High Availability And Optimization Solutions Increase Efficiency And Productivity

It's definitely not "garbage in, garbage out," at Norcal Waste Systems, Inc. With some of the most innovative recycling programs in the country, "garbage in, value out" more aptly describes Norcal's services, including material recovery facilities, construction and demolition debris recycling, and large-scale composting of food and organic wastes.

Norcal's employee owners work to ensure that every company effort, from the management of its data systems to ongoing customer service, is handled with excellence. The company serves more than 570,000 residential and 55,000 commercial customers, and business continuity and IT efficiency are critical company issues.

"Before we implemented high availability, if the data systems at our San Francisco headquarters had gone down, it could have taken multiple days to get the IT end of our business running again," said Oscar Campos, Lead Operator at Norcal.

To select the right high availability and optimization solutions, Norcal turned to Key Information Systems, Inc., an IBM Premier Business Partner. Key Systems recommended ORION HA for i5/OS and Vision Director, from Vision Solutions. The implementations were handled by Key Systems and went very smoothly, according to Campos.

Norcal replicates data from San Francisco to its site in Vacaville, California. "We have 3 LPARs on our IBM i550 in San Francisco, and we recently added a third partition to our i520 in Vacaville for development. We perform periodic tests for integrity, and I'm glad to report to say we've gone through fi ve successful tests of ORION HA," Campos said.