Nodak Mutual Insurance Company Enhances Disaster Recovery with Assure iTERA HA Solution
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Assure iTERA HA
- IBM i
- IBM 8203 Power Systems server
- IBM 8202 Power Systems server
Tech Stack
- IBM i
- Assure iTERA HA
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Backup & Recovery
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Nodak Mutual Insurance Company, headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota, is a prominent player in the insurance industry. As the largest property and casualty insurer domiciled in North Dakota, Nodak Mutual offers a wide range of insurance products, including life, home, auto, farm, crop, and business insurance, along with other financial products. With approximately 125 employees, the company operates primarily during normal weekday business hours. Nodak Mutual is committed to providing reliable insurance services to its customers, ensuring their peace of mind and financial security. The company has a strong presence in the region and is known for its customer-centric approach. Nodak Mutual's dedication to maintaining business continuity and protecting its operations from downtime is evident in its proactive approach to disaster recovery and data protection. By implementing advanced solutions like Assure iTERA HA, Nodak Mutual aims to enhance its operational resilience and ensure uninterrupted service delivery to its clients.
The Challenge
Nodak Mutual Insurance Company faced a significant challenge with its outdated disaster recovery strategy, which relied on tape-based backups and a third-party recovery site. This approach would have taken days to resume full operations after a disaster, which was unacceptable for the company. The existing strategy involved creating backup tapes and shipping them to a recovery site in Phoenix, Arizona. In the event of a disaster at the primary data center in Fargo, North Dakota, it would have taken days to allocate a system at the recovery site, configure it, load all data and applications from backup tapes, test the system, and finally make the applications available to users. This lengthy process would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to conduct business during the downtime. Additionally, the disaster recovery provider allowed only 24 hours of testing time per year, which was insufficient for Nodak to have confidence in the recovery solution's effectiveness. The company needed a disaster recovery solution that could dramatically reduce recovery times and provide peace of mind with a well-tested solution.
The Solution
To address its disaster recovery challenges, Nodak Mutual Insurance Company implemented a high availability and disaster recovery solution called Assure iTERA HA. This solution replicates all data and applications in real-time from the company's primary IBM i-based production server to a Nodak-owned hot-standby backup server located in a third-party facility. In the event of a primary system failure, Assure iTERA HA can quickly complete a failover to the backup system with minimal downtime. Nodak Mutual conducts annual failover tests to ensure the solution's reliability and uses Assure iTERA HA's 'virtual roll swap' feature to verify the readiness of the backup system without affecting production operations. The primary benefit of Assure iTERA HA for Nodak Mutual is peace of mind, as it provides confidence that the solution will work as required in the event of a disaster. The company uses IBM i-based Power Systems servers, known for their reliability, and Assure iTERA HA enhances this reliability by ensuring business continuity. The ability to test the solution, including non-disruptive virtual roll swap tests, gives Nodak complete confidence in its disaster recovery capabilities.
Operational Impact
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