Recovery AssuranceExpert for DB2 z/OS: Automating the IT risk management of business availability

Business availability is more than just having a reliable hardware and database platform in place. Even the best high availability environment cannot safeguard itself from logical errors. Since most companies cannot afford downtime, it is important that the enterprise data on which they depend is always available.

Well-planned recovery procedures should be able to assure a complete recovery of enterprise-critical data within a pre-defined time window that provides for minimum disruption of the business. However, within complex environments, it is nearly impossible to perform recovery tests without disrupting the production system. Therefore, even the best-planned recovery scenarios fail because of operational risks resulting from unforeseen and typically immeasurable vulnerabilities.

If you are interested in minimizing the risk associated with DB2 for z/OS availability and recoverability, read this white paper by Brenda Honeycutt to learn about the value of regular, periodic health checks to assure your recovery time objectives for DB2 recoverability.

Assuring the Recoverability of Your DB2 Databases

Availability requires much more than just having a reliable hardware and database platform. Most companies cannot afford significant downtime, and some cannot afford any! As such, it is crucial for unplanned outages to be as short as possible. But it is not just a business requirement, in many cases assuring a speedy recovery is also a legal mandate. Regulations such as SOX and Basel II dictate that any outage is resolved within a predefined period of time.

But how many of us can answer, with any degree of certainty, the question “How long will this outage last?” There are many variables that need to be considered when estimating a DB2 recovery time: backups available, quality, point-in-time requirements, amount of log processing, disk speed, tape mounts, and on and on and on...

With these thoughts in mind, Michael Figaro and I will be delivering a webinar titled Assuring the Recoverability of Your DB2 Databases, on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 10:30 am CDT.

We will tackle issues ranging from regulations, IT complexity, and business continuity, to DSNZPARMs and backup/recovery planning. We’ll also make the case that planning for database recoverability is the most important task among the many tasks of the DBA.

As part of the webinar we will introduce and demonstrate Recovery AssuranceExpert, a new technology to help you ensure that all of your critical DB2 objects are recoverable within your recovery time objectives. Recovery AssuranceExpert is an automated solution to perform daily health checks of data availability and recoverability, as well as provide actual recovery times required for a DB2 object, a complete application, or even a whole DB2 subsystem. Join us on October 23rd to find out how you can insure that your actual recoverability times fit into your SLAs.