Credit Union in Whitefish, Montana, and National Flood Service (NFS) in Kalispell, Montana. Two other customers in the U.S. are currently implementing the software.

Trader's has signed two additional business partners to promote, sell, implement, and support the Quick-EDD line, including Hainey Business Systems in York, Pennsylvania, and TechResearch of Irvine, California.

Roux is hopeful these partners will attract new customers to the Quick-EDD/HA product, and show potential customers that the software works as advertised. Trader's has a discount pricing offer for early adopters who purchase Quick-EDD/HA in the next six months or so. Pricing is tier based, and the company is currently charging about $25,000 for Quick-EDD/HA software for two P10 systems.

For more information, visit Trader's Web site at www.quick-edd.com/uk/index_uk.htm.