Migrating to a virtual system to consolidate servers can be a time-consuming, labor-intensive job that places your data at risk, but it doesn't have to be.

Written by Henry Martinez

The benefits of using virtual systems to consolidate physical hardware have been widely discussed and generally accepted. Server consolidation can reduce hardware costs, software-licensing fees, power consumption, HVAC costs, and the burden of server management and maintenance. In addition, a single physical server containing multiple virtual severs can be easier to secure than multiple physical systems.

If monitoring your cache battery is a "back burner" task, you could be making a big mistake.

Written by Greer Hahn

Editor's Note: This article is an extract from the white paper "Four Things You Should Know About Cache Battery," which is available free at the MC Press White Paper Center.

The white paper "Four Things You Should Know About Cache Battery" explores the issues and challenges surrounding cache battery monitoring for users managing IBM i servers, including Power Systems and System i environments. Written by one of the industry's leading authorities on system and performance management, CCSS, the paper has been created as a response to the surge of interest flowing from data centers where the dependence on machine availability, the necessity for data integrity, and audit compliance regulations leave no margin for error.

The *noMAX HA/DR solution from Maximum Availability ensures unmatched data integrity and optimal recovery time for the IBM System i.

Written by Michael Stuhlreyer

In today's highly competitive global marketplace, it is a business imperative to ensure the continuity of critical business operations and to protect a company's information assets. This makes business continuity an essential objective for companies of all sizes. Businesses must satisfy themselves that they have a comprehensive high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution in place.

Still the leading industry technology for archiving data, magnetic tape gets a boost from researchers in Switzerland and Japan, who say it's much greener than disk.

Written by Chris Smith

If you are one of those people who has resisted the move to back up everything to disk because you just like knowing you have a tape offsite that has all the company's data going back to the Vietnam War, then take heart; you have just been given a new lease on life with a breakthrough in tape technology.

Organizations often view an investment in DR as insurance, but that perspective may blind them to the returns available from investments in advanced DR solutions.

Written by Jeff Ashman

Expenditures on disaster recovery (DR) solutions are frequently considered a cost of doing business, not an investment. Or they may be viewed as insurance policies that, hopefully, will never be called on to pay out claims. From this perspective, it's difficult to justify more than the minimum expenditure that will provide "good enough," but not necessarily optimal, protection against losses due to a disaster.

IBM i provides a wealth of valuable system management information, but third-party tools are required to put it to effective use.

Written by Bill Hammond

Editor's Note: This article is extracted from the white paper "Executive Overview: Simplifying the Management of IBM i Environments" available free at the MC White Paper Center.

Despite being one of the easiest systems to administer, IBM i is neither self-managing nor self-optimizing. Consequently, even a formerly well-tuned IBM i system may develop bottlenecks over time.

Not sure you want to buy? Take it for a test-drive!

Written by Greg Hintermeister

When evaluating systems management software, it can be very easy to focus on the low-level technical details to decide if it can provide your business with what is required to make your data center run smoothly. However, at some point, you need to ask yourself the question: "Does this software support the real-world scenarios I need to make my business better?" In this article, I describe some of the features that IBM Systems Director provides to help you decide where it fits in your data center's future.

Businesses evolve and grow. Technologies advance. Consequently, organizations need dynamic infrastructures that allow them to quickly react to change.

Written by Craig Johnson

Repetition breeds complacency. As a result, after decades of reiteration, some people no longer pay as much attention as they should to the old saying, "the only constant is change." But, for better or worse, the last couple of years, which carried us over a peak and into a low valley in the economy, have made the truth of that adage abundantly clear.