Mainframe Cloud Hosting And DR Requirements

What you need in the way of cloud hosting and disaster recovery services is probably what you have now (or a subset of what you have now).

The best starting point for any discussion of remote hosting services begins with a profile of your current requirements.  We can do this informally over the phone or by email.  We're good listeners and we take good notes.  But in our experience the best way to get the ball rolling is for us (and for you) to get all the details down in writing in a simple, orderly way.

So, what we've done is to first list the questions we need you to answer.  After that we went over the same points and broke them down into details, and the result is a form you can print and fill out.  The form may look kind of long at first but bear in mind that only some of the questions apply to your particulary situation.  Consequently, you actually only need to fill out part of the form, possibly only a small part.

We have also made this worksheet available in PDF format.  The PDF is a live (but local) form; you can fill it out from within Acrobat Viewer.

Mobile?  You can print this Printer vendors provide free mobile apps so you can print our worksheet on a network-attached printer.  For instance, HP has ePrint; Lexmark has Lexmark Mobile Printing; Canon, Brother and Epson have their own apps; etc.  If you tap this link to the PDF worksheet your mobile device will offer you options:  typically, your choices will include printing right now (via a mobile printing app), viewing the PDF (using a PDF reader app) or saving the PDF file.

Anyway, let's get started:

1. What is the proposed timing for the inception of potential hosting services?
2. How long a term is required or estimated (in months)?
3. How much processing capacity is required in MIPS or MSUs?
4. Does this current system run in a shared or dedicated CPU/LPAR?
5. How much DASD space is required? (number and type of volumes, i.e., qty 34 type 3390-03)
6. How many simultaneous tape drives, and what type (3480/3490/3590) are used at peak tape processing periods?
7. How many tape cartridges currently exist in your library?
8. Printing requirements:  Please list channel-attached.  Also list TCP/IP-attached.
9. What IBM or third party software is needed?  What are the license terms?  Are any licenses currently owned?
10. What types and versions of IBM OS are you running?
11. What security package, such as RACF, are you using?