Hardis Group’s Cariboo application avoids the loss of configurations for infrastructure components such as storage racks, switches and virtual servers, making it quicker and easier for IT departments to restore these configurations following an incident or hardware failure.
Grenoble, March 9, 2022 – Hardis Group, a consulting firm, digital services company and independent software vendor, announces the release of Cariboo, its new solution for backing up IT infrastructure configurations. Cariboo, an open-source application available as a virtual appliance or an RPM package, lets IT teams back up configurations for IBM Power Systems Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs), Brocade switches, Virtual I/O Servers (VIOS) and FlashSystem storage racks. Backup compatibility could be extended to other infrastructure components in the future, depending on user feedback.
Quickly back up and restore infrastructure component configurations
IT departments, like all enterprise teams, need a way to back up infrastructure component configurations so they can quickly restore the data and reconfigure their hardware should a problem arise.
“All too often, configuration data are overlooked in business recovery plans,” said Hardis Group consultant and Cariboo software engineer Damien Ferrand. “If a problem occurs with a switch or VIOS, it can sometimes take days to finalize a new configuration, which typically has to be adjusted to achieve stability. And while issues with storage racks are rare, retrieving the configuration data can prove impossible without a backup.”
The benefits of Cariboo are twofold: it prevents configuration data loss while limiting the amount of time IT departments need to spend on reconfiguring faulty hardware. As a result, entire configurations can be restored in mere minutes, leaving the equipment ready and able to continue delivering business-critical services.
An open-source application available as a virtual appliance or RPM package
Cariboo is an open-source application released in two formats: a virtual appliance for deployment on any type of virtual machine (VM), and an RPM package that can be installed inside a proprietary RedHat (or derived) distribution. The application also comes with optional installation and support services from Hardis Group.
The first version of the application supports configuration backups for the following infrastructure components as standard:
- Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs) for IBM Power Systems servers (IBMi, AIX and Linux)
- Brocade Fiber Channel switches
- Virtual I/O Servers (VIOS)
- IBM FlashSystem storage racks (including Storwize and SVC models).
Cariboo is quick and easy to configure and includes an automatic VIOS detection feature, allowing IT teams to back up virtual machines locally at predefined intervals. For maximum security, organizations are advised to incorporate these backups into their general business recovery plans.
Availability
Cariboo is currently available to download in OVA and RPM formats from GitHub. The application can also be obtained directly from Hardis Group, which offers installation and support services.
Learn more
To go further, discover our page dedicated to the Cariboo solution: