Switch and Smile

Yes. Robot HA boasts hundreds of happy customers around the world and does not suffer from the legacy complications that sometimes accompany older AS/400 solutions. In addition, Fortra has been automating and monitoring IBM i for 30+ years. We understand the problems that can pop up in high availability environments and our expert tech support team is ready to help you through them at any time, day or night.

We find that many customers are not comfortable doing a role swap with their current solution or have never tested their role swap. This tells us that their current setup might not be correct. In such cases, Robot HA offers a smart, step-by-step transition to ensure that a proper setup is in place from the beginning. This is not a huge issue for either of us as Robot HA is easy to implement. Plus, Fortra has the best tech support in the business. They’ll be with you every step of the way until you’re comfortable with your new tool.

Our trials are the actual software that you would own. You have access to the full product as well as our world-class tech support team. Our experts will help you get set up correctly and provide basic training right off the bat. We encourage you to reach out to our friendly experts at any time during your trial with questions, comments, or concerns. Remember, it’s our goal to get you smiling again!

We recommend installing Robot HA on the same two systems and set it up to replicate a different set of libraries/IFS. This demonstrates proof of concept and allows you to transition to Robot HA at your own pace. 

Yes. Thanks to our special partnership with IBM, Fortra has exclusive insight into PowerHA. Robot HA can close the gaps by adding flexibility and providing replication for data and applications in SYSBAS. It can even replicate data out of your IASP to another server or partition for business intelligence purposes.

Yes. Robot HA scales to match the workload on your IBM i. It can replicate 188 million journal transactions per hour across any distance—physical or virtual—and apply the data the moment it is received. Robot HA can also work with the IBM journal caching API, which organizations buy separately from IBM.

Yes. Robot HA supports internal and external disks, as well as SYSBAS, ASPs, and IASPs. It can even help you migrate from internal to external disk.

Yes. Robot HA is part of the Robot product line, which has been automating and monitoring your IBM i high availability environment for 30+ years. Robot HA is especially powerful when paired with Robot Console message management software, Robot Monitor performance monitoring software, or Robot Schedule batch management software. The monitoring templates in our Halcyon product line will also give your HA a boost, no matter your solution.

Robot HA ships with a built-in notification and an audit process, which can run to verify you are ready for a role swap in your desired interval. Fortra also offers complementary monitoring tools for added assurance and real-time notification.

We find that many customers have been over-running audits for fear of being out of sync with data and objects. Much of this fear is justified because of how other HA products probe for new objects being added to the system. Robot HA does not use QAUDJRN, which overtaxes system performance. If you’re still nervous, Robot HA does ship with integrity checks, which can be scheduled to occur at responsible intervals.

Robot HA is written directly on top of IBM i sockets. It does not use standard internet applications like FTP, Telnet, etc., which are also written on top of the sockets layer. This makes Robot HA fast and flexible—it is not limited by FTP or other standard application restrictions. It also uses local and remote journaling.

Robot HA transfers data via local and remote journaling over TCP/IP. Robot HA has built-in, data-in-flight encryption, which is useful where SSL (secure sockets layer protocol) encryption is not present or not desirable.

Robot HA is software-based replication, also known as logical replication. The production (source) and backup (target) systems can be different IBM i models with different versions of operating system and located any distance from each other without performance or latency issues. Fortra also shares the roadmap for PowerHA with IBM and leads development and support efforts.