RE: disaster plan for small shops

["Corbett" <corbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim,
Are you using IBM for hardware maintenance?  I ask because I'm using a local
BP who "holds" the hardware maintenance contract for my company and they
provide a DR machine (as well as phones and other "stuff") at their location
for use by their clients.  This could be one low-cost option for you and
you'd probably only have to pay for this service in the event that you
actually used it, aside from any charges they may have for reserving the
disk space for you.  This option could make management happy...in my
experience, spending a lot of money on this kind of thing has been a hard
sell.

OR, you may want to talk to a company who has an AS400 (already) connected
to the internet, such as myself, and could provide you with emergency access
over the internet...in the event of a disaster.  This company would probably
charge you to "spin" your information, but it could be not-so-current info
(just place-holding and making the restore easier), until you overnight them
a backup tape and inform them that you've had a disaster and need to use
their machine NOW.  Then you'd have to find a place for some PCs and CA
printers with internet connectivity and you'd be up, limited maybe, but up.

This option would simply require that the DR site maintain space on their
machine for you and be willing and able to act fast to "refresh" your data
and user profiles in the event of a disaster.  Some of the complications
with this approach would be any "external" interfaces and devices you may
have, such as EDI or fax, etc, which would affect the feasibility (and cost)
of this, as well as how much disk capacity and printing capabilities you
would need during the "DR" time.

As others have said, SunGard is an expensive option for a company your size
and your decisions will be based heavily on how much time you can afford to
be down.  As for me, if this AS400 is on fire tomorrow morning, I'll just
get another one in here in a day or so and be back on track really fast.
Or, failing that, take the backup tape to my office and load it on mine (I'm
a consultant sitting at a customer location).

In any event, make sure you've got a good off-site storage for your backup
tapes and make sure to keep the off-site location updated with a fairly
recent full (save-21) save.

Just some thoughts.....

William A.(Tony) Corbett
IBM Certified - AS/400 Developer 
http://www.asresources.com 
corbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
404-784-4737
fax: 678-935-5005