INFORMIX disk mirroring across a LAN ? (fwd)

> Date: 25 Jul 91 20:51:24 GMT > > Leafing through my technical glossies on INFORMIX-STAR (INFORMIX's distributed > database extension), I discovered that a Future Direction > (from a 1990 pamphlet) would allow: > > -Replicated databases (synchronized and unsynchronized) to ensure critical data > bases are always available. > > Does anyone know if this has been realized yet ? What I would like to achieve > is disk-mirroring from one system to another. From what I can see, the > disk-mirroring abilities of INFORMIX ON-LINE 4.0 (which we are using :') will > not support mirroring databases to remote systems. > > Can anyone expand on this or point me in a different direction ? > > -- > Al Parker P.Eng, Sr Consultant with Gellman, Hayward & Partners Ltd > and part-time M.Eng student at U-T > 33 Yonge St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1G4 > UUCP:alp%ghp@mnetor.uucp, Voice: (416)862-0430 > Al - It so happens that I saw an excellent presentation on this topic last year at the Spring 1990 conference of the IEEE Computer Society International in San Francisco. The topic was "Architectures to Tolerate Disasters", and papers were presented by IBM, Tandem, and Princeton. There seemed to be a consensus among the presenters that the best method of maintaining a remote database is by remote logging, handled at the DBMS level or the OS level. Many other methods, including remote mirroring and application level remote logging, had been considered and tested, all with some degree of failure. It also seemed clear that the only commercial product available at the time supporting this is the Tandem REMOTE DATA FACILITY (50 installations worldwide). IBM had an offering, but it was only useful for maintaining a geographically nearby remote database (like in the same computer room on a second computer). The issues surrounding this complex subject are well covered in the 3 papers, which I'm sure you can find locally (if not, I could send you a paper copy): Tandem's Remote Data Facility - Jim Lyon Tandem Computers, Inc. Design Approaches for Real-Time Transaction Processing Remote Site Recovery - D. L. Burkes and R. K. Treiber Data Base Technology Institute IBM Almaden Research Center kentt@ibm.com Issues in Disaster Recovery - Hector Garcia-Molina and Christos A. Polyzois Department of Computer Science Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 PUBLISHED IN: Digest of Papers February 26 - March 2, 1990 CompCon Spring 90 Thirty-Fifth IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IEEE Computer Society Press 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle PO Box 3014 Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1264 order # 2028 As to when Informix might provide such functionality, they certainly do not provide it now, and I believe that they have not announced the release in which it would appear. ------------ DHL WORLDWIDE EXPRESS ------------------------------------------- Greg Bryan gbryan@ssf-sys.dhl.com DHL Systems Data Administrator uunet!ssf-sys.dhl.com!gbryan San Francisco -------------------------------------------------------------------------------