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Three more wishes – coming soon! What can we expect for NonStop?


With summer in full swing and with temperatures climbing higher than we have seen in quite some time, it’s hard to imagine that seasons will be again in transition in oh, say three months’ time. Living alongside the Rocky Mountains we have come to expect anything and, each day we step outside, we can be at a loss as to what the will weather do; clear skies aren’t all that helpful.

It’s not all that often that I start with a weather commentary but this year, it’s getting harder to ignore. Floods in Australia and fires in Portugal! Tornados in the US and more fires even as there are swarms of jellyfish in the eastern Mediterranean! Predicting the weather so it seems remains as much a hit and miss exercise as it has always been; here in Colorado the story goes that “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes and it will change.”  

At the end of August I will wrap up fifteen years of posting to this blog, Real Time View. Shortly I will begin my sixteenth year and you will find me still writing posts about NonStop. As I look back upon this journey, one thing strikes me more than anything else. We continue to have a thriving NonStop community even as there are so many more media channels within which you will find a constant stream of updates and predictions on all things NonStop! On the other hand, it has never been about waiting five minutes to see if the NonStop journey will change.

The NonStop community, unlike the weather, is rather predictable. Change often seems to move at glacial speeds and yet, when you look back to August 2007 and to that first post to this blog, so much has changed with NonStop. We have seen it all; racks, blades, pizza boxes, dumb chassis, smart chassis, disks that were once solid state are now flash drives and yes, NonStop entered the world of virtual machines. In little over a decade! Amazing when you look at all the options we have today.

Early next year I will once again pen my three wished for NonStop. I have done this every three years following the first post back in February, 2008. It has always proved to be a fun project for Margo and me as we consider what might happen in the following three years. More often than not we like to stretch the goals we have for NonStop, but with the passage of time, many of what we wished for have indeed come to fruition. Put it down to the glacial speed perhaps and the fully visible path already trod, but no matter, the mere fact that we can openly discuss what might be ahead is testament enough to the future of NonStop remaining rosy.

While this isn’t about the three wishes that we will address next year it is a sneak preview into what we have listed as possibilities. If you want to revisit either the three wishes posts or simply look at the previews, just tab over to Labels and scroll down to the entries for Wishes and Wishes – Preview. But here’s a headline for you – the list of candidate possibilities for what will be included in our predictions as three wishes has never been longer and that too is an encouraging sign.

What has made the list to date (and I am sure between now and February 2023 new entries will appear) and what will we be prioritizing? For now we have five entries but with NonStop TBC 2022 upcoming as well as with what we are still digesting following HPE Discover, expect to see two and maybe three more entries added to the list. But what did we cover in the three wishes posted February 13, 2020? Would you now be surprised that we covered topics that included new systems options for NonStop (not just ProLiant but Synergy and Apollo), NonStop’s presence in GreenLake and yes, the gradual disappearance of NonStop within virtual machines.

What we did miss is the option for NonStop to run on EdgeLine systems (EL4000 and EL8000) which has us excited as well as appearance of NonStop applications on the basis of “as-a-Service.” Also missing from our observations was the organizational shifts that occurred, with NonStop an integral part of High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Headed by Justin Hotard and together with a new Senior VP and Chief Product Officer for the group, Trish Damkroger, where oversight of NonStop will reside, it leaves open the bigger question of what comes next for NonStop.

There is no better way to introduce the candidates that made the list than to say that organizational shifts present opportunities as much as they simply suggest change. As Tom Petty used to sing, “the sky was the limit” even as he added, “Into the great wide open; Under them skies of blue” the future for NonStop may be so bright, as another popular singer suggested, “I gotta wear shades.” With changes too in the sales organizations, “things are going great and they’re only getting better,” seems more than an appropriate line to add. With Neil Davis in EMEA, new arrival Karen Ramirez in North America and Suresh Menon in APAC, I have a sense that there will be additional logos added to the portfolio by the time we post next February.

Making the list? How about Partnerships. Neil has done a great job in bringing Manufacturing-as-a-Service through abat+ and Payments-as-a-Service through Lusis to market. The next year or so will be telling with respect to the traction developed by the presence of these applications. Seriously, though we need a lot more and in this regard, I am wishing for HPE to provide additional seed money to select vendors to bring them into partnership with the NonStop team. There has been considerable talk of late about doing something like this, but seriously, it is time for action and I am hoping we hear more on this topic at the upcoming NonStop Technical Boot Camp, 2022.

The NonStop community itself is a candidate as we wish for a continuation of the unity that Connect provides through its publications, events and forums. Sharing knowledge is incredibly important and remains the sole voice for every member of the NonStop vendor community. Margo and I have been involved with user groups for decades and view them as a vital instrument in fostering shared experiences across all regions and within all market verticals.

GreenLake will remain a candidate even as I am looking for feedback from the community as to the level of interest in moving from CapEx to OpEx. Only paying for what you need is a message appearing everywhere you turn these days, but for those running mission critical applications requiring permanent availability there remains some doubt as to the advantages of re-implementing on this basis. Perhaps there are some financial services organizations enamored with running applications on private clouds where security might be better but even so, the move to GreenLake by existing NonStop users will probably take many years.

The path to being able to run anywhere and everywhere on virtual machines more or less at the touch of an icon is still a very long way off. However, the potential to add yet more layers of abstraction such that it matters little as to the fabric on hand with NonStop being able to leverage whatever technology is being provided quite transparently. This has been a goal of mine for some time as we moved from ServerNet to InfiniBand then Converged Ethernet/RoCE so why not support it all? There are still obstacles in the way of those wishing to be able to run NonStop in public clouds but adding this transparency couldn’t hurt. And there is still the issue with how fine grained you want your fault zones to be, but like fabrics, there are choices that can be made in this regard.

Finally, the name NonStop. Surprise you to read that I think it has served its purpose and we need to move on. While I am not suggesting a return or reintroduction of Tandem or of the image of the Tandem bicycle, but rather, NonStop is really an attribute and simply adding HPE doesn’t help a whole lot. Introduce the former Tandem chevron, but this time, in green? Call it the Green Machine (ohm, perhaps not)? HULK: NonStop – after all, he has never stopped and he is green for good measure! Whatever the branding folks consider new and fresh doesn’t bother me but isn’t it time to give NonStop a new coat of paint, re-launch, and set it on a new course?

These are all preliminary candidates to make my short list for the upcoming post on my three wishes. I am sure there will be work still left to do before finalizing that list and should you like to influence the direction in which I am headed just let me know. Until then, there is lot to think about and in simply thinking about NonStop means we all see a bright future for the product. So yes, can you spare a set of shades as it could become a lot brighter than any of us could imagine! 


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