Installed on more then 1000 LPARS!
M81 software is specialized in system software running on IBM i operating system (also known as OS/400 or i5/OS), to help IT teams to better manage their systems.
The products made by M81 address complex areas, but are very simple to implement and IT teams can work with them very quickly.
The areas covered are, for example:
- Hot backups
- Automatic refresh of UAT or anonymisation environments…
- Many daily Recovery copies of PROD disks
- Advanced monitoring of anything running on IBM i, FROM well-known products like Nagios, ChekMK, Pandora, PRTG, SolarWinds, Zabbix, …
- Automatic Database recovery after a “Data incident”, a disk crash or a disaster, without any HA solution in place)
Currently 3 products are available: FLASH for i, CONTROL for i and RECOVER for i
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The aim of the “Control for i” product is to monitor 100% of an IBM i partition using a product such as Nagios and plenty other tools (e.g.: Centreon, CheckMK, Pandora, PRTG, ServiceNav, Shinken, SolarWinds, Zabbix, etc…). Yes, you can keep the usual GUI interface of your enterprise monitoring solution !
Nagios and “Nagios-like” tools, have really basic capacities to survey IBM i (system checks as ping, disk space used and some more …) but they cannot be used to monitor:
- whether a subsystem has started and contains all the expected jobs,
- if backups were correctly made the previous night,
- if your HA solution is correctly operating
- the good running of your ERP batches
- the complete end of your data transfers
- …
The plugin supplied with ‘Control For i’ enables the connection between the “Nagios-like” tool and the IBM i partition.
The only input parameter is an IBM i command which will be executed on the IBM i partition. The message returned from this command will be the text displayed by Nagios or sent by e-mail if it concerns an error. No development at all is required!
The product is supplied with numerous check commands which cover most of needs related to IBM i, IBM i applications and middleware operations.
The commands can of course be used interactively in a 5250 session to test and validate a check (or in a CLP program written by the user).
All the commands are written to be executed extremely quickly in order to avoid timeouts during checks performed by Nagios.
With 150 Plug & Play controls provided, more than 95% of our customers needs are covered.
But in some cases, a specific control is still needed. We provide templates to create new ‘CONTROL for i’ commands, that will be used as well by Nagios.
On the IBM i partition, an agent is running permanently. Its role is to accept requests from Nagios, and to return the answer (with relevant message).
The scheduling and the frequency of the controls are managed by Nagios.
The ‘Control for i’ product is available in English and French versions.
BACKUPS WITHOUT IMPACT ON PRODUCTION !
OBJECTIVES
The clone partition of your PROD can be used for several types of operation such as:
- Run a SAVE21 every day, without any impact on the production
- Run your usual daily backup, with or without BRMS
- Refresh in some minutes partitions dedicated to many activities : Testing, Acceptance, Pre-prod, Anonymisation, …
- Create a Test partition before any kind of upgrade (system, application, …)
- Extract data from the Clone partition to feed your Data Analytic or DWH
- Copy your production disks before and/or after a critical Batch
- Generate 2, 12 or 24 copies of your disks for RECOVERY or Roll-back purposes
Example : Users and programs remain active on the Production partition while a full system backup (SAVE21) is being carried out on the ‘Clone’.
HOW IT WORKS
- All operations are managed from the Production partition, using IBM i commands
- A single ‘FLCLONE’ command launches the complete chaining
- Operations on HMC, VIOS, External Storage are automated
- Connection between the production partition and other elements are secured
- The history of the operations carried out on the Clone partition is sent on the Production (DSPLOG, Job logs, BRMS files, …)
Prerequisites:
- IBM i V7R1 and above
- No iASP is needed, but iASP are fully supported.
- HMC or Novalink console (other to come)
- External IBM storage: Storwize, SVC, FlashSystem, DS8000
- External EMC Vmax, Unity or PureStorage (other models and manufacturers to come).
REDUCE YOUR DATA LOSS TO A FEW MINUTES, IN CASE OF A CRASH OR DISASTER
he purpose of the ‘RECOVER for i’ product is to reduce your data loss to a few minutes, in case of a “crash” or a “data incident” on your Database.
The ‘RECOVER for i’ product manages and automates each operation:
- If they don’t already exist, create database Journals
- Detach database Journals (receivers) every N minutes
- Send them to an external FTP/NFS server
- Store them on this ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’ server
In case of “crash” or a “data incident” ‘RECOVER for i’ will:
- Import the Journals on the rescue IBM i partition where your Database has been FULLY restored (or Cloned)
- Ask you the hour/minute/second where you want to recover your data (a few minutes before the crash or the incident)
- Apply the data changes on all the restored (or cloned) Database
- Allow you to follow all operations, through real-time dashboards
- Provide at each step the right information to your monitoring solution (and why not to our product ‘CONTROL for i’ …)
Use cases
- In any situation where a loss of data would be critical
- Of course if you don’t have any HA/DR solution
- THE BEST COMPLEMENT of a “Cold Backup” solution
- If you have HA, and if the HA Database is also corrupted or/spoiled
- you could restore the last tape Backup on the HA partition
- and use ‘Recover for i’ to update the restored Database
- If your Prod Disks (and Prod DB) are Cloned (with a FlashCopy/SnapShot solution as ‘Flash for i’)
- you could use ‘Recover for i’ to update the Cloned Database
