iSeries Data Replication With Stelo

Heterogeneous real-time data replication for iSeries and AS/400

Data problems manifest in a lot of different ways:

Too many ad hoc queries bogging down your your IBM iSeries server?
Have a new web service to bring up in weeks, not months?
Need to re-engineer your DB2 i database without breaking existing applications?

Data replication is an effective solution to all of these problems. In this post we’ll discuss using iSeries data replication with Stelo.

What is Stelo?

Stelo Data Replicator is a low cost, Wintel-based iSeries data replication solution. It helps you free up precious iSeries resources and improve overall user experience. We drew on 25 years of IBM database experience to build SQDR as the solution that addresses the most common challenges of the platform.

Here’s how iSeries replication with Stelo works:

Stelo is easy to install and configure within hours.
All installation, management, and configuration is done through a user-friendly graphic interface. No developer is needed and zero iSeries experience is needed to get the best real-time replication results available in the marketplace.
The software runs off-server. Because the software runs on an intermediate VM that sits between the source and destination, Stelo has a near-zero footprint on the iSeries CPU and disk utilization. Stelo is built this way to provide top performance on real-time, heterogeneous replication for DB2 for i, DB2 for LUW, SQL Server, and Oracle users.
Stelo acquires change data from the iSeries and stages the data on low cost Wintel hardware. This happens fast — within sub-second latency. (No data is staged on the host so your whole system runs faster as well.)
Staged data is published using Unicode encoding, ensuring the greatest fidelity to subscribers. The iSeries replication process is now complete. Your data is now available whenever, wherever you need it.

This process outlines a basic iSeries replication scenario. For a deeper look, please request a product presentation.

Two more features of Stelo worth mentioning are:

Data Silos

It’s possible to create data silos based on different vendor products, such as SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL. Stelo works in conjunction with SQL Server Replication, Oracle Data Warehouse, and other native DBMS replication and extraction tools.

Automated Schema Change Recovery

Stelo helps you avoid downtime due to an altered schema. When it detects a change in the source table schema three things happen: 1) an automatic alert is sent, 2) a checkpoint is created, and 3) replication is paused. The checkpoint ensures reliable data without the need to create a new baseline. Replication automatically starts back up once the schema is updated.

Best price-performance iSeries replication solution

Despite being robust and reliable, Stelo has the lowest total cost of ownership for any iSeries data replication solution. There are two main reasons for this: 1) We use load-based pricing, whereas most competitors charge per source core, and 2) We do not require a dedicated support engineer. This equates to a significantly lower price point, making Stelo the best price-performance solution for customers looking for heterogeneous, real-time iSeries replication.