This guide is for IT directors, infrastructure managers, and CIOs responsible for mission critical IBM i systems. If you’re looking to strengthen your resilience against today’s increasingly sophisticated threats, this straightforward roadmap delivers the protection you need without unnecessary complexity.
The reality is clear: Most IBM i disaster recovery plans haven’t kept pace with evolving threats. This article tackles the challenging realities of IBM i vulnerabilities, delivers concrete solutions that maximize investment value, and shows you exactly how to achieve recovery capabilities that will reinforce business confidence in your critical systems.
Secure your organization’s operational continuity. The seven battle tested practices outlined here transform your IBM i disaster recovery from a standard insurance policy into a comprehensive resilience strategy that delivers when you need it most. In today’s threat landscape, robust recovery capabilities aren’t optional. They’re essential.
Introduction
The IBM i platform has earned its reputation for reliability. But in 2025, that reputation can create a false sense of security. The reality: modern threats, particularly ransomware, are actively targeting systems like IBM i environments.
Your IBM i system now exists in a connected ecosystem. Its integration with networks, cloud services, and external applications has created new exposure points that sophisticated attackers are increasingly exploiting. What was once your most stable system now faces the full spectrum of modern threats but often without equivalent protections.
Effective disaster recovery best practices require addressing two critical metrics: Recovery Point Objectives (how much data you can afford to lose) and Recovery Time Objectives (how quickly you need to be operational). This article identifies seven critical areas in IBM i disaster recovery and provides actionable solutions to ensure your systems remain resilient against both traditional and emerging threats.
Problem: Insufficient Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
The Challenge
Most IBM i environments still rely on nightly backups, risking an entire business day of critical data loss. For manufacturing disaster recovery scenarios or disaster recovery for financial services organizations, losing 24 hours of transactions represents significant operational and financial risk.
Traditional journaling methods may be inadequate during sudden outages or sophisticated attacks. Meanwhile, regulators and customers have increasingly strict expectations for data protection as transaction volumes grow and data becomes central to business operations.
Solution: Advanced Data Protection Strategies
To achieve near zero RPO for your IBM i environment and minimize data loss, implement this multilayered approach:
- Implement continuous data replication: Deploy real time logical replication that captures changes as they occur, reducing potential data loss to minutes or seconds.
- Deploy journal receiver management: Automate journal receiver swapping with proper retention to create a detailed recovery timeline.
- Utilize storage based replication: Complement logical replication with SAN to SAN replication for block level data protection independent of application layers.
- Establish multiple recovery points: Create tiered recovery points at different intervals to provide options for various recovery scenarios.
- Implement change data capture: Monitor and log all database changes with timestamps to enable granular recovery options.
Outcome: Near Zero Data Loss Capabilities
With these strategies, your organization shifts from potentially significant data loss to minutes or even seconds. This translates directly to business continuity, customer confidence, and regulatory compliance.
When facing recovery scenarios, you’ll have multiple recovery points available, allowing you to choose the most appropriate based on the specific situation. Data corruption? Roll back to before it happened. Ransomware? Recover from an isolated backup. Hardware failure? Minimal transaction loss.
Problem: Lengthy Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
The Challenge
Traditional IBM i disaster recovery involves system restores that can take days to complete. Hardware dependencies create significant bottlenecks, especially when restoring to different hardware configurations or cloud environments.
For mid market companies, extended downtime has increasingly severe implications. Manufacturing disaster recovery operations, financial transactions, or healthcare services that depend on IBM i systems require faster recovery times than traditional approaches typically provide.
Solution: Rapid Recovery Architecture
Implement these RTO optimization strategies to significantly reduce your RTO:
- Establish standby LPARs: Maintain pre configured logical partitions ready to take over production workloads, eliminating time consuming system setup during recovery.
- Automate recovery procedures: Create scripted, tested recovery workflows that minimize human error when rapid response is critical.
- Implement role swaps: Design your environment to support efficient role swaps between production and DR systems, substantially reducing transition time.
- Utilize hardware independent recovery options: Configure your recovery environment to restore to different hardware or cloud platforms if necessary.
- Prioritize application recovery: Implement tiered recovery that brings critical applications online first, allowing business operations to resume while less essential systems are restored.
Outcome: Minimized Downtime and Business Continuity
A properly designed rapid recovery architecture can reduce RTO from days to hours or even minutes. This directly preserves revenue streams, customer relationships, and organizational reputation.
The ability to quickly recover critical applications allows your business to maintain essential operations even while full recovery progresses, significantly reducing the business impact of disruptive events.
Problem: Cyber Threats to Recovery Infrastructure
The Challenge
Modern ransomware disaster recovery attacks specifically target backup systems to prevent recovery. Connected disaster recovery environments are vulnerable to the same attacks that affect production, creating potential recovery challenges.
Traditional disaster recovery best practices were built primarily for hardware failures or natural disasters, not the sophisticated cyber threats organizations face today. When both production and backup systems are compromised, recovery becomes significantly more complex.
Solution: Cyber Resilient DR Design
Implement these cyber resilience strategies for your IBM i disaster recovery environment:
- Create immutable backups: Establish write once, read many backup storage that cannot be modified or deleted, even with administrator credentials.
- Implement air gapped protection: Physically or logically isolate backup systems from production networks to prevent attack propagation.
- Deploy LPAR isolation: Utilize separate, restricted logical partitions for backup and recovery operations with strict access controls.
- Establish clean room recovery environments: Create isolated environments for recovery operations verified free of malware before restoring production data.
- Implement anomaly detection: Deploy monitoring tools that detect unusual behavior patterns indicating potential ransomware activity, such as mass file changes or encryption.
Outcome: Recoverability Even After Security Breaches
A cyber resilient DR design ensures that even if attackers compromise your production IBM i environment, you maintain the ability to recover from clean, protected backups. This significantly reduces potential impact and enables faster recovery.
The confidence from knowing your ransomware disaster recovery capabilities remain intact even after a cyber attack allows your organization to focus on containment and remediation rather than facing potentially extreme recovery challenges.
Problem: DR Testing Complexity
The Challenge
Many organizations find it challenging to fully test their IBM i disaster recovery capabilities. Testing is often limited due to resource constraints, perceived business disruption, or technical complexity. Without comprehensive testing, recovery capabilities remain theoretical rather than proven.
When disruptions occur, untested recovery plans may encounter unexpected challenges, extending recovery time and potentially increasing data loss. The complexity of IBM i environments with custom applications and integrations makes thorough testing particularly important.
Solution: Simplified Testing Frameworks
Implement these testing strategies to validate your IBM i disaster recovery capabilities:
- Establish regular testing schedules: Create a calendar of increasingly comprehensive tests, from basic validation to full scale recovery simulations.
- Implement non disruptive testing methods: Utilize techniques like recovery verification in isolated test environments without production impact.
- Automate test procedures: Create repeatable, documented test workflows that reduce the resource burden of regular testing.
- Document test results thoroughly: Maintain detailed records of test outcomes, including metrics, challenges encountered, and resolution steps.
- Incorporate testing into change management: Validate recovery capabilities after significant system or application changes to ensure continued protection.
Outcome: Regular, Meaningful Validation of Recovery Capabilities
A simplified testing framework makes it practical to regularly validate your recovery capabilities, building confidence that your DR plans will perform as expected. Thorough testing identifies and addresses potential issues before they impact actual recovery scenarios.
Most importantly, regular testing builds procedural familiarity and expertise within your team, ensuring they can execute recovery procedures efficiently during actual recovery situations.
Problem: Complex Compliance Requirements
The Challenge
Regulatory frameworks like SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others impose specific disaster recovery documentation and testing requirements. Auditors increasingly expect evidence of DR testing, measurable recovery metrics, and documented procedures.
While compliance needs often drive DR investments, meeting regulatory requirements doesn’t automatically ensure optimal recoverability. Organizations must balance compliance requirements with practical recovery capabilities, particularly challenging for IBM i environments with their unique architectures and applications.
Solution: Compliance Integrated DR Planning
Implement these compliance managed hosting strategies to align your IBM i disaster recovery plans with regulatory requirements:
- Map recovery capabilities to specific regulations: Create clear documentation showing how your DR plans satisfy each applicable regulatory requirement.
- Implement automated compliance reporting: Develop tools and processes to generate compliance evidence from your regular DR testing and operations.
- Establish clear recovery metrics: Define and regularly measure KPIs like actual RTO/RPO achieved during tests, making them available for audit purposes.
- Document change control processes: Maintain clear records of how DR plans are updated in response to system changes or identified gaps.
- Conduct regular compliance reviews: Schedule periodic assessments of your DR plans against evolving regulatory requirements to identify and address gaps.
Outcome: Streamlined Audits and Regulatory Confidence
A compliance managed hosting approach transforms audits from complex projects into routine validations of your existing practices. By building compliance into your DR processes from the ground up, you reduce the overhead of regulatory requirements while ensuring your recovery capabilities meet or exceed mandated standards.
This approach also provides stakeholders from executives to customers with confidence that your IBM i environment meets both regulatory requirements and practical recovery needs.
Problem: DR Cost Justification
The Challenge
Disaster recovery infrastructure often remains inactive except during testing, making ROI challenging to demonstrate to budget decision makers. Financial constraints can lead to limited DR investments, potentially leaving critical systems with insufficient protection.
Organizations frequently underestimate the true business impact of downtime. Revenue loss, reputational impact, customer attrition, and regulatory penalties can represent substantial costs. This gap between perceived and actual business impact can result in inadequate protection for business critical IBM i systems.
Solution: Multi Purpose DR Infrastructure
Implement these strategies to maximize the value of your managed disaster recovery services investments:
- Enable development and testing use: Configure DR environments to support development, testing, and QA activities during non disaster periods.
- Implement reporting offload: Utilize DR infrastructure for resource intensive reporting and analytics tasks, reducing load on production systems.
- Establish realistic downtime cost models: Work with business stakeholders to calculate the true hourly cost of system unavailability, including both direct and indirect impacts.
- Demonstrate compliance value: Quantify the risk reduction and potential penalty avoidance provided by robust DR capabilities.
- Implement graduated investment: Align DR spending with application criticality, focusing resources on systems with the highest business impact.
Outcome: Enhanced ROI and Business Value
Multi purpose DR infrastructure delivers continuous value to the organization, not just during recovery scenarios. This ongoing utility makes it easier to justify comprehensive managed disaster recovery services investments and maintain appropriate protection for critical IBM i systems.
By accurately quantifying the business impact of downtime and data loss, organizations can make informed decisions about DR investments based on risk management principles rather than just technical considerations or arbitrary budget constraints.
Problem: DR Expertise Gaps
The Challenge
IBM i expertise is becoming increasingly specialized, particularly for disaster recovery scenarios. Organizations may lack the in depth knowledge required to design and implement robust DR solutions tailored to their specific IBM i environment.
Internal teams may have limited experience with recovery procedures under actual disaster conditions. This expertise gap becomes particularly relevant during recovery operations, when efficient decision making is essential. IBM system modernization initiatives further complicate traditional DR approaches, requiring updated expertise and strategies.
Solution: Building DR Competency and Partner Selection
Implement these strategies to address expertise challenges:
- Invest in staff training: Provide regular education on IBM i disaster recovery concepts, technologies, and procedures.
- Create detailed runbooks: Develop step by step recovery procedures with sufficient detail to guide team members through recovery operations.
- Establish mentoring programs: Pair experienced IBM i administrators with newer team members to transfer critical knowledge.
- Select specialized DR partners: Engage with managed disaster recovery services providers who maintain deep IBM i expertise and can supplement your internal capabilities.
- Conduct simulated recovery exercises: Practice recovery scenarios regularly to build team experience and confidence.
Outcome: Sustainable DR Capabilities
By addressing expertise requirements through a combination of internal development and strategic partnerships with managed disaster recovery services providers, organizations can build sustainable disaster recovery capabilities for their IBM i environments. This approach ensures that critical knowledge is distributed appropriately and provides resources to draw on during complex recovery scenarios.
The confidence that comes from knowing your team has both the knowledge and support needed to execute recovery operations translates directly to reduced downtime and more predictable outcomes during actual recovery situations.
Conclusion
Protecting your IBM i environment in 2025 requires a comprehensive approach addressing both traditional risks and emerging threats. By implementing the disaster recovery best practices outlined in this article, you can significantly enhance your organization’s resilience and ensure business continuity even under challenging circumstances.
To strengthen your IBM i disaster recovery strategy:
- Begin with a comprehensive risk assessment to identify your most critical applications and data, along with current protection gaps.
- Implement immutable, isolated backup solutions to create a foundation of recoverability even in challenging scenarios.
- Establish regular testing procedures to validate your recovery capabilities and build team expertise.
CloudSAFE specializes in helping mid market organizations develop and implement robust managed disaster recovery services for IBM i environments. Our dedicated infrastructure approach provides the security, performance, and flexibility needed to protect your business critical systems while maximizing the return on your DR investment.
Contact us today to request a DR assessment and take the first step toward bulletproofing your IBM i environment for 2025 and beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is IBM i (AS/400) vulnerable to ransomware attacks?
Yes. IBM i systems are increasingly targeted by ransomware. While the platform has strong inherent security, integration with networks and external systems creates potential vulnerabilities. Modern ransomware disaster recovery specifically targets backup systems to prevent recovery, making comprehensive DR approaches essential.
How much does effective IBM i disaster recovery cost?
The cost varies based on recovery objectives, but organizations should consider the true cost of downtime when budgeting. For mid market companies, downtime costs typically range from $10,000 to $50,000 per hour. Modern managed disaster recovery services approaches like dedicated DR LPARs with secondary use capabilities provide both protection and ongoing ROI.
What is the difference between high availability and disaster recovery for IBM i?
High availability focuses on preventing downtime through redundant systems, often within the same data center. IBM i disaster recovery ensures you can recover after a significant disruption affects your primary site. While HA may reduce the need for DR in some scenarios, it won’t protect against region wide disasters or cyber attacks that could affect both production and HA systems.
How often should we test our IBM i disaster recovery plan?
At minimum, conduct quarterly component tests and annual comprehensive recovery tests. After significant system changes, perform targeted tests to verify continued recoverability. Modern testing approaches using isolated environments can reduce business disruption while providing meaningful validation of your disaster recovery best practices.
What RPO and RTO should we target for our IBM i environment?
For most mid market organizations in 2025, aim for RPO under 15 minutes and RTO under 4 hours for critical applications. These RTO optimization targets balance business needs with practical implementation costs. Applications processing financial transactions typically require even more aggressive targets (RPO under 5 minutes, RTO under 1 hour).
How can we make our IBM i backups ransomware proof?
Implement immutable storage that prevents modifications to backup data, even by administrators. Create logical or physical air gaps between production and backup systems. Use separate authentication systems for backup infrastructure. Employ anomaly detection to identify potential encryption activity before it completes. These ransomware disaster recovery strategies ensure recoverability even after sophisticated attacks.
Can cloud services be part of our IBM i disaster recovery strategy?
Yes, cloud platforms now support IBM i workloads for disaster recovery. Options include IBM Cloud, specialized managed disaster recovery services providers like CloudSAFE, and hybrid approaches using cloud for specific components. The key factors are ensuring proper replication, testing capabilities, and sufficient IBM i expertise within the cloud provider.
