ITG Report: Resiliency Floats The IBM i Boat

January 7, 2013 Dan Burger

Building an IT strategy takes well-thought planning and a rock solid foundation. Yet decisions are being made every day that are counter intuitive to that basic tenet and it is costing companies millions of dollars. Often this occurs because a lack of evidence skews the decision making. You better believe this is happening in IBM i shops where the encroachment of other platforms brings IT professionals face-to-face with an unfamiliar–and often less reliable–hardware, operating systems, and databases.

Ignoring the threat that is gathering against the unfamiliar and often misunderstood IBM i platform, which is mistakenly imagined as never having progressed past its original AS/400 incarnation, is a grave mistake. And if you consider yourself an IBM i advocate, you need evidence and some skills in the art of persuasion to make strong points in the platform’s favor. Don’t wait until the danger is at the doorstep.

This brings me to the report by the International Technology Group, entitled Qualifying the Value of Resilience. It makes cost comparisons while examining the IBM i platform with some HA accoutrements, Microsoft‘s Windows Server Failover Cluster for X86 servers, and Oracle‘s Exadata parallel database systems. ITG sorts this out by studying financial and operational data supplied by 60 companies employing IBM i, WSFC, or Oracle Exadata to run core enterprise systems.

Based on this input, six composite company profiles were created. These companies operate supply chains (an auto parts manufacturer, a retail chain, and an industrial distributor) as well as financial services companies (a diversified retail bank, a property and casualty insurer, and a services company).

The average costs of downtime per hour were first calculated for these companies, and then multiplied by numbers of hours of downtime for each of the three platform options. The focus was placed on underlying hardware and software platform outages, rather than application-level downtime.

The focus of this report can be distilled into business costs due to system downtime and the business risks associated with this. According to ITG, business costs due to outages were on average 90 percent less on the IBM i platform compared to the Windows server clusters and 71 percent less compared to Oracle Exadata systems. The calculation was based on planned and unplanned outages of less than three hours.

The lower incidence of IBM i system downtime led to a three-year savings of between $2.8 million and $35.3 million compared to using clustered Windows servers, and between $700,000 and $8.6 million compared to using Oracle Exadata.

The risk exposure–a quantified potential for loss that includes such things as liability issues, property loss or damage, and product demand shifts–of unplanned outages of six to 24 hours added confirmation of the value of the IBM i system.

Supply chain companies’ three-year costs of downtime by platform. (Illustration reprinted from ITG report. Click graphic to enlarge.)

According to the ITG calculations, the risks of business damage are reduced 93 percent when using IBM i compared to clustered Windows servers and are 73 percent lower compared to Oracle Exadata machinery. These variances translated into $257,000 to $7.43 million in higher risk exposure for the use of clustered Windows servers and $56,000 to $1.69 million for the use of Oracle Exadata clusters.

The costs of downtime, ITG asserts, are known to have a ripple effect, which carries over into areas such as lost sales, increases in operational costs, late deliveries, and schedule disruptions in supply chain companies. It affects financial services companies such things as lost or delayed transaction fees, lost interest income, lost productivity, and incalculable loss of customer confidence. Thus, we have some big numbers to ponder.

In detailing the nightmare of unplanned downtime and the increased business risk it brings, the ITG report emphasizes the worry of security and malware threats and attacks. The added cost of internal monitoring of systems is one aspect. The cost of a data breach is what puts companies at risk.

Customer data breaches may trigger fines and other regulatory penalties. There are also the costs of remedial actions such as notifications, monitoring for identity theft, query handling, and investigation and resolution of security flaws that are taken into account. Publicized breaches often result in customer losses and reputational damage can be substantial. Beyond customer data, other sensitive information may be compromised, and damage to systems and software may occur.

Financial services companies’ three-year costs of downtime by platform. (Illustration reprinted from ITG report. Click graphic to enlarge.)

The report makes the judgment that lower costs of downtime and risk exposure for users of the IBM i are due to fundamental differences in architecture and technology.

Here’s how the architecture and technology was described in the ITG report. The Power Systems were running IBM i 7.1 with IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i high availability clusters. One of the comparison setups was a Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and WSFC on Intel Xeon E5 and Xeon E7 platforms. The other included Oracle Exadata models (which also use Intel Xeon processors) with Oracle 11g Database including Real Application Clusters (RAC) for linking the database nodes.

Arguments can be made about the equality/inequality of these systems in terms of price and performance for the point of this comparison, but it is what it is. ITG directs the focus to three-year savings rather than up-front costs and specific debates concerning architecture and technology. However, because this report was commissioned by IBM, it does include some glowing words describing the IBM advances–in areas such as availability, security and malware protection, disaster recovery, scalability, and performance–with no specific mention of the competition’s strengths or weaknesses. By the way, those who present evidence in favor of other platforms have their own embedded biases.

For the sake of those who would use this report to make a case for the IBM i to upper-level management, or anyone else who is misinformed or inexperienced about the platform, the ITG report includes references to the system’s modern features such as the SQL-compliant DB2 relational database; Internet standards and interfaces to tablets and smartphones; support for a range of development languages, including C/C++, COBOL, RPG, Java, PHP, XML and others; modern development tools; public and private cloud capabilities; and the capacity to co-existence with X86 and Unix servers.

In a conversation I had with Ian Jarman about a month ago on the topic of the ITG report on IBM i in the SMB market, he let me know the ITG reports that compare IBM i with the competition are requested by user groups like COMMON and the IBM i Large User Group (LUG). Members of those groups use the reports to make a business case for new projects or upgrades.

The entire ITG report can be accessed as a PDF at this link.

Arming The IBM i Nation

ITG Says IBM i + DB2 for i Still Offers Lowest TCO

IBM Touts System i TCO in ITG Report

PowerVM Outshines Other VMs In IBM-Backed Report

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Best Practices for Doing IBM i Cloud Backup & DRaaS Right

In the technology business for 30+ years including more than a decade in cloud backup and disaster recovery, we’ve learned a few things along the way. Here are best practices to follow – and land mines to avoid.

RELIABILITY. Up to 71% of restores from tape contain failures.

BEST PRACTICE: Use disk-to-disk technology for backups.

With disk-to-disk technology, your backup data resides on disk drives, proven to be far more reliable than tapes. When your backup completes, you know the data is secure and accessible on the disk drive. With tapes you never really know if your data is usable until you try to restore it, at which point it’s too late.

BREADTH OF OFFERING. Choice in product and service offerings meet your business’ needs.

BEST PRACTICE: Don’t settle for less than what you need.

Vendor offerings vary widely. Some are designed primarily for consumers and others for enterprise data centers. Choose a solution that scales and offers the features you need to provide the level of service you expect. De-duplication and delta-block technologies will improve performance, reduce your data footprint and save you money. Find out if their de-duplication offering is at the file level or the block level. Make sure the solution can back up servers, PCs, and laptops as well your applications.

SECURITY. 60% of organizations using tapes don’t encrypt their backups.

BEST PRACTICE: End-to-end encryption with no “back door.”

Using encryption with tape makes backups run slowly and often takes too long to fit within a backup window. As a result, most people simply turn encryption off, creating a security risk. Even with the physical safety of disk-to-disk backup, encryption is essential. Look for 256-bit AES. Find a solution that encrypts your data during transmission and storage. Make certain there isn’t a “back door” that would let someone else view your data.

ACCESSIBILITY. Companies waste thousands of hours waiting on tapes.

BEST PRACTICE: Ensure that you can get your data back with minimal delay.

You should have direct access to your backups, with no time spent on physical transport (no trucks, no warehouses). Restores should take minutes, not hours or days. Set yourself up to work with your data, not wait for it. Make sure your solution provider can meet your Return-to-Operations (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) which determine how quickly you can recover your data and maintain business continuity. Inquire about onsite and offsite replication that provide both improved performance and a solid disaster recovery strategy.

CYBER SECURITY. More than 80 percent of U.S. companies have been successfully hacked, according to a Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.

BEST PRACTICE: Regular cyber security training and phishing tests for all employees using company email are essential to your organization.

Your end-users are the weak link in your network security. Today, your employees are frequently exposed to advanced phishing attacks. Trend Micro reported that 91% of successful data breaches started with a spear-phishing attack. Be sure your vendor of choice includes cyber security training as part of their backup and DR package.

SCALABILITY. Some backup systems can’t scale readily.

BEST PRACTICE: Invest in a data protection architecture that can grow with your business.

You should be able to back up your data no matter how large it grows. Starting small? Look for an option that handles your backups automatically. Then, as you grow, gives you tools to manage complex environments. Look for “changes-only” and compression technologies to speed backups and save space. And insist on bandwidth throttling to balance traffic and ensure network availability for your other business applications. Make sure that their solution offerings rely on common technology to scale easily as your business––and data––grow.

COST-EFFECTIVENESS

BEST PRACTICE: Calculate the true total cost of tape-based back up.

A 2019 Server OS Reliability Survey found that one hour of downtime costs at least $100K for 98% of companies to over $5 million for 34% of surveyed companies. When you do the math, the dollars make sense: Go with disk-to-disk. Unlike tape, there are close to zero handling costs—no rush deliveries, loading, accessing, locating, or repeated steps. And there’s one benefit you can’t factor directly: Reputation. Reliability and security can make an incalculable difference with just one avoided breach or failure.

COMPLIANCE. Most companies have problems satisfying privacy, security, and data retention regulations.

BEST PRACTICE: Choose a data protection partner who has deep know-how about compliance, and the technology to ensure it.

Disaster Recovery. Most companies lack a comprehensive, tested plan for disasters.

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor that delivers a complete DR solution.

You can’t say your data protection is complete until you have a disaster recovery plan that is itself complete and tested. Your backup vendor should have both the product mix and professional services team to help you prepare for a worst-case scenario. Make sure they can help configure your backups so you rebound quickly. Best bet: A vendor who can train you to deal with disasters confidently, based on your company’s actual configuration.

EASE OF USE. Some companies don’t —or can’t—manage their backups from one place.

BEST PRACTICE: Get control and reporting you can use anywhere, with ease. Managing your backup environment should be simple, and the software you use should eliminate any guesswork that could lead to lost data. You should know at all times if your data is protected across your entire network—including remote offices—by simply looking at a dashboard. The software should be simple to configure using wizards, yet powerful enough to meet your specific needs with customizable views, job propagation, and roles-based security.

OPERATING SYSTEM AND PLATFORM SUPPORT. Most backup vendors support a limited range of OS, server types, and applications.

BEST PRACTICE: Look for broad and deep technology that supports your complete environment. Your backup solution should accommodate your environment, not vice versa.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT. Backup vendors’ product support varies widely.

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor whose support is passionate, maybe even slightly obsessed. Customer support should be one of your vendor’s main selling points. You shouldn’t have to wonder if they’ll be there to help when you need them most. Do they offer phone support or email only, and who exactly are you talking to when you call that 800 number? Find a vendor that will treat your data as if it were their own.

REPUTATION. Does your backup vendor have a quality reputation and the financial resources to stay in business for the long haul?

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor with strong financial backing and customer references. There are a lot of vendors that have come and gone. When you consider a service provider, look for one that has strong financial backing, a solid business plan and the ability to be in business as long as your data needs to be stored. Ask for customer references and case studies as their customers are the best validation you can get.

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