Questions to Ask When Selecting IBM i HA and Disaster Recovery

Selecting a high availability and disaster recovery solution for IBM i is rarely a purely technical exercise. It is a decision that affects business risk, operational confidence, regulatory posture, and long-term cost. Yet many evaluations still focus on surface-level criteria, whether replication exists, how fast it is, or how the initial pricing compares.

Those questions matter, but they are not enough. IBM i environments are long lived, business critical, and deeply integrated into daily operations. The right HA and Disaster Recovery solution is one that aligns with how the business actually depends on the platform, not just how data moves between systems. This is why IBM i organizations increasingly evaluate logical replication solutions such as Maxava HA in terms of recoverability, integrity, and long-term fit rather than raw feature lists.

For buyers assessing their options, the most valuable questions are often the ones that reveal assumptions, rather than the ones that confirm features.

What exactly is being protected, and at what level?

A foundational question is deceptively simple: what does the HA solution actually understand about your environment?

Replication is often discussed as though all methods are equivalent. In practice, the level at which replication operates determines what is truly protected. Some approaches focus on copying data blocks, without awareness of transactions, applications, or dependencies. Others operate at the IBM i object and transaction level, with an understanding of journals, commitment control, and application structure.

This distinction matters because IBM i applications are not collections of isolated files. They are ecosystems of database objects, programs, IFS content, and configuration that must remain aligned. Recovery that completes successfully from a technical standpoint but leaves applications unable to start or data in an uncertain state is not a successful recovery.

A useful question to ask is whether the solution can distinguish between meaningful business transactions and raw data movement, and whether it can ensure that recovered systems represent a known, consistent point in time that the business can trust. Logical replication architectures, including Maxava HA, are designed specifically to address this requirement.

Who actually controls recovery when something goes wrong?

Another critical question is about ownership. When an outage occurs, who has the tools, visibility, and authority to diagnose issues and execute recovery?

In many organizations, storage and infrastructure are owned by teams outside the IBM i function. That separation can work well operationally, until a recovery event exposes gaps between responsibility and control. IBM i teams are often accountable for uptime and data integrity yet may have limited insight into replication behavior occurring at the hardware or storage layer.

Buyers should ask whether recovery control sits with the people who understand the applications and data, or whether it depends on coordination across multiple teams during a high-pressure event. The more complex the dependency chain, the greater the operational risk.

Effective HA aligns accountability and control rather than separating them. This alignment is a defining characteristic of IBM i–centric HA solutions such as Maxava HA.

Can we prove that recovery works, not just assume it does?

Replication alone does not prove recoverability.

Regulators, auditors, and boards increasingly expect evidence that systems can be recovered, applications can run, and data integrity can be verified. Assertions that data is replicated are no longer sufficient. The focus has shifted to demonstrable recoverability.

A key question for buyers is whether the HA solution supports regular, realistic recovery testing, and whether those tests produce evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Can role swaps be performed in a planned, repeatable, and reversible way? Can recovery be validated without disrupting production?

If recovery procedures are difficult to test, they tend not to be tested. That is when theoretical resilience turns into real-world risk. Modern IBM i HA platforms, including Maxava HA, are designed to make recovery testing operationally practical rather than exceptional.

What does “low latency” really mean in practice?

Replication latency is frequently highlighted during evaluations, often reduced to a single number. Buyers should ask what that number actually represents.

Does it reflect transport delay only, or end-to-end readiness of the target system? How does latency behave during peak processing, not just during quiet periods? What happens after interruptions, when the system needs to catch up?

The right question is not “how low is the latency,” but “how much business activity could we lose right now, and under what conditions does that change.” That reframes latency in terms of Recovery Point Objective rather than technical performance. Logical replication solutions such as Maxava HA are typically evaluated using this end-to-end perspective rather than single-point measurements.

How does the HA and Disaster Recovery solution behave as the platform evolves?

IBM i environments do not stand still. Hardware is refreshed. Operating system releases change. Workloads grow and shift.

A crucial but often overlooked question is how the HA solution adapts to that evolution. Does it support multiple IBM i releases at the same time? Can different releases be mixed safely during transitions? Are hardware refreshes treated as routine technical changes, or do they trigger commercial renegotiation?

Buyers should look closely at how pricing and licensing behave over time, particularly during hardware upgrades. Transparent, predictable pricing models reduce long-term cost and avoid turning normal infrastructure evolution into a financial event.

Total cost of ownership is shaped far more by what happens after year three than by the initial purchase. This is a key reason IBM i organizations favor HA solutions such as Maxava HA that emphasize pricing stability and long-term viability.

How much operational overhead does HA introduce?

High availability should reduce operational risk, not add to it.

Some approaches impose architectural constraints that increase complexity over time. Requirements for identical hardware, tightly coupled storage, or disruptive upgrade paths can make environments harder to manage and slower to change.

A useful question is how much ongoing effort is required to maintain protection. How visible is replication health? How quickly can issues be diagnosed? How much day-to-day attention does the solution demand from skilled staff?

Operational simplicity is not a nice-to-have. It is a cost and risk factor that compounds over the life of the system. IBM i HA solutions such as Maxava HA are designed to minimize this operational burden as environments grow.

What should we expect from a long-term HA partner?

Finally, buyers should consider what kind of relationship they expect from an HA vendor over the long term.

IBM i customers value stability. They invest in platforms and partnerships that last for decades, not quarters. An HA solution is not a tactical purchase. It becomes part of the operational fabric of the business.

That makes transparency, predictability, and alignment with customer success critical. Buyers should ask whether the vendor’s commercial model rewards longevity and platform evolution, or whether it extracts value at each change point.

The answers to these questions often reveal more than any feature matrix.

Choosing with confidence

Selecting IBM i HA and DR is ultimately about confidence. Confidence that data is consistent. Confidence that recovery works. Confidence that costs are predictable. Confidence that the solution will still make sense as the platform evolves.

Asking the right questions early helps cut through marketing claims and focus on what really matters. Not whether data is replicated, but whether the business can continue, confidently and verifiably, when it matters most. That is the standard modern IBM i HA and DR solutions, including Maxava HA, should be measured against.