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  Let’s talk about virtual machines, containers and what’s the attraction for NonStop customers. But first, the big question; with mission critical applications, are they relevant? When it comes to myths and fables there is perhaps none more the subject of speculation than the existence of King Arthur and his fabled magician, Merlin. Modern speculation goes so far as to suggest Merlin was an original “Time Lord” of Dr. Who’s fame. Others suggest he was the model for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Gandalf. As for Harry Potter, well it is not so much a case of speculation so much as it’s a case of dropping into a pure fantasy. Merlin even made an appearance in the movies; Transformers: Last Knight. Myths carry with them the expectation that wondrous things occurred and that without their featured characters, societies would have been lost. When it comes to technology there has always been a sense of fantasy and of the unbelievable and yet, here we are entering the seventh decade of commercial IT...

Containers certainly transformed the transportation industry and even today, are being re-purposed  in interesting ways. But for mission critical solutions running on NonStop, virtualization beats containerization every time! Moving house and resorting to temporary storage facilities made this past year a time where total disruption prevailed. While there was some anticipation over what was about to become our new home there was still many anxious moments in the lead up to that eventful day. However, the move itself was rather painless and when the van finally showed up, inside were three or four fiberboard containers holding all of our much-treasured belongings. Turned out, as the movers held onto our belongings over the summer it was easier for all parties to simply package everything up into a container to better facilitate the multiple transfers that took place. You may recall seeing this picture before. That is, the one at the top of the page that features two 40’...

In 48 hours’ time we will be back out on the highways mixing it up with all the big rigs, trucks and SUVs and even though it takes us three days, there is no way we would miss the NonStop Technical Boot Camp, 2017, in San Francisco. Will we be seeing you there? If by now you haven’t heard about the biggest event of the year for the NonStop community, then listen up! This is a big occasion and already the number of attendees is crossing the line and approaching a really good figure – not sure exactly what the final count will look like but I do know there are a lot of people really looking forward to this event kicking off in just a few days’ time. The move to San Francisco may be one factor, or simply because it’s a chance to head to sunny California where the real appeal lies. No matter, the chance to hear the NonStop team outline the next milestones for NonStop and to hear firsthand about recent successes in the marketplace by HPE along with the vendors providing solutions on No...

Seated at a bar made up of repurposed shipping containers prompted me to think of NonStop. Just as shipping containers can be repurposed, with the arrival of Virtualized NonStop can we see NonStop being repurposed as well?     It was way, way back in 2009 when I wrote a post to this blog site about how HPE was packaging up shipping containers loaded with blades and peripherals and marketing them as a specialty POD – actually, as a “Performance-Optimized Datacenter” and to read more about this, check out the post of July 2, 2009, Common standards, uncommon advantages! I have no real idea of how successful this market campaign proved to be but I only heard that the program was discontinued sometime last year.  And the reason? HPE was moving beyond blades, where today it was all about hyperconverged infrastructure, hybrid IT and yes, Synergy. Perhaps I was too quick to dismiss Synergy as just software as the more I have dug into HPE Synergy, the first thing I notice...

It’s London and it’s the BITUG Big SIG. The NonStop community is gathered to hear more of NonStop and it’s a lot happier community these days. Before it starts I thought it may be good to reflect on what NonStop has accomplished already in just two years since support for x86 was announced.  Few readers of my blog posts will have missed my many references to cars and music and walking around London for nearly a week there was plenty to remind me of both. A Rolls Royce here, a McLaren over there and yes, plenty of Aston Martins everywhere! Sometimes you simply forget how successful the English have been through the years when it comes to cars. As for a small point of fact, nearly all of the F1 teams have their headquarters around London, from Red Bull to Williams to now the first North American team in ages, Haas F1, chose to complement its North Carolina operations by setting up shop nearby in Banbury, Oxfordshire. On the other hand, when it comes to music, what needs to be ...

Familiar territory for the NonStop community – with NonStop X we have speed as well as scale – and with transformation under way together with the emphasis on hybrids, there’s much to cheer for when it comes to HPE NonStop systems! Last year, around this time, Margo and I spent several weeks on the road, attending numerous industry events held across the western states of the U.S. On one such trip we found ourselves driving through southern Arizona where we  came across the ruins of Casa Grande. We stopped to visit the ancient ruins and despite what we were told, I am not all that sure anyone knows precisely what was going on millennia ago, nor whatever  happened next. I touched on this briefly in the post to this blog of February 6, 2015,  Of hubs and spokes; of niches, clouds and beyond the horizon; it all looks good for NonStop X! , where I referenced another post, this time to our social blog of February 3, 2015,  In truth, we are but travelers …  This ...

As for industry standards, it's been part of the game plan for NonStop to embrace industry standards fully and with NonStop X, HP delivers on this plan ... From the very first time a container ship passed through the heads of Sydney Harbor at the end of 1969 I have been fascinated by the container industry. Spending my formative years of IT working for a container shipping company cemented that fascination and I have been following the industry ever since. So much for the container ships that carried a measly 2000 standard size Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEU as today new-age behemoth ships transport almost ten times this number. What has really sparked my interest all these years later is what’s happening with containers today on dry land, as industries have grown up with novel ways to exploit essentially a standardized “building block”.  According to one news source, the Port of Seville, Spain, is among the more recent converts using seagoing containers in unconventiona...

With all the talk about modernization and of NonStop truly being a modern system, it is worth noting just how easy it has become to run modern Java applications on NonStop today! The past ten days have seen me working out of a hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee, as Margo oversaw events for the association she now works for…. and I took advantage of the free room and the barbeque. But no sooner had we landed back home in Boulder than we packed the RV and headed to southern California for the long weekend, setting up camp just outside Rosamond and reveling in the lack of humidity at Willows Springs race track. Finally, we pulled up stakes and headed to Las Vegas where we are now baking in the desert heat, wishing we had a little more humidity, as we wait for HP Discover 2012 to begin! And the picture above is of me setting up camp and unloading the track car that for the next ten days will once again become our daily drive. What to expect? What will be demonstrated? Who will be th...