What is High Availability? High availability refers to a system’s ability to remain operational and accessible over a long period. This involves minimizing downtime and ensuring that services continue even during hardware failures, network issues, or other disruptions. High availability is typically measured by the “five nines” standard, meaning 99.999% uptime, which equates to just…
IBM’s Interactive Product Tour Catalog
When looking for hardware, it can be difficult to find an engaging way to view products and compare them to one another. Every website that compares specs begins to blend together into one blurry image of cores, processors, storage, and bandwidth. IBM has made a resource available that showcases not only the specifications and components…
Why should I buy new hardware when used is less money?
The Background: At least once a month, I get a customer request to compare pricing of “new” versus “used” hardware. Often this will be purely looking for a lower price, but it can also be due to needing features no longer available new. While the comparison can appear simply a price issue, other contributing factors…
Modernizing your DR plan and Backups: Virtual Tape Library (VTL)
Once upon a time, tape backup was the only answer for a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy. In many cases today, we have found this strategy incomplete and not successful. Often times, tapes are stored next to the system, stored in a closet, in the trunk of a car, or other places where they are unprotected…
Legacy Data – Legacy Code
We’ve had many conversations lately with clients regarding their need to organize, prioritize, or “do something’ with legacy data and sometimes legacy code. The origins of these conversations are varied from moving off a production technology platform, enterprise software migrations, industry regulations, to sometimes corporate bureaucracy demands. The conversations typically center around having large amounts…