D3 Hot Backup Webinar Recap
We recently co-hosted the webinar with Rocket Software for D3 hot backup - Why You Need It and Can’t Survive Without It. A big thank you to Bryan Glassick and Brian Cram for co-hosting with us!
The recording can be found here. The presentation is available on request.
We did receive a lot of good questions which are answered below.
Q. Can I purchase hot backup for on-premise?
A. Absolutely! But why would you want to? If you lose one server, depending on the situation you would lose both. It is best to keep your primary and hot backup server in two separate controlled locations in the event of an outage of some sort.
Q. Can you mix and match environments, for example AIX and Linux?
A. No - the host environments must be the same. eg D3 Linux to D3 Linux, D3 AIX to D3 AIX and so on.
Q. Do the license counts have to match?
A. Yes! They need to match your existing production server license. Remember; this could become your primary server and you will want to maintain full functionality to avoid any disruption in your business.
Q. When I fall back to the secondary server (Hot Backup) how am I able to print from the D3 spooler?
A. Great question. We highly recommend you use our cloud printing software (CirrusPrint) that allows you to print seamlessly from our data centers through a secure SSL connection.
Q. You talk about a Hot Backup Server in the cloud; what sort of internet connection speed do I need to make this work correctly?
A. We get asked this question all the time when clients make the move to the cloud. Believe it or not, your typical PICK application requires very little data to pass back and forth between the user (client) and the server in the cloud. It all depends on how much data has changed on your primary server that needs to make its way to the secondary server.
Q. What happens if I mistakenly connect to my secondary server and make and add several changes to certain data files. Will those data files and records eventually be updated on the primary server?
A.It is important to distinguish to the end-user which is the PRIMARY and SECONDARY server. These sorts of mistakes can be avoided with very little effort by simply adding a small program to your login script to validate server connection and its current role.
Q. Does Hot Backup automatically failover to the secondary server?
A. No, you need to make sure you have a separate connection available to your users so they can switch over quickly to avoid any further down time. This can be as simple as changing the IP address on your terminal emulator setup screen. It is probably wise to have one already established ready and available. Please consult with your system administrator to setup for you.
Q. Are you going to discuss pricing for a Hot Backup license?
A. A D3 Hot Backup license starts at 25% of list price. The discount per seat tier is as follows:
Seats Disc% Per Seat 1-50 75% $15 51-250 78% $135 251-500 81% $116 501-1000 85% $92 1001 and up 90% $61
Q. In your demo today where (physically) was your secondary (Hot Backup) server located?
A. In today’s demo our primary server was located in Irvine, CA and our secondary Hot Backup Server is currently located in Ashburn, VA - nearly 2,500 miles away. As you saw in our demonstration we did not experience any latency or performance issues.
Q. What sort of equipment do you use in your cloud?
A. Our managed hosting cloud solutions are built on a brand name, industry leading platform - enabling us to give our customers better performance and greater agility.
Q. What is the difference between hot standby and cold server (what is the difference between hot site and cold site?)
A. The hot standby server would be the equivalent to our Hot Backup server we demonstrated today. A cold server or cold site would be less expensive but it takes a lot longer to get back to full operation after a disaster as we would have to boot the server and do a complete restore from the production server. This could take many hours to be up and fully functional.
Q. D3 Release Version 9.2.2 WINDOWS rev 06/17/15 FSIDM,FHB, account does not exist on our system. Is FHB created automatically with one of the steps from guide or FHB command? Our IT dept. hasn’t set up the HB license we need yet. I’m just curious if it’s supposed to be available already in our D3 Windows version environment?
A. The FHB file is a file within the FSIDM and when you run FSI hot backup program to configure it, it creates the file.
Q. I’m assuming D3 hot backup can be used to multiple secondary systems, is that a correct assumption?
A. It cannot go to multiple secondary systems at once. I cannot have one master going to 2 other systems, 3, 4. But I can have a master going to a slave, which is also a master going to another slave and so on and so on - this would be similar to a daisy-chain setup. You would have to buy a license for every hot backup system.
Q. Does create-file and delete-file go across?
A. Yes! As you saw in our demonstration - when creating a file using the “L” option (logged) that exact same file with the exact modulo and separation appeared immediately on the Hot Backup Server.
Q. What did you mean by problems due to fully path issues?
A. A lot of times what somebody will have is an AP account and they have a file in there called DEX. They create an index that does a translate to another file - debtor. That debtor file resides in the AP account. So when you reference that index, you don’t have to tell that its in the AP account because people will be in the AP account or in a q pointer in that account without fully pathing. D3 of hot backup process, it starts up on that PIB but runs in the DM. When it does its updates it has to know where to go for that debtor file. It does not reside in the DM. Instead of saying debtor it should say AP,DEBTOT, give it the full path kind of like you do in Unix. Giving it the full path like root. That’s what I mean by full pathing.
Q. What happens if you have remote errors on the live server that necessitate a restore but those errors are written to the secondary server?
A. Normally we would not log the errors file. The errors file in D3 is marked as a DT file so the errors do not get logged even if you are logging all files.
Q. Should restores be done on the secondary on a regular basis?
A. Only if you think the servers for some reason or another got out of sync. A system restore would clear this up fairly quickly.
Q. Would I need to purchase a hot backup license?
A. Yes - hot backup is a feature that needs to be enabled. That is done during the licensing process. Unless it is activated you cannot use it.
Q. Can a VPN be established for printing?
A. Absolutely. This will need to be setup on your Hot Backup cloud server.
Q. Do licenses need to be bought to add a PICK in the cloud or is that part of the $399 per month?
A. You would have to purchase the hot backup licenses in addition to the $399 monthly fee. However, the license cost is a one-time fee with just the ongoing annual hot backup software maintenance fee (SMA) after year 1.
Q. Why wouldn’t the VME get backed up and just the FSI?
A. Most like data in your VME is static and won’t need to be logged. As you know it’s always recommended that you store your programs and data in the FSI. The reason the FSI gets backed up and not the VME, the connection between the FSI and VME is RPC (Remote Procedure Call) connection and we cannot get there from here with VME.
If you have a question that is not answered here, please feel free to email us at [email protected] and we will get your question answered.