Toronto Tech Conference An Educational Achievement

March 25, 2013 Dan Burger

Successful IBM i tech conferences depend on a couple of key performance indicators. First of all, there has to be attention to the right topics and speakers and secondly there must be a core group of volunteers who are dedicated to getting the conference done right. The Toronto User Group (TUG) consistently scores high with its annual Technical Education Conference (TEC), which this year is scheduled for April 25 and 26 in Toronto.

There are good reasons for this. The user group has education professionals that are prominent and they put an emphasis on education that is evident with the Night School program they have had in place for some time. There’s also the close connection with the nearby IBM Toronto Labs, which adds resources and personnel–maybe not as much as it once did, but it is still a positive factor in TUG operations.

There are six educational tracks each with eight or nine sessions. The tracks are performance management, RPG application development, application modernization, accessing and optimizing data, and system administration and management. There’s also a bonus track with a variety of session topics that allows attendees to have additional options when filling in schedules. The session grid with access to session abstracts is posted online.

The speaker list includes subject matter experts that have earned reputations for teaching and presentation excellence: Susan Gantner, Jon Paris, Bob Cozzi, Larry Bolhuis, Charles Guarino, Rob Bestgen, Barbara Morris, Dawn May, and others.

The keynote speaker, chief architect for the IBM i operating system Steve Will, is the most sought-after IBM i executives for briefings and events. Will has a wealth of experience working on the IBM midrange platform and is currently responsible for setting the strategy of the IBM i operating system, as well as deciding which enhancements will be implemented. His insights include perspectives formed by discussions with many IBM i clients and partners.

TEC 2013 takes place at an excellent facility: Seneca@York University. Registration fees are $695 for TUG members and $795 for non-members. A one-day vendor exposition will be held April 25.

For more information, see the Toronto User Group for Power Systems website.

TUG Night School Matches Enthusiasm with Capability

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FIVE KEY QUESTIONS

Assessing backup and DR for your business

The US Bureau of Labor reports that 93% of businesses suffering significant loss of critical data are out of business within five years. In the process of making a decision as business-critical as your backup and DR recovery requirements, the worst decision you can make is no decision. Businesses relying on outdated, unreliable backup methods are living on borrowed time.

Reflect on the cost to your business and to your clients, not only from a financial perspective, but in lost time, damaged reputation, and the long-term consequences as a result of permanent loss of critical data.

Where to start?
There are five key questions to consider when assessing backup and disaster recovery solutions:

1. Which data, applications, and servers will, if lost, impact your business functions and
in what timeframe?

2. What are the technologies hosting this information today and in the foreseeable future
(hardware, virtual machines, operating systems, database, heterogeneous platforms)?

3. In the event of a loss, how quickly do you need to get the data back and systems
running again?

4. Which personnel would be involved in the recovery process including client
and/or patient notification?

5. Where would your recovery happen should you lose access to critical servers
or your complete site?

These are questions about which every stakeholder in your company may have a different opinion; there is no one right answer. It is critical, however, to understand the tradeoffs on each of these elements so you can make the proper value assessment when selecting a backup solution.

Once you understand your business' current situation, pain points, and priorities, compare your requirements to the features and services offered by a data protection vendor. There are many companies offering backup solutions from traditional tape-based systems, to onsite disk-to-disk storage and/or online cloud services. Some of the solutions are expensive while some cloud-based solutions can cost the equivalent of only a few Starbucks' coffees a month. The variability in pricing can be directly traced to the functionality and delivery of service, especially in the area of recovery.

As you evaluate the many choices, on the surface they may appear similar but there are significant differences in the areas of security and infrastructure, supported technology and flexibility, management and ease of use, and customer service. The following sections explore these critical areas in more detail.

Security and infrastructure
Solutions have varying degrees of security built from the ground up. Does the solution include end-to-end encryption both in motion and at rest? What encryption levels are supported? Who has access to the encryption key? Does the solution offer compression and deduplication to significantly reduce the amount of data being transferred and reduce the backup window? For cloud services, what hardware, storage, rack space, bandwidth, and power are standard components offered? What levels of security and infrastructure are needed to meet your industry regulations and compliance requirements?

UCG's VAULT400 data protection solutions are highly secure, offering end-to-end encryption both in motion and at rest. Your company is the sole owner of the encryption key; even UCG cannot access the data. VAULT400 cloud-based data centers are maintained with best of breed hardware, preemptive predictable monitoring and RAID 5+ redundancy, to ensure you never lose your data.

Supported technology and flexibility
What data protection capabilities are offered by the solution? Some solutions protect only Windows servers and desktops. Others can cover more heterogeneous environments that include UNIX, Linux, VMware, AIX, IBMi, and other platforms. Is the software common across the supported technologies? Some solutions support multiple platforms but with different software making management of the solutions more burdensome and data restoration more difficult. VAULT400 supports a wide range of platforms with common technologies and the same interface across all platforms.

What level on the application stack requires protection? Should you need to replace hardware, you may spend hours or days reinstalling the OS, applying patches, reinstalling drivers and applications, and reconfiguring the machine before you can recover the data. Bare metal restore software automates this work for you. Moving to the top of the stack, Oracle databases, Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint all require custom protection to guarantee optimized backup performance as well as full application recoverability. When evaluating various solutions, understand what it will take to recover your servers, data and applications.

How quickly will you need to recover? Internet recoveries are limited by the Internet connection speeds as well as network latencies. Does the solution offer the ability to physically ship data to your site? Is there an option to store a cache of the data onsite for quick, LAN-speed recoveries? Can you restore data to a different serial number and operating environment then it was initially backed-up from?

UCG's VAULT400 provides a number of different products and service options to assist you during disaster recovery including: bare metal restore, offsite replication service, remote disaster recovery service, and quick ship of pre-loaded hardware with an entire system or a large amount of data.

Management and ease of use
Control of the data protection solution from a single, centralized location minimizes the effort required to reconfigure backup jobs and schedules. Can you centrally manage backup and recovery in remote offices? Will you receive regular email status reports? How much time will need to be allocated to manage the ongoing daily process? How easy will the restore process be? VAULT400 provides a consistent, easy to use, centrally managed environment for local and remote management of your backups and recovery. The set-it-and-forge-it nature of VAULT400 significantly reduces the amount of time needed to manage backups on a daily basis.

For online solutions, what management is happening behind the scenes? Is data validation, optimization of the backup pools and server health checks tasks completed on a daily basis? How frequently is new storage provisioned, are servers replaced and software updated? The hours devoted to these processes ensure compliance with the SLAs specified.

Customer care
Support spans the lifecycle of your data protection solution: from selection to deployment to regular operations. What level of education will your business need to choose a solution, and where can you obtain that guidance? Who will be responsible for deployment and installation? Is training available with the package? What is the average turnaround time on your operational questions and issues? In the event of a disaster, how quickly can you get a live person on the phone? Be sure to obtain the correct balance of support with your in-house expertise.

With incredibly high customer satisfaction, UCG provides customer service with the same passion as if your data is our own. Our world-class customer support team maximizes your investments in our services and software by providing state-of-the-tools and services to ensure you succeed.

Putting it all together
As you assess data protection solutions, including the one you are using now, it is critical to understand how the solution meets the five key questions for your organization's needs. In addition, how does the solution compare in the critical areas of security and infrastructure, supported technology and flexibility, management and ease of use, and customer service? Go with a solution that meets your needs and provides you with the best technology and services for your peace of mind.

Put your trust in UCG's VAULT400 secure cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions
There are many choices for backup but putting your trust in a company with proven, reliable solutions for recovery of your data is crucial. Thousands of end users trust VAULT400 cloud backup solutions to ensure their mission critical data is always available when they need it. VAULT400 also offers hardware disaster recovery. UCG provides a complete offering to meet your requirements for recovery of operations.

Proven solutions and services provide the flexibility you need to employ the most cost-effective backup and recovery solution. UCG's long-term partnership approach and quick response helps customers find savings over time and backup and recovery you can believe in.

When a disaster occurs, the clock is ticking!

For a complimentary risk assessment
Click here or call UCG at 800.211.8798 today!

CAN YOUR BUSINESS AFFORD TO WAIT?

Connect with us on our social networks!

You can find us on Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook Several informative webinars and videos are available on Vimeo as well as our VAULT400 Resource Library.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration on UCG's products
and services, please visit us at www.ucgrp.com/Talk2Us

United Computer Group, Inc.
Independence Corporate Center
7100 E. Pleasant Valley Road, #250
Independence, OH 44131-5556
info@ucgrp.com

www.ucgrp.com · www.vault400.com

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