Posted on September 25, 2018
Managing a large and complex server like the IBM i, can be daunting. Add to this the fact that you may have Scaling Up/Down/In/Out, need to control High Availability and Monitoring, Patching, Manage Backups and Restores, you have to ensure the OS is kept up to date. Even the fundamentals such as security and configuration can take significant expertise.
To do this, you need the right skills, operational procedures while maintaining a best practice approach while adhering to stringent Internal/external governance.
Imagine if all you had to do is manage your database, or like many of our customers; they only have to manage Database Clients and Queries, Create Indexes and Maintain referential constraints between tables.
A managed service partner takes care of everything else; this will include:
Managed IBM i High availability using Multi-LPAR topologies, which provides an SLA up-time of 99.95%.
With the Multi-LPAR features enabled on your production server, iTech provides asynchronous “standby” replica of every database and system across multiple systems. Since both the database and its replica are in sync, there is no chance of data loss. iTech manages the whole process, and also offers a fully managed failover service, so even if the master production database goes down, an automatic failover mechanism will change the master DNS to a replica to achieve high availability.
This same technology also offers us the chance to move other workloads off the production, such as Queries and backups. This can have a huge benefit on busy production databases.
To do all of the above on IBM servers, you would need significant investment in infrastructure, software and additional off grid premises, to house the standby systems; this would be expensive, and self-managed.
IBM i scalability is difficult, to do this your own would require time, money and training. Handling mandatory downtimes due to upgrades or infrastructure requirements can be tricky, and this is just the beginning of the many scalability responsibilities. That is why one of iTech’s key advantages is its scaling service. You need more capacity to test a new feature, or you want a second system to try out a new application, we have a solution. Moreover, iTech MSP offers two levels of scalability features: vertical and horizontal.
Security Managed Services –
We enable push-button IBM i security with a scaling component depending on your needs. After a small amount of analysis, we will have turned on every inch of monitoring that is possible on the IBM i server. iTech will monitor all of your events and separate the events of the system from the Security events. This level of control allows you to sit back and wait until we have something to tell you.
Risk Management –
In a secure environment, you MUST understand the risk, and you MUST have control over the risk. The very minimum control is security event monitoring. Risk acceptance is key, but to understand the risk, you must first have a process of continuous security analysis. Imagine having around the clock operations focused on just security events. .iTech MSSP has everything you need for Security event Monitoring irrespective of peak business hours or non-peak hours, at iTech we never stop.
Interim CISO –
If you want to get to grips with your risks, or you have legislative requirements to build a bulletproof CyberSecurity model, iTech has introduced a fully inclusive cybersecurity service that requires a variety of skills. These skills include project leadership, risk management, technical expertise, and compliance. An Interim CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is an efficient solution as they have many responsibilities for ongoing security within the organization.
This is a great alternative to an industry-wide problem without the cost of hiring an in-house security team.
Featuring:
- A complete Information Security Audit of people, processes and technology.
- Data Protection – creating processes and procedures for the business
- An Information Risk Register identifying all assets and processes that could be subject to a security threats
- Policy Creation of how risks will be evaluated and assessed while considering the business, legal and regulatory requirements of the organization.
- A Gap Analysis Report highlighting the areas of improvement required.
- A Security Improvement Process. This process will monitor and consistently manage security improvements within the business.
In short, we will identify and implement a fully working Risk Register. (Enterprise-wide) we will establish a Risk Committee that will be driven to work through the remediation and report to the committee weekly.
