• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Shield Takes Another Stab At Multi Node In HA4i

    April 4, 2018 Alex Woodie

    Shield Advanced Solutions is putting the finishing touches on a new version of its HA4i high availability software that can replicate data across multiple nodes. The product, which has the working name HA4i Multi-Node, will allow customers to adopt more complex data replication flows, such as one-to-many and many-to-one, which puts it on a more solid footing with other HA products.

    IBM i shops have been steadily adopting high availability software over the past few years, studies such as HelpSystems‘ annual IBM i Marketplace Survey and Vision Solutions‘ State of Resilience show. We’re now at a point where about 50 percent of the IBM i installed base has some sort of high availability, either logical replication or hardware-based replications, such as IBM‘s PowerHA.

    Most of the recent growth in the HA market has come from the lower end of the IBM i market, which had previously been unable to justify six-figure price tags that HA implementations typically involve. The largest IBM i firms that can least justify downtime implemented HA long ago, in most cases.

    Shield Advanced Solutions has been one of the benefactors of this growth with HA4i, which is a budget-friendly HA product that the company says is simple but effective. HelpSystems, which acquired Bugbusters and its RSF-HA product in late 2016, is another.

    While Shield started out on the low-end of the HA spectrum, the company is steadily moving up the functionality ladder. A great example of this is the forthcoming release of a new multi-node implementation of the HA4i software. “Many people have asked for a version of our HA4i product which would support multiple replication paths,” Shield president Chris Hird wrote on his company’s blog last month, “but we have been avoiding that until now!”

    Hird writes that Shield is close to releasing a new product that allows a multi-node configuration in HA4i. It will have all of the underlying technology of HA4i, in addition to the extra functionality that enables the software to run across a cluster larger than two IBM i server nodes, but it will be a separately licensed product.

    The new multi-node product is well into the testing phase, and Hird expects to formally announce the new product sometime before the PowerUp 2018 conference (the new name for COMMON‘s Annual Meeting and Exposition). It will not be an upgrade from HA4i, as the company wants to maintain that product as is.

    “We are not going to change HA4i,” Hird writes. “It will remain our product of choice for those who want simple yet effective one-to-one replication for high availability. This [new] product is going to be aimed at the enterprise-level customers who are most likely to require the multi-node capabilities.”

    The multi-node feature will allow customers to replicate data from a production system to multiple backup systems. This might include an HA node that can step in and take over processing if the production system goes down, or a disaster recovery (DR) system that the organization relies on to be the last hope in the event of a wider outage.

    Many longstanding HA products in the IBM i market offer multi-node features. Some enterprise clients may use multi-node replication to provide a hot backup of the production machine located in the same data center or campus, and then replicate data off the hot backup to a DR machine that’s located hundreds or thousands of miles away, thereby providing geographic separation, which is considered a best practice for enterprise IT shops.

    Shield actually offered a multi-node capability in HA4i years ago, but Hird removed it. “Nobody needed it,” Hird told IT Jungle in an interview last year. “All our customers are one-to-one. The majority of customers are going to be one-to-one. Therefore, it was making everybody suffer with a multi-node configuration when they didn’t need it. It became too complex.”

    Hird, who is the primary developer for HA4i and also the head of his Ontario, Canada, business, admits that the multi-node feature will add more complexity. However, Hird says he put a lot of effort into making sure the new feature is as simple to use as possible – and has no impact at all on HA4i customers who don’t need multi-node capabilities.

    “Users should not need a specialist to come in and configure the product, so it was important to add as much self-awareness and self-help into the product setup and management [as possible],” Hird writes in another blog post. “Lots of new commands and additional tools have been added to help make things simpler such as automated remote journal builds and automated status checking and recovery.”

    RELATED STORIES

    Logical Replication: Still the Mainstay for IBM i HA

    Shield Finds Success Through Simplicity With HA4i

    Shield Achieves Milestone with HA Product

    Shield Goes Lean and Mean with HA Software

    Shield Overhauls HA Product, Gives It New Name

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: Disaster Recovery, DR, HA, High Availablity, IBM i

    Sponsored by
    ARCAD Software

    Embrace VS Code for IBM i Development

    The IBM i development landscape is evolving with modern tools that enhance efficiency and collaboration. Ready to make the move to VS Code for IBM i?

    Join us for this webinar where we’ll showcase how VS Code can serve as a powerful editor for native IBM i code and explore the essential extensions that make it possible.

    In this session, you’ll discover:

    • How ARCAD’s integration with VS Code provides deep metadata insights, allowing developers to assess the impact of their changes upfront.
    • The role of Git in enabling seamless collaboration between developers using tools like SEU, RDi, and VS Code.
    • Powerful extensions for code quality, security, impact analysis, smart build, and automated RPG conversion to Free Form.
    • How non-IBM i developers can now contribute to IBM i projects without prior knowledge of its specifics, while ensuring full control over their changes.

    The future of IBM i development is here. Let ARCAD be your guide!

    Watch Now

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    ERP Caught Up In Cloud Updrafts 30 Years And Just Getting Started: IBM i Celebration Looks Ahead

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 28 Issue: 26

This Issue Sponsored By

  • ARCAD Software
  • COMMON
  • Harkins & Associates
  • UCG TECHNOLOGIES

Table of Contents

  • 30 Years And Just Getting Started: IBM i Celebration Looks Ahead
  • Shield Takes Another Stab At Multi Node In HA4i
  • ERP Caught Up In Cloud Updrafts
  • Four Hundred Monitor, April 4
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 13

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • Meet The Next Gen Of IBMers Helping To Build IBM i
  • Looks Like IBM Is Building A Linux-Like PASE For IBM i After All
  • Will Independent IBM i Clouds Survive PowerVS?
  • Now, IBM Is Jacking Up Hardware Maintenance Prices
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 24
  • Big Blue Raises IBM i License Transfer Fees, Other Prices
  • Keep The IBM i Youth Movement Going With More Training, Better Tools
  • Remain Begins Migrating DevOps Tools To VS Code
  • IBM Readies LTO-10 Tape Drives And Libraries
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 23

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2025 IT Jungle