An IBM i high availability budget starts with two environments, the replication software and implementation. Public PowerHA reference figures start around $4,495 for software and $5,000 to $20,000 for an SMB implementation.

AS/400 high availability costs more than backup because it keeps a second environment ready to take over. Public PowerHA reference figures start around $4,495 for software. SMB implementation figures commonly start around $5,000 to $20,000, while enterprise work can reach $50,000 or more.

That is only the opening number. The real budget includes the second IBM Power environment, operating system rights, replication software, network design, testing and the people who keep the recovery plan current.

What high availability means

Start with the plain difference between backup, high availability and disaster recovery.

Read the HA definition

PowerHA SystemMirror for i

Base LicenseFrom ~$4,495

SMB Implementation$5,000 - $20,000

Enterprise Implementation$50,000+

Metered Cloud Rate$0.336 - $0.528 per instance-hour

PowerHA is OS-integrated, offered in Standard and Enterprise editions, and is IBM's own answer to logical replication and clustering. The metered hourly rate is aimed at burst or temporary DR capacity rather than an always-on production mirror.

Third-party logical replication vendors

Third-party IBM i HA/DR vendors

Vendor	Product	Pricing Model
Maxava	Maxava HA / Maxava Cloud	Monthly fee scaled by source machine's software tier (P-group); not published
Rocket Software	Rocket iCluster	Quote-based, not published
Legacy Vision Solutions / Fresche	iTera / MIMIX lineage	Quote-based; confirm the current vendor before quoting

None of these vendors publish a fixed price list. Maxava holds roughly 3.9% and Rocket roughly 2.4% reported market share in the IBM i HA space as directional context, not a pricing signal.

Warm standby vs hot standby

Backup-only

Lowest software licensing cost. Highest recovery time, often hours to a full day depending on data volume and restore method.

Warm standby

Data is replicated to a second system that is powered but not actively serving production. Reduces licensing and hardware cost vs. hot standby at the price of a longer failover window.

Hot standby

A fully licensed, continuously running mirror. Highest software and hardware cost, but failover measured in minutes rather than hours.

Backup and security stack costs

IBM's native save and restore tools are part of the operating system. Backup, Recovery and Media Services has its own current subscription details in IBM's licensing documentation. Operational cost also moves with storage and retention.

Security and compliance tools often use the same quote-based pattern as the HA vendors above. Ask for an itemized quote. A single annual bundle can hide whether recovery, security or storage is driving the number.

Because none of the major third-party HA/DR and security vendors publish list pricing, the single highest-leverage move in this category is getting two competing quotes against the identical configuration before committing.

IBM i High Availability & Disaster Recovery Cost Comparison