High availability

Whether you need continuous availability for your business applications or are looking to reduce the amount of time it takes to perform daily backups, IBM® i high availability technologies provide the infrastructure and tools to help achieve your goals.

Most IBM i high availability solutions are built on IBM i cluster resource services, or more simply clusters. A cluster is a collection or group of multiple systems that work together as a single system. Clusters provides the underlying infrastructure that allows resilient resources, such as data, devices and applications, to be automatically or manually switched between systems. It provides failure detection and response, so that in the event of an outage, cluster resource service responds accordingly, keeping your data safe and your business operational.

The other key technology in IBM i high availability is independent disk pools. Independent disk pools are disk pools that can be brought online or taken offline without any dependencies on the rest of the storage on a system. When independent disk pools are a part of a cluster, the data that is stored within them can be switched to other systems or logical partitions. There are several different technologies, which can use independent disk pools, including switched disks, Geographic Mirror, Metro Mirror, and Global Mirror.