Many years ago, when Margo and I frequented the
highways of North America in our RV, we talked about buying a dog. For those
who may have passed RVs in parking lots, you may have run across the decal
telling everyone that the RV was unlocked and the keys were under the German
Shephard. We had a colleague from our Tandem Computer days that bred German
Shepherds and we thought that there would be nothing better than to own a pair
of them. Back when I lived in Sydney I had a Shephard – Labrador mix and the
family truly loved him, so the idea of owning a pair of Shepherds didn’t seem all that out of the ordinary. With tickets to California in our hands and plans to accommodate
well advanced, it was only the voice of our family members warning us: with the
dogs we do not get to play with our granddaughter and that led to a late cancellation
of such a purchase.
It then should come as no surprise that at that time we
had made the decision to call them Primary and Backup! I recalled this thwarted
exercise as I stood in the service bay of our local Jaguar dealership. For many
years there was a saying that went something like, “if you own a Jaguar, you
better buy two to make sure you had one to drive!” Today however, nothing could
be further from the truth as the Jaguars of this century have, for us at least,
proved extremely reliable. The two were in the service bay as we dropped off
the second Jaguar when picking up the first and what went through our minds was
well, it all made sense didn’t it? Nothing wrong was there, when you consider
the weather that crossed Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, in having Primary and
Backup!
The April issue of NonStop Insider has hit the digital
newsstands and can be read by following this link - https://www.nonstopinsider.com/editorials/issue-7-4-editorial/
It is a bumper issue to say the least, with articles from HPE folks across
North America as well as Asia-Pacific. There are numerous commentaries on
NonStop SQL, Security, including Ransomware, Platform Modernization and a return
visit to the IDC grading of systems, ranking them by levels of availability. The
premier level has always been Availability Level 4 and for quite some time,
this level was shared only by NonStop and certain configurations of the IBM
mainframe.
But of late, IDC has begun watering down the criteria
to where now it is simply addressed with the following:
True
fault tolerance through redundancy in hardware and software: This approach
provides continuous data processing, even in the event of the failure of one
hardware or software component. Because all data processing (i.e., support for
a given application) occurs in a side by-side fashion, the failure of any
single component in the system will not affect other sets of computing
resources that also support that same application. As a result, computing can
continue uninterrupted.
Spot the out for most vendors? Here you have it: “The failure of any single component in the
system will not affect other sets of computing resources.” In other words,
you may be down but no other application running at the time should be
affected. So sad to hear you are only running one application! In a world where
we so often hear of good enough being well, good enough and glitches happen all
the time. If as yet you haven’t read my latest commentary on AL4 then check the
article in the April issue of NonStop Insider - https://www.nonstopinsider.com/uncategorised/the-latest-on-fault-tolerance-hpe-is-a-key-player-in-the-al4-market-according-to-idc/
IBM released the Z16 last year to quite a fanfare, most
of which centered on the mainframe now becoming available in rack-mounted form.
Yes, more than a decade after NonStop embraced rack mounting, IBM considers their
work as a breakthrough for the enterprise even as they recognize that in many
ways they were late to the party.
But it isn’t just that NonStop has been available
rack-mounted for such a long time as it is highlighting how little attention
IBM is paying to capitalizing on the presence of the cloud; racking mainframes
may be fun but that’s just a start, surely? And it isn’t until you address the
presence of clouds, be they private or public, that you can truly call yourself
modern. IDC may give a gold star to NonStop and the Mainframe but even then,
the awarding of that star doesn’t suggest for a moment that the system being so
honored is modern!
There is one other article in the April issue of
NonStop Insider that is worth reading in full - https://www.nonstopinsider.com/uncategorised/what-comes-after-development-simplified-deployment-for-hpe-nonstop-applications/ It
covers the two story lines of two most recent posts to the HPE Community Blog
that focus on just how modern NonStop has become, whether it is from a
development or deployment perspective. Both of these posts reference the many
television episodes featuring home renovations where we have all become
acquainted with what makes a home modern – open floorplan, clear sight lines,
stainless steel appliances.
For a more comprehensive overview of both these posts
on modernization of development and deployment as they appear in the HPE
Community Blog, take a look at the latest issue of The Connection. Re-appearing
in The Connection for the first time in decades is my column Real Time View.
As noted in prior posts to this blog, Pyalla Technologies, LLC. is throwing its
full support behind Connect and future posts to this blog will only touch on
topics that might otherwise not find their way into NonStop community media.
Comparing today's IT deployments with how modern
homes function can only go so far and yet the imagery is hard to ignore. “In
many ways, IT development wants to leverage open technologies as much as
possible even as they want connectivity to every corner of the enterprise along
with the ease of movement that this entails, within the enterprise and beyond,”
said HPE Mission Critical Systems Marketing Manager, Vikas Kapoor.
And now there will be the opportunity to develop
applications for NonStop out of public clouds. For AWS users this is as simple
as connecting to the Public Cloud Marketplace where you will find everything
you need to develop an application that targets the NonStop platform. Look for
support of other public cloud providers to follow shortly.
So here is the answer to the question that is almost
certainly going to be asked. Again, isn’t good enough, good enough, but now,
you can have it all – out of the box. Whether you develop in Java, C/C++ or
Python, it’s all there in the public cloud for you to leverage. More
importantly though is the ability to inherit the fault tolerance of NonStop
without digging deep into its internals or becoming an expert in all things
NonStop.
The flip side is that accepting good enough can be
dangerous. It leads to a false sense of security anchored solely in the belief
that it’s OK to be good enough as “we have always done it that way!” AL4 with
meaningful and usable fault tolerance is at your fingertips and can be
leveraged right out of the box. This remains an unheard of experience on
platforms other than NonStop, so yes, good enough may be good enough for some,
but why would you ever settle for second best?
This topic and much more will feature heavily in the
upcoming regional user events, the most important event of all being the
E-BITUG in Edinburgh Scotland, May 15 – 17. For the latest updates on this
event, check out the E-BITUG web site - https://www.bitug.com/ebitug-2023. There
will be a lot of product updates along with news from the participating vendors
you may have missed, so plan accordingly. Looking ahead to future events in
2023 there will continue to be highlights of just how the NonStop technology,
whether running on-prem or in the clouds is still significantly ahead of the
pack. Or, as one NonStop product manager reminded me in a recent exchange, “if
you are not aiming for the best you will eventually fall behind.”
What should not be missed is just how far NonStop
systems have come from when it was all about those Primary and Backup use cases
that dominated much earlier events. They still embody the effectiveness of the
“special sauce” of NonStop that separates NonStop from all else.
We never did get those German Shepherds and saying we
have tame Jaguars doesn’t really cut it. We no longer have the RV either, but
then again, the thought of having primary and secondary processes behind the
scenes supporting almost every financial transaction we perform assures us that
as blasé as some may be about good enough, ultimately, good enough no longer
cuts it when it comes to the deployment of today’s modern systems.
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