Ash Giddings
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A Hardware Refresh Is The Perfect Time To Re-Evaluate Your HA/DR Strategy
November 10, 2025 Ash Giddings
For most IBM i shops, hardware refresh cycles arrive with a mix of excitement and apprehension. New generations of IBM Power Systems like the recently announced Power11 machines offer the chance to increase power, improve efficiency, and take advantage of the latest features.
But along with the upside, upgrades also trigger some tough decisions, particularly around software licensing. High availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solutions are often near the top of that list. These tools are critical for helping businesses to maintain resilience and continuity, yet many customers find themselves paying significantly more for their HA/DR software after a hardware …
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Is Your IBM i HA/DR Actually Tested – Or Just Installed?
August 25, 2025 Ash Giddings
When it comes to high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) on IBM i, one question instantly separates the prepared from the at-risk: When was the last time you tested a full role swap?
It’s surprising how often IT managers and system administrators mention that HA/DR measures are in place, yet then admit that their solutions haven’t been tested in months, sometimes even years. In some cases, the DR systems were implemented but never validated at all.
According to Gartner, despite the mission-critical nature of disaster recovery, fewer than half of businesses have tested their DR plans within the past …
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Coming To You Live In A Datacenter Very Near You, Or One Far Away, Too
February 24, 2025 Ash Giddings
We are at a pivotal moment in IBM i history regarding migration options. Public cloud solutions like IBM Power Virtual Server and Skytap on Azure have matured to the point where they are now viable for production workloads, shedding the novelty value that surrounded them during the era which coincided with the launch of IBM’s Power9 machines, to a lesser extent, Power10 iron.
Additionally, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) worldwide are well equipped with Power10 hardware and the expertise to support both migrations and ongoing operations. Furthermore, on-premise Power10 delivers impressive price-to-performance benefits, with Power11 poised to raise the bar even …
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ISE Grows MSP Business With Maxava’s Monitor Mi8
September 16, 2024 Ash Giddings
Maxava, the global provider of innovative monitoring, high availability, and disaster recovery software and services solutions for the IBM i platform, announced today that Information Systems Engineering (ISE) is finding success using Maxava’s Mi8 to monitor its clients IBM i systems.
ISE, which provides consulting, software, and managed services for IBM i clients, was founded in 1984. The company’s specialty is working with the Infor XA (MAPICS) line of ERP software. The company also owns Paper-Less, a manufacturing execution solution (MES). Experts in the IBM i, ISE employees have over 300 years of RPG programming experience and over 70 years …
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Securing The Crown Jewels When Intruders Break Into The Glass House
April 15, 2024 Ash Giddings
Recognizing the importance of proactive cybersecurity, Maxava is proud to announce the launch of Maxava Security, a ground-breaking solution set to revolutionize IBM i data protection. Departing from conventional reactive measures prevalent in many IBM i security solutions, Maxava Security heralds a proactive paradigm shift, prioritizing heightened visibility along with swift recovery over the traditional incident-response model.
The IBM i server has long been a workhorse in the business world. Renowned for its reliability, stability, and ability to secure, it hums away in the background, running key applications while housing mission critical data for countless organizations. Yet, no system is …
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No Matter Where You Are Going, Migrate Live Helps You Get There
February 26, 2024 Ash Giddings
Businesses are now faced with more choices than ever before when it comes to their IBM i environments. Should they keep them on-premise on Power10 following a well-trodden path, migrate them to a partner’s Power cloud, or embrace the public cloud? Or maybe some combination of the three?
Whatever the decision, probably the largest hurdle is the actual migration, with downtime invariably not an option coupled with the challenge of moving terabytes of critical data without impacting the business. Traditional migration methods are time-consuming, prone to error and come with integrity risks. In addition, system administrators and those responsible for …
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Fully Managed Disaster Recovery For IBM i Partners
July 31, 2023 Ash Giddings
Maxava, a vendor dedicated to High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) for the IBM i market, has announced a new offering aimed at resellers, independent software vendors, and managed service providers, Maxava’s Fully Managed Disaster Recovery (FMDR) offering provides partners with all the components necessary to manage every aspect of IBM i DR. This extends all the way from initial planning, through implementation, ongoing monitoring, virtual and real role swap testing, to 24×7 crisis support in a disaster.
John Dominic, Maxava’s vice president of global sales, says: “Our partners are telling us that their customers no longer want a …
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Using The Public Cloud For IBM i Disaster Recovery
April 24, 2023 Ash Giddings
Disasters can strike at any time, and it’s essential for organizations to have a disaster recovery plan in place to ensure business continuity. However, creating and maintaining a comprehensive disaster recovery plan can be a daunting task, particularly for organizations that rely on IBM i servers, often running business critical applications that perform key functions together with many interfaces into other servers and applications.
Previously, investments in IBM i disaster recovery solutions were an expensive outlay, requiring significant capital investment in both hardware and software, in addition to the sizable costs associated with running a datacenter.
Fortunately, with the advent …
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Why Maxava High Availability?
February 27, 2023 Ash Giddings
Software-based logical replication for IBM i remains a popular solution for high availability and disaster recovery due to its ability to adapt over the years to changing environments like co-locations and the cloud. Maxava HA is known for its efficiency and scalability, but what else sets it apart for large enterprises worldwide?
Negligible CPU Consumed On Production Server
The Audit Journal (QAUDJRN) is a valuable tool for protecting the IBM i server with over 70 auditable events. However, in large environments, it can become overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of entries every minute. Some logical replication solutions heavily rely on …
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Capture Point Restore: The Perfect Companion For High Availability
December 12, 2022 Ash Giddings
Businesses are constantly challenged by cyberattacks, coupled by their ever-increasing diverse nature. Ransomware and malicious data deletion or corruption can originate from both inside or outside of the business and staying out of the headlines by preventing attacks or at worst limiting the impact is high on the agenda for many.
There’s seemingly never a day goes by without a prominent attack being reported, damaging both the tangible capabilities to conduct business at the time, combined with intangible ongoing damage to business reputation that these destructive incidents invariably bring.
Many businesses have wisely invested in high availability for their IBM …
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