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TimeFinder
Helps You Improve Your Organization's Productivity and Enhance Online
Business Continuity
Faster access to the increasing volume of information that floods
businesses is becoming a prerequisite for survival in today's connected
world. E-businesses are discovering that their customers are intolerant
of delay and demand immediate access to information. TimeFinder meets
these requirements, creating valuable time that businesses-both traditional
and electronic-can leverage to exploit unlimited opportunity and satisfy
infinite need.
Revolutionise the way you
do business - Exploit your information systems in ways you never
imagined-with TimeFinder
TimeFinder Enables Realtime Business in A Global Economy. TimeFinder,
unique software for mainframe, open systems, Windows NT, and AS/400
platforms, keeps your business running at full capacity even during
scheduled outages. It allows system and storage administrators to
create, in background mode, independently addressable Business Continuance
Volumes (BCVs) for mainframe and open system information storage.
The BCVs are mirror images of active production volumes that can be
split from the production volumes, with no impact to the production
host. The BCVs can be used to run tasks that otherwise cannot be performed
without seriously impacting production availability. This parallel
processing capability offers workload compression and significantly
increases productivity while maintaining continuity needs. Once the
BCV task is complete, the volume can be resynchronized with the production
volume, reassigned to another production volume, or maintained "as
is" for another task.
Increased Data Accessibility
TimeFinder's new Multi-BCV function allows up to eight separate BCV
relationships to be paired with a single standard volume. This enables
restores to be performed incrementally from any one of eight volumes
to accelerate restore time. Multiple copies of BCV data can be used
for other purposes such as testing , back-ups, data mining , and loading
of data warehouses. In addition, Mirroring on a RAID 1 or RAID-S protected
volume is provided. When TimeFinder is used with Symmetrix Remote
Data Facility (SRDF ), BCVs may reside on both the source Symmetrix
system and a remote target Symmetrix. TimeFinder batch utility commands
across SRDF links enable remote management of BCVs, making it easier
to create and manipulate BCVs from a central location.
The new Instant Split function enhances performance by making a BCV
immediately available to host systems. Instant Split allows important
tasks against mirror volumes to start sooner than ever before. Once
a split command is executed, the BCV is available to the host for
immediate use, saving valuable production time since customers no
longer have to wait for the split to complete.
TimeFinder includes a Snap utility, designed to duplicate datasets
and volumes within a Symmetrix® environment at a point-in-time.
This utility offers enhanced support for OS/390 SMS data structures
and can create multiple copies of datasets or volumes concurrently.
TimeFinder advantages can be achieved from both single Symmetrix and
SRDF-capable Symmetrix installations. BCVs can be locally mirrored
and/or used as an SRDF source. BCVs are established to help solve
issues related to competing workloads, application testing, and data
warehouse creation and usage, thus increasing the usefulness and value
of your enterprise's information resources.
Winning the "Race-to-Sunrise"
For global enterprises or government agencies, the amount of time
available for backups is typically squeezed both at the front and
back ends. TimeFinder puts an end to this crunch.
With TimeFinder, backup operations are performed against BCVs, leaving
the production copy fully available for regular business needs. Applications
and systems that would normally shut down, or at best slow down, remain
up and running , earning revenue and serving customers. Alternatively,
systems may now accommodate additional applica-tions, gaining further
productivity from your existing investment.
A Backup Strategy That Works
Smarter, Not Harder
TimeFinder makes the often tedious backup function more streamlined
and efficient. Backup operations can be conducted on BCVs at any point
in time and as frequently as desired. Limitations and risks imposed
through partial backups are drastically reduced. Normal procedures
can be used to back up the BCV contents onto tape while your applications
continue providing full service.
Mainframe- and open systems-independent software vendors (ISVs) can
integrate TimeFinder with various application management tools to
non-disruptively obtain a point-in-time copy of application data.
This enables activities such as database backup, recovery, and reorganization
to be performed automatically and efficiently using fewer host resources.
Integration with open systems management tools provides TimeFinder
users with the ability to manage volumes, including BCVs, from a single
platform.
Load or Update Data Warehouses
with Ease
By using BCVs as the data warehouse load source, business continues
as usual even as the warehouse is populated with information or refreshed.
Since updates are not disruptive, they can be made more frequently,
providing a more accurate basis for data analysis and smarter, more
timely business decisions. "What if" scenarios can be run on more
up-to-date information, which can result in more accurate predictions.
This capability is enhanced even further when TimeFinder is used in
conjunction with other Symmetrix software products. InfoMover allows
you to manage file transfers between any combination of UNIX, Windows
NT, and mainframe systems without disruption, enabling easy and frequent
updates to open systems information while critical business applications
simultaneously generate revenue. EMC Data Manager (EDM) offers high
speed backup of Symmetrix-based data to tape. EDM's integration with
TimeFinder delivers non-disruptive backup of the world's largest databases.
Rapid, Reliable Application
Testing
E-commerce demands uptime, rapid application development, agility,
and speed. With TimeFinder, a variety of applications can be tested
with real data, not simulated or test data, enabling rapid, reliable
application testing. TimeFinder lets you create BCVs with mirrored
copies of information that can then be applied to new or modified
applications to obtain real-world results. Alternatively, you can
establish a BCV-mirrored database of information and then modify the
data to test the result. In every case, applications can be developed
and debugged faster and installed with a proven performance and organizational
benefit.
Continuous Business from
Business Continuity
EMC's SRDF is the industry's premier business continuity solution.
It mirrors data transaction for transaction, from a source Symmetrix
system to a target Symmetrix located across the hall or across the
globe. In an SRDF environment, TimeFinder allows BCVs to act as SRDF
source volumes for the SRDF mirroring function. Local or remote BCVs
can be used for data mining, e-business content delivery, application
development, testing, backups, or numerous other uses.
Key
Features
- Creates instantly accessible Business Continuance
Volumes (BCVs) and thus lets you
- Perform backups quickly, frequently, and
without disruption
- Reduce time limitations through workload
compression
- Eliminate job step copies to improve batch
processing time
- Load or update data warehouses as needed
- Provide production data for application development
testing with zero downtime
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