A leading European food manufacturer depends on IBM i to run its mission-critical manufacturing, supply chain, and business operations. Continuous system availability is essential to keeping production lines running and customer deliveries on schedule.
The Challenge
Following severe flooding, the company's on-premises data center became inoperable, taking its IBM Power infrastructure offline. With production systems unavailable, the organization faced the prospect of prolonged manufacturing downtime and significant business disruption.
Fortunately, one critical asset survived the flood: an on-premises Network File System (NFS) server containing recent IBM i backup data. While the backups remained intact, the company needed an environment to restore it to. Without any usable on prem systems, no IBM Cloud environment, no cloud disaster recovery infrastructure, and no IBM Power Virtual Server environment available for recovery.
The company needed to:
- Establish a cloud environment from scratch.
- Securely transfer large backup files from the surviving NFS server into IBM Cloud.
- Provision new IBM Power infrastructure.
- Restore critical IBM i workloads and resume production as quickly as possible.
The Solution – Enter IBM Power Virtual Server
IBM rapidly assembled a cross-functional team of cloud, infrastructure, IBM Power, and support specialists to execute an emergency recovery plan.
Working together, the team:
- Established the customer's IBM Cloud environment.
- Provisioned a new IBM i virtual server instance on IBM Power Virtual Server.
- Built and configured secure networking, including a virtual private cloud (VPC) and VPN connectivity.
- Helped transfer backup data from the surviving on-premises NFS server into IBM Cloud storage for restoration.
- Restored the customer's IBM i environment onto IBM Power Virtual Server.
- Enabled administrators to validate applications and complete system recovery using IBM i administration tools.
Working across multiple time zones, IBM teams began recovery efforts immediately after the incident was reported.
Business Outcomes
The coordinated response enabled the customer to restore production systems in just 24 hours, despite starting without any cloud infrastructure.
Key outcomes included:
- Restored critical manufacturing operations within 24 hours.
- Avoided an extended production outage following the data center flood.
- Successfully migrated from an entirely on-premises environment to IBM Power Virtual Server during the recovery effort.
- Continued running production workloads on IBM Power Virtual Server while evaluating a long-term hybrid cloud strategy.
Why IBM Power Virtual Server
IBM Power Virtual Server enabled the customer to rapidly rebuild its IBM Power environment without changing existing IBM i applications.
Benefits included:
- Rapid provisioning of enterprise-grade IBM Power infrastructure.
- Native IBM i compatibility without application refactoring.
- Secure connectivity between on-premises and cloud environments.
- Flexible cloud infrastructure capable of supporting both disaster recovery and long-term production workloads.
- A seamless path from emergency recovery to hybrid cloud modernization.
Lessons Learned
The incident underscored the importance of a comprehensive cloud disaster recovery strategy.
Although the customer was fortunate that its on-premises backup server survived the flood, relying solely on local backups introduced unnecessary business risk. Had the backup server also been damaged, recovery would have been significantly more complex.
The recovery also demonstrated how cloud preparedness can dramatically reduce recovery times. Best practices include:
- Maintaining off-site backups in IBM Cloud Object Storage to eliminate dependence on surviving on-premises infrastructure.
- Maintaining a preconfigured disaster recovery environment on IBM Power Virtual Server to accelerate workload recovery.
- Regularly testing disaster recovery procedures to ensure systems can be restored quickly during an actual event.
With cloud-based backups and a warm standby disaster recovery environment already in place, the customer could have reduced recovery time even further and minimized operational risk.
A Partnership Beyond Technology
The recovery showcased the value of collaboration between IBM specialists and the customer's technology team. Together, they transformed what began as an emergency response into the foundation for a more resilient hybrid cloud strategy.
As one IBM team member reflected:
"Within hours, we stood up an entirely new cloud environment, securely transferred the customer's surviving backup data, provisioned IBM Power Virtual Server, and restored their IBM i workloads. Recovering production in just 24 hours from a standing start demonstrated both the resilience of the platform and the value of experienced teams working together."
Looking Ahead
The customer emerged from the crisis with more than restored operations—it gained a modern, cloud-enabled infrastructure strategy. By continuing to leverage IBM Power Virtual Server, the organization strengthened its business resilience while laying the groundwork for a long-term hybrid cloud architecture.