IBM treats non-production deploys with a lower priority to resolve problems. When we archive, we select a similar-sized non-production environment first, before we archive production. We need the volume to determine how big to make the archive files and how long the archive jobs will run. For more detail: As the project manager for an archive solution, we first test our solution before we deploy it to production. This involves the IT-AD folks that maintain the application and business folks that own the data. Like any project plan it has a start date and an end date. Fudge is integrated into the project plan for accommodate on foreseen delays. We build the archive solution in a non-production environment with production like volume of data. Let’s call this our test environment. When we encounter an problem that we can't resolve, we reach out to IBM. They build an environment to simulate the conditions that are causing our outage. Because this is not a production environment. IBM assigns a lower priority for a resolution. In the past it has taken weeks up to 2 months for a fix. Delaying the completion of the project plan, beyond the fudge added to the plan.
