Re: Informix Remote Mirroring

In reply to Bill Williams in Informix-List 277 Bill, Now I would agree with pretty well everything you said. One point, though at the moment the users needing this facility are probably in the 5% range, I think you underestimate the cost to companies of a **catastrophic** loss. It is amazing how many companies have gone bust because they couldn't recover their systems, either because they had no recovery plan or because they were down too long. Many companies rely on either borrowing time on somebody else's box or on the suppliers providing replacement equipment in a hurry. Should either not be possible at the time of the failure the business can be finished. If the business has gone to the expense of setting up a remote site with tape transfer to keep the system at most 1-2 days behind, the additional cost of remote hot standby need not be that expensive. The cost of the equipment and space is already covered so your extra expense is the performance drop caused by the comms system to keep the database synched, the extra software license costs (probably purchased anyway so that the standby box can be used rather than sit idle for 99.9% of the time) and the comms system itself. With falling hardware and comms costs a lot of companies can afford the peace of mind. Lastly more commercial companies than you might think have systems which require either no loss of data ever (Eg banking systems where loss of a transaction could get you sued for many times the cost of hot remote standby) or where lives are at risk (Eg Process control in manufacturing or transport systems). Even things like the control of a telephone network or nationwide telesales might be considered as such an application. Cheers, Jim -------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Jim Gordon Internet: jgordon@ssf-sys.DHL.COM Company: DHL Systems Inc Phone: (415) 358-5911 Address: 1700 S. Amphlett Blvd. Fax: (415) 571-6429 San Mateo, CA 94402 --------------------------------------------------------------------