Case Study: Day-Brite Lighting achieves "lights-out" automated LPAR backups and nightly operations with Fortra Robot Automated Operations

Day-Brite Automates LPAR Operations With HelpSystems

Day-Brite Lighting, a Genlyte subsidiary with more than 60 years in commercial and residential lighting, runs an IBM System i 550 with two logical partitions (Production and Test), supporting 300+ users across manufacturing and distribution sites. The IT team needed to automate nightly operations to meet SOPs and SOX requirements, stop relying on a night-shift operator, and solve the technical challenge of sharing a single IBM 3576 tape drive between partitions for nightly backups.

They implemented HelpSystems’ Robot suite (including Robot SCHEDULE, LPAR, SAVE, ALERT, CONSOLE and others) to automate scheduling, device movement, backups and notifications. Robot SCHEDULE and Robot LPAR coordinate with the HMC to move the tape drive between partitions and run saves with built-in delays, enabling unattended, “lights-out” nightly operations. The result: fast ROI, reliable nightly backups, automatic alerts for issues, simplified administration, SOX-friendly testing/production separation, and more than two years of successful nightless operations.

Day-Brite

Lynn Key

iSystem Administrator and Communications Manager