Abstract
IBM Z® platforms underpin mission-critical enterprise workloads where disruptions directly impact availability, data integrity, and business outcomes. Business continuity is achieved through engineered resiliency and recovery, leveraging platform capabilities to contain failures, preserve service, and ensure predictable outcomes.
Resiliency sustains service during disruption by isolating faults, eliminating single points of failure, and enabling graceful degradation. Recovery restores service after disruption through deterministic, automated processes aligned to defined RTO and RPO objectives. Together, they deliver consistent availability, reduced downtime, and rapid restoration across IBM Z environments.
Disruption is inevitable. Systems fail, workloads evolve, infrastructure is maintained, and threats continue to emerge. The real measure of success is not avoiding disruption, but ensuring controlled behavior under stress and fast, reliable recovery.
This IBM® Redbooks® publication examines resiliency on the IBM Z® platform, focusing on system behavior under failure and the architectural choices that drive availability and recovery. It introduces deployment patterns ranging from restart-based recovery to multi-site continuity, providing a practical framework for aligning business requirements with design.
The publication highlights enabling capabilities across the IBM Z stack, including infrastructure, z/OS®, middleware, applications, and operations, with emphasis on automation, observability, and AI-assisted, predictive operations.
Business continuity depends on predictable behavior under stress and reliable restoration after stress. This publication helps you design and operate IBM Z environments to achieve that outcome.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Business continuity: A foundation for the intelligent digital business
Chapter 2. IBM Z deployment patterns: Behavior under disruption
Chapter 3. Infrastructure layer: Building resiliency
Chapter 4. Operating system layer: Enabling resiliency
Chapter 5. Middleware layer: Coordinating resiliency
Chapter 6. Application layer: Engineering resiliency
Chapter 7. Management layer: Orchestrating resiliency
Chapter 8. Bringing business continuity into practice
Appendix A. Data center resiliency considerations
Appendix B. Sustaining acceptable performance
Appendix C. Best practices: Reducing risk
Related publications
Special Notices
The material included in this document is in DRAFT form and is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind. IBM is not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of the material, and may update the document at any time. The final, published document may not include any, or all, of the material included herein. Client assumes all risks associated with Client's use of this document.