Tandemworld eNewsletter for April 2015
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Tandemworld eNewsletter
for April 2015
Contents
Things I heard around the
halls of NTI….
HP Shadowbase Now Available for HP Integrity NonStop X
Musings on NonStop! - April, ‘15
NonStop X family arrives as we welcome the first member – the HP NonStop X NS7 X1
Ban Bottlenecks® - Non-Reactive Performance Management
NuWave Technologies and Information Balance Partner to Expand Application Modernization Practices
BITUG NEWS
XYGATE Merged Audit now support BASE24 & BASE24-eps!
BREAKING NEWS – First Asian HP NonStop customer choses comForte's SecurData
Connect With NuWave at Upcoming Events
NonStop SQL Database Management
Does it need more CEOs being fired for taking cyber security serious?
NonStop Innovations Blog - What You’ve Been Missing
XYPRO looks forward to seeing you throughout 2015
comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dummies' Book!
Availability Digest Examines ISIS’ Effective Efforts in Cyber Warfare
Working with Large XML Documents in COBOL
comForte at events near you in 2015
NENUG Welcomes NonStop Users from Northeast Region
The new comForte Newsletter is available
Don’t Let Low Pins Put the Brakes on your High-Speed CPUs
Opsol Integrators’ Custom Development Services – Fixed Price, Rapid Turnaround
Securing Data and Accelerated Applications
Current Subscribers 15042
Things I heard around the halls of NTI….
What is an IPU?
In our industry it’s pretty common to shorten complex descriptions down to 3 or 4 letter acronyms. Often times people start using the acronym and have no clue what it really means. We start writing it down and it eventually replaces the original subject. As an example, it’s been at least a decade since I wrote out Central Processing Unit but my spell checker still complains about CPU.
For about 25 years NTI has licensed DRNet by a combination of processor power level and number of CPUs in the chassis. With the shift to blades and cores NTI is beginning to track IPU’s. When I asked our team what an IPU was nobody knew so I Googled it up (an acronym for “looked”). One of the definitions is “Invisible Pink Unicorn”. That’s probably not what our engineers meant so I dug deeper. In a 2008 paper HP introduced the NB50000c blade line, describing their logical processor as consisting of two or more cores. They called these cores Instruction Processing Units (IPUs).
NTI’s Director of Engineering tells me that the term Instruction Processing Unit (IPUs) is very old and comes from a 1999 IEEE spec. Even earlier, Unisys used the term when describing parallel pipes in their mainframes. It was one of the methods of achieving peak performance with high-speed CPU based systems.
I am not sure if this was what HP meant when they associated IPUs with blades, but I guess I will add it to my spellchecker dictionary. My next task is to figure out what my kids mean when they text me LOL.
Xbox support
Last fall at ITUG (an acronym for the NonStop Technical Bootcamp) I saw the introduction to the new HP X86 product line, planned for 2015 ships. Because it was early days, and we didn’t yet know what the official name would be, we started referring to it as the Xbox. The HP folk’s wrinkled up their noses when they heard us. They didn’t want the new hardware line being associated with a Microsoft gaming platform. I can assure you that the new Xbox is not a toy. This is a serious box for our high volume install base.
The HP NonStop X is now shipping. Part of our install base has begun testing. NTI Engineering has recently completed a multi-month testing regiment and we are now ready for customer shipments. Here is the announcement from our Engineering team:
Announcing DRNet Support for HP Integrity NonStop X
DRNet 5.3 introduces support for the HP Integrity NonStop X platform. This release is compatible with S-, H-, J-, and X-Series RVU’s, as well as all of the platforms supported by DRNet®/OPEN.
I can see clearly now
DRNet can now replicate to and from the cloud. I call this feature DRNet/ClearSky. We built this feature with the thought that a Customer could setup a quick replication cache into a secure cloud location in the event that a box was at risk and did not have a properly configured backup box available. While it’s early days and we have not yet shipped this feature to any Customer sites, it shows you that we continue to look for ways to advance and improve data replication.
Meet me for a pint at the pub
On May 12th BITUG will host the Little SIG on the HMS Belfast. BUTUG always does a fantastic job of organizing their events. Following the day’s sessions NTI will be sponsoring the evening drinks and food at a local pub at the docks by the ship. Check with the BITUG website for more details.
Take me out to the ballgame
On June 24th N2TUG presents "Hit a Home Run with HP's NonStop X". The SIG will meet at the Texas Rangers Ball club, inside their Hall of Fame Museum. That evening we will watch the Texas Rangers beat the Oakland A’s from a private suite (the Texan in me speaks). The N2TUG team have arranged for a pretty fun event. Early interest shows as many as 70 may show up. NTI is the Gold sponsor and is covering lunch for this event.
FWIW
As you can see NTI has been busy in both the real and virtual world. Let me finish by saying BCNU@ any of our events. If you are SITD then VBG. MHOTY if you can figure this out without Google. TTYL.
DRNet® is world class NonStop Data Replication technology.
· Real-time Active/Active Data Replication
· Real-time Tandem to OPEN Data Replication
· Real-time File Synchronization
· Refreshingly Real-Time Support from Real Engineers
+1 (402) 968 3674
HP Shadowbase Now Available for HP Integrity NonStop X
We are all excited about HP bringing 100% fault-tolerant solutions to the HP Integrity NonStop X architecture! All of us benefit from continued innovations for our NonStop environments with greater scalability, performance and security. Now, you can choose either the Intel® Itanium® architecture or the HP Integrity NonStop X architecture of Intel® Xeon® processors, and run HP Shadowbase on all of these platforms!
We hope that you are also aware that Gravic’s leading-edge Shadowbase software solutions – addressing data replication for business continuity and heterogeneous data integration requirements – are now being licensed, serviced, and supported by HP. HP Shadowbase solutions extend the range of functionality and choice for data replication solutions available to NonStop customers like you. By providing a single point of purchase and support for these advanced replication and data management solutions, you are benefiting from the global reach, industry expertise, and 24x7 support available from HP. For more information, please see the HP data sheet, HP Shadowbase Suite for HP NonStop and Other Servers, the HP brief, Make your Business ‘Nonstop’, or contact us
Gravic Presents on HP Shadowbase Advanced Data Replication Solutions at Upcoming GTUG, MENUG, and SATUG Events
We hope to see you in Munich next week at the European NonStop HotSpot – Conference & Exhibition hosted by GTUG and Connect Germany. We look forward to meeting with you and discussing your data replication and data integration requirements. We hope that you will attend our two presentations:
Winning Against Internet Banking Fraud with HP Shadowbase Streams
Tuesday, 28 April, 15:00-15:30, Studio 3
Abstract: This case study of a large European bank demonstrates what can be achieved by combining clever application design, coupled with a HP Shadowbase Streams configuration, to prevent expensive internet banking fraud and yet still facilitate prosecuting the perpetrators.
HP Shadowbase Data Replication for Business Continuity, Integration, and Compliance
Wednesday, 29 April, 14:00-14:30, Studio 3
Abstract: HP now licenses, sells, services, and supports Gravic’s leading-edge Shadowbase solutions that address data replication for business continuity and heterogeneous data and application integration requirements. Join us to learn how the new HP Shadowbase solution set is allowing companies to settle on a common replication platform for all their replication needs.
We also hope that you will join us on 4 May, at the Hilton Dubai Jumeirah for the Connect and the Middle East NonStop User Group for the Second Annual MENUG Meeting, where we will be presenting on the new HP Shadowbase product suite.
This same week, 4 to 8 May, we look forward to seeing you at the 2015 South African Summit held at HP headquarters in Rivonia, where we will also be presenting on the new HP Shadowbase product suite.
For more information on Shadowbase solutions, please visit: www.gravic.com/shadowbase. To speak with us about your data replication and data integration needs, please visit us at www.gravic.com/shadowbase, email us at SBProductManagement@gravic.com, or call us at +1.610.647.6250.
Please Visit Gravic at these Upcoming 2015 Events
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GTUG Conference Munich, Germany, 27-29 April |
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MENUG Meeting Dubai, 4 May |
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SATUG Conference Rivonia, South Africa, 7-8 May |
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HP Discover Las Vegas, NV, 2-4 June |
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N2TUG Meeting Arlington, TX, 24 June |
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MATUG Meeting Herndon, VA, 17 September |
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NENUG Meeting Andover, MA, 18-19 October |
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CTUG Conference Toronto, 21-22 October |
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The Payment Knowledge Forum London, 5-6 October |
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Connect HP NonStop TBC San Jose, CA, 15-18 November |
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Please Visit Gravic at these Sites
Musings on NonStop!
April, ‘15
The
opinions expressed here are solely
those of the now self-employed author
The news is out! The first member of the HP NonStop X family is the HP Integrity NonStop X NS7 X1 – and there’s a growing list of documents and papers available from the HP web site. What’s up there? Well, it’s a growing list, but at the time of writing I have found:
An introduction paper: HP Integrity NonStop X systems
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/integrity/nonstop/nonstopx-bladesystem.html#!&pd1=1
A data sheet: HP Integrity NonStop X NS7 X1
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA5-7443ENW&cc=us&lc=en
An updated NonStop brochure that now includes the NonStop X family alongside the existing NonStop i family: HP Integrity NonStop
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-2988ENW&&cc=us&lc=en
And of course, there’s a planning guide with a lot of details about power requirements and how the chassis is populated: HP Integrity NonStop X NS7 Planning Guide
http://h20565.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=7792031&docId=emr_na-c04576463&docLocale=en_US
By the time this issue of the Tandemworld is published I suspect there will be even more information made available to the NonStop community, but already blog postings and commentaries are beginning to appear as well. In case you missed it, I posted to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View, on March 31, 2015:
Here comes NonStop X and here’s to another decade or two, or four, of NonStop excitement!
http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2015/03/here-comes-nonstop-x-and-heres-to.html
It’s not every year that a new family of NonStop systems is introduced,
but I have a long association with NonStop systems that pretty much
bookend my own time with NonStop and before that, Tandem Computers. The
day I joined Tandem Computers in Sydney, Australia, they were taking
delivery of a VLX system and it attracted a lot of attention. It was
hard not to consider the VLX as a move up into the mainframe category,
but even so, I was restrained from making the analogy, even though I had
come to Tandem after nearly two decades working on IBM mainframes. As I
was making the move to Cupertino I arrived for the launch of the Cyclone
and was among those on the Tandem campus when the big one hit, the 1989
Loma Prieta earthquake.
Back in 1989 the talk was about being big – the baseball World Series
was underway between cross-Bay teams Oakland and San Francisco. IBM had
launched a new bigger mainframe even as Digital rolled out a serious
system that pushed it up into the mainframe category as well, even
though, as Tandem did, Digital pushed back on the comparison. Something
about standing too close to a legacy platform – even all those years ago
– seemed to make vendors nervous. But the Cyclone went on to great
things for many Tandem users and the option of the Cyclone and the CLX
(announced earlier) opened up new market opportunities for Tandem
Computers.
We have seen the introduction of the Himalaya systems – the K and the S series. With them came support for POSIX APIS and the beginning of a new, open, industry-standard era. ServerNet gained considerable market attention and the technology began attracting other vendors who began licensing the offering from Tandem Computers. ServerNet and RISC technologies were going to occupy center stage for many years with RISC finally succumbing to EPIC as the Intel Itanium engines appeared.
Fast forward to today and it’s all about adding another family to the HP Integrity NonStop product line – standing alongside NonStop i you will now have the option for NonStop X. Yes, it is a family with the first member, a representative of the middle of the range, in terms of family position. Clearly, for those who have watched recent presentation by HP product managers, it’s easy to see that there will be an entry-level system delivered shortly, possibly before the end of HP’s financial year, even as the chalk hasn’t quite settled on the blackboard depicting much more powerful, multi-core NonStop X systems to come. And really, the best way to look at this is that the community will have choice as the NonStop products embrace industry-standard components.
Of this I note in my upcoming column to the NonStop community magazine, The Connection. In the May / June 2015 edition of my column, Back for more … I quote numerous HP executives and managers. Perhaps the most important quote of all I noted came from Martin Fink, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, HP. “It’s been a long journey to where we see NonStop running entirely on industry-standard hardware,” Martin Fink said. “Thanks to the significant investment HP has made in support of NonStop, customers will realize immediate value from the much improved price / performance that NonStop X now provides.”
This was followed by my own observation that even as the word exciting
can be over-used at times, the connection between NonStop and, before
that Tandem, with exciting dates back to the unquenchable and
enthusiastic support for NonStop that originated with the company’s
founder. And it isn’t showing any signs of letting up. Look back at
Randy Meyer, VP & GM, HP Mission Critical Systems, column in the Nov /
Dec, 2014, issue of The Connection. In that issue Randy said, “Our
strategy is clear - HP is committed to providing choice, value and
investment protection to our mission-critical customers. To that end, we
are offering the 100% fault-tolerant solutions our customers rely upon
on x86.”
There will be a lot more published about the NonStop X and there will be
customer and vendor take-up scenarios featured prominently in time. For
more than a year the HP Advanced Technology Center (ATC) had opened its
doors to all parties needing to test their solutions, middleware and
products available today that support NonStop X. As April began I asked
the NonStop community in the LinkedIn group,
Who has, or who knows about, someone having ...
a NonStop X installed.
Hopefully, we will begin to see a picture form. But it will take time and hopefully too, there will be enough feedback to make my next Musings on NonStop an interesting read for all in the NonStop community. Before I conclude this month’s musings, I refer the NonStop community back to comments made by Sean Mansubi that appear in the post to Real Time View referenced in the opening of this musing:
“I am particularly excited about our opportunities to offer hybrid solutions, which are NonStop servers directly tied to other x86 servers running Linux/Unix/Windows via InfiniBand (IB) to create low latency, high performance heterogeneous solutions. We are planning on delivering a Limited Beta Program for partners and customers later this year.”
Hybrids? In Beta test programs later this year? And readers of my musings wonder where the story lines come from, but I will refrain from saying anything more on this topic and save it for a musing later in the year.
Founder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Email:
richard@pyalla-technologies.com
Following my blogs? My web publications? My discussion Groups?
Check out (or
copy and paste to your
browser):
Real Time View
at
http://www.itug-connection.blogspot.com/
…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, Real Time View
comForte at http://blog.comforte.com/
…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, comForte Lounge
Realtime.ir at http://realtime.ir.com/
…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, realtime.ir
WebAction.com at http://webaction.com/blog/
…. And check out the group on
LinkedIn, Data Driven Apps
ATMmarketplace at
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogger.php?id=130763
buckle-up at http://www.buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/
…. And check out the SubGroup on LinkedIn, Pyalla Track Days
NonStop X family arrives as we welcome the first member – the HP NonStop X NS7 X1
The announcement has been made and the story of
NonStop X is gaining traction in the marketplace. As March came to a
close it became official – the first member of the NonStop X family to
reach General Availability (GA) status was the NonStop X NS7 X1 and even
though the name may remind us of futuristic planes or even top of the
line performance models from auto manufacturers, there’s no hiding the
fact that as of now NonStop comprises two distinct families of systems
including the Intel Itanium based NonStop i and the Intel x86 based
NonStop X families.
One of the recent press articles to catch our attention came from the
Australian electronic publication, ITWire. In the article
HP’s long road to a single server architecture writer, Graeme
Philipson, notes how “HP inherited disparate architectures from Tandem,
DEC and Compaq, as well as a couple of its own. Bringing them all
together has been a long process, which is nearly complete … Over the
last decade or more HP has been evolving all these architectures, with
their disparate chip sets and operating systems, towards one hardware
architecture based on Intel processors. ”
Philipson then quotes HP Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise
Group South Pacific, who then gets to the heart of the value proposition
of HP leveraging industry standard Intel x86, “The old mainframe model,
which IBM is persisting with, is simply not cost-effective in the modern
world. The price-performance of the new breed of high end Intel based
servers just blows them away.” This is very clearly the message HP
wishes to convey with the GA of the NonStop X NS7 X1 – the NonStop
family is embracing industry-standard technologies and perhaps the big
jump for many within the NonStop community is the understanding that
from here on out, the OSS personality is the premier platform for
developers and users alike.
At DataExpress this isn’t going unnoticed, nor is it something we think
will go away. OSS is here to stay and that is now influencing our
development plans for our secure managed file transfer products. “Today,
we have two distinct products, DataExpress NonStop (DXNS) and
DataExpress Open Platforms (DXOP) and we are taking steps to see if we
can now consolidate these under a single multi-platform product
offering,” DataExpress President, Michelle Marost, explained. “While as
yet we do not have a customer asking for our DXOP product on OSS,
considering the built in redundancies that NonStop brings to the table,
it just makes sense for us to go there.” But that could all change and
perhaps, with as much talk as there is of hybrid configurations
featuring a mix of NonStop and Linux, customers may look to have just
the one product operating on either side of the NonStop / Linux divide.
As you consider future hybrid configuration it begs the question as to
whether degrees of separation could be configured whereby the Linux
resides within the security DMZ and NonStop inside the internal network,
behind the security provided by the DMZ – it doesn’t take a whole lot of
imagination to think in terms of such separation, given the concerns of
all companies about adding to their security defenses. Given this, said
Marost, “the Linux DXSG would run in the DMZ. Since Infiniband appears
to be the coms mechanism or layer, we sure would like to see it support
FTP transfers at some point, which is what would be needed for the
communications between DXNS and DXSG at this stage.” Not an altogether
surprising assumption and one we know would be beneficial to many
NonStop vendors.
However, more to the point and
in line with heading towards just one product in support of industry
standard systems, “We’d really like to test our DXOP product running on
NonStop OSS, with DXSG running inside and outside firewalls. We believe
the best path for us is running DXOP on NonStop Architecture. However,
we are open to trying any configuration that make sense and if
worthwhile, coding a solution that is desirable for marketability.” And
with that, we are soliciting any and all input from the NonStop
community – please, don’t be shy!
In his most recent post to the DataExpress News Blog Richard Buckle
writes about this topic in more detail and he makes references to other
statements by HP executives here in the Americas. The news is getting
out there and indeed, NonStop X represents a welcome game-changing shift
for HP. For the complete story, read the latest blog post to DataExpress:
ARRIVALS ARE ALWAYS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED … ESPECIALLY FOR THE NONSTOP
COMMUNITY!
Contact Info:
1401 Shoal Creek, Suite 250,
Highland Village, TX 75077
email:
sales@dataexpress.com
Sales:
972-899-3476
Corporate: 972-899-3460
Ban Bottlenecks®
Non-Reactive Performance Management
The industry hasn’t learned much in the 25 years that we’ve been providing the Ban Bottlenecks Performance Management Service. As opposed to our Ban Bottlenecks clients, many mission-critical sites still suffer outages with nothing more than weak excuses that “No one could have anticipated…” Nothing is further from the truth.
With today’s state of the practice of performance management most sites simply don’t collect and review the information required to anticipate problems. You can’t do it by watching a screen change colors, or by focusing on CPU and disk only. You can’t do it by collecting reports and not looking at them. You can’t do it by not understanding the application, the business behind the application, and the business plans driving the application.
Simply put, the mission-critical applications which we manage deserve a much more comprehensive view, a much more integrated collection and examination of all the factors affecting the application. Computer and non-computer factors must be considered.
For the last 25 years Ban Bottlenecks has been successful in collecting, integrating, and analyzing all the factors affecting application availability and performance. Time and again we have shown our clients where their systems will be heading into trouble. They have fixed the issues before there were problems, before there was a service disruption. If this is your goal, give us a call.
Contact us for a free proof of concept!
1.415.256.8369
NuWave Technologies and Information Balance Partner to Expand Application Modernization Practices
On April 8th, NuWave Technologies, an HP NonStop middleware and services company, and Information Balance, a leading provider of application portfolio management software, announced a strategic partnership to expand their NonStop application modernization practices.
Both NuWave and Information Balance have experience catering to global clients who need to modernize applications running on business-critical servers. Information Balance’s ib-ARM (application roadmap) software prepares corporations for this process by providing insight into their current application structure, while NuWave’s solutions actually facilitate the modernization process for HP NonStop users, so this covers the two major steps in the process. This partnership builds a bridge between the two sales teams, creating a streamlined journey for NonStop customers.
At the start of this journey, a sales representative from either NuWave or Information Balance will identify a company’s unique needs and then provide accurate guidance as to whether one of the partners’ solutions would be a good fit. Whether a corporation is planning to modernize their applications, migrate them to another platform, or simply maintain them, ib-ARM can provide the information necessary for organizations to make these decisions and prepare for whichever route they’ve chosen to take. If the customer decides to migrate their applications, NuWave’s SOAPam Server® and their expert consultants can help NonStop users to accomplish a zero-downtime migration.
On the other hand, when a corporation decides to modernize a number of their applications at once, ib-ARM can provide developers with an inventory of all of their components (a roadmap) before they make changes to their applications. For NonStop customers, NuWave’s SOAPam Client® can actually modernize the applications without any changes to the software. This product allows NonStop users to access external information from their NonStop applications, enriching them in real time with current stock prices, currency exchange rates, suppliers’ price quotes, warehouse inventory, and anything else that is in the form of a SOAP Web service.
Information Balance and NuWave Technologies are excited for this new partnership, and the teams will be working closely together to ensure that NonStop customers receive the right solutions to overcome their unique IT challenges. To start modernizing or migrating, contact Gabrielle at NuWave Technologies (
gguerrera@nuwavetech.com, +1-603-546-7379) or Gabor at Information Balance (gszirmak@infobal.com, +1-416-962-5235 x226).
BITUG NEWS
Little SIG – This is being held on HMS Belfast on the 12th May - the first time using this iconic venue. This is a single track event where we're expecting some new announcements from HP and third party vendors, as well as an interesting and varied agenda.
For more details and the latest information on the event including registration go to the BITUG website
www.bitug.com – Registration is now open!
XYGATE Merged Audit now support BASE24 & BASE24-eps!
The ability to track and review all activity on the HP NonStop server is a requirement that is no small task as businesses must quickly identify suspicious activity. To help their customers meet these security standards, HP bundles XYGATE Merged Audit (XMA) with the NonStop Operating System.
XMA is an easy to use product that collects and filters data from various audit logs into a single, normalized SQL database on the NonStop, from which you can generate reports. It can also send that data via SYSLOG to integrate seamlessly with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) devices.
Read the full story at XYPRO.com
XMA has been shipping as part of the NonStop security bundle since 2010, so chances are high that you already have XMA on your system. For more information about purchasing the BASE24 & BASE24-eps plug-ins, please contact your XYPRO Sales Representative.
Learn more about XYGATE Merged Audit
Stay Connected with XYPRO
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn Group
BlogSpot
YouTube
BREAKING NEWS – First Asian HP NonStop customer choses comForte's SecurData
The customer will use SecurData to securely store passwords which are managed on the HP NonStop. Many applications on HP NonStop have historically stored passwords in the clear, creating an easy attack vector which is no longer acceptable today. Securely storing passwords can be a daunting task and that is why comForte’s SecurData product has been enhanced to support “irreversible tokenization”. Using this feature provides for a simple yet extremely secure way to store passwords as tokens and to make it impossible for an attacker to find users’ real passwords even when the whole password database gets into the wrong hands. The irreversible tokenization feature comes in addition to the existing product features such as the ability to transparently change applications including support of SQL/MP.
SecurData provides comprehensive data-at-rest security enabling users to take complete control of their sensitive data and significantly reduce the risk of data breaches without having to make any changes to the application.
Connect With NuWave at Upcoming Events
NuWave will be travelling to key events throughout the world to develop relationships in the NonStop community and speak about connecting NonStop to other platforms, bringing it into the 21st century. Want to network with a member of the NuWave team? Check out our schedule of upcoming events and presentations, and
click here to find more information about each summit. Email Gabrielle at gguerrera@nuwavetech.com or Dave at davidross@nuwavetech.com to schedule a time to meet.
|
Event |
Location |
Dates |
Representative |
Presentation |
|
GTUG |
Munich, Germany |
April 27-29, 2015 |
David Ross |
|
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MENUG |
Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
May 4, 2015 |
David Ross |
How to Increase Your NonStop Interoperability |
|
DUST |
Scottsdale, AZ |
May 12, 2015 |
Gabrielle Guererra |
How to Increase Your NonStop Interoperability |
|
BITUG Little SIG |
London, United Kingdom |
May 12, 2015 |
David Ross |
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N2TUG |
Arlington, TX |
June 24, 2015 |
Gabrielle Guererra |
How to Increase Your NonStop Interoperability |
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NENUG |
Andover, MA |
October 19, 2015 |
Gabrielle Guererra |
TBA |
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CTUG |
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada |
October 21-22, 2015 |
Gabrielle Guererra |
TBA |
NonStop SQL Database Management
As a Database Administrator (DBA), it can become overwhelming to think of all of the tasks I am responsible for; designing databases, extracting data, managing performance (both programs and tables), not to mention I have to do all of this manually. If your job is anything like mine, you know a DBA is always being pushed to do more in less time which makes for stressful days.
Is there a Solution for us and those we work with?
While there are a few Database management tools offered from HP such as NSM/web or MXDM, I believe I have found the ideal solution for all DBA’s, developers, testers and QA analysts and users. Merlon Software Corporation has developed an extensive set of database solutions for SQL/MP and SQL/MX to allow anyone who needs access to NonStop hosted data, regardless of your NonStop knowledge, to manage, manipulate, view, query, and optimize data and the programs that interact with it.
Read the full article at XYPRO.com
Stay Connected with XYPRO
LinkedIn Group
BlogSpot
YouTube
Does it need more CEOs being fired for taking cyber security serious?
For a long time Europe seemed to be the front runner when it came to payment security: European banks were among the first ones adopting SSL encryption to the NonStop in the early days back in the early 2000s. The very first SSL implementation in MR-Win6530 was triggered by a Dutch bank and – what you might not know – we actually implemented the full SSL protocol ourselves due to the export restrictions on cryptography in the US (and funnily enough those make us FREAK out again these days).
Also EMV chip cards were introduced around 2008 in most parts of Europe and seriously increased the difficulty of credit card fraud via cloning of cards. Today, the US is basically the last large country still NOT having EMV implemented. However from what I have been seeing in the industry over the past years things are changing.
Read the first post of this series on security at http://blog.comforte.com/?p=444
NonStop Innovations Blog - What You’ve Been Missing
Healthcare Fraud Exposed
The need for high availability in healthcare is pretty clear. After all, if doctors can't get the data that they need, lives can actually be lost. The need for security is also great—much greater than you would think. In 2012, there was over $12 billion in credit card fraud, about half of which was in the US, and this number grew in 2013 and 2014 as hackers got better at what they do. How is this type of fraud occurring? Once a hacker infiltrates a healthcare provider’s database, what kind of information are they looking for, and how are they using that information? And how are they getting away with this?
Read “Healthcare Fraud Exposed”, the latest NonStop Innovations blog post, where Gabrielle speaks with HP Security Voltage’s Luther Martin about the need for healthcare companies to shift to a high-security, high-availability platform like NonStop. Find out how problematic healthcare fraud has become worldwide, and how turning to NonStop could be a solution.
SaaS Testing Solutions for NonStop Users
Keep your eye out for a two-part series featuring Ascert, a key player in automated end-to-end testing and certification. Learn how you can lower your costs and your risk with fully scalable, cloud-based testing software.
Check the blog frequently to make sure you don’t miss future articles, including these enlightening interviews with Ascert’s Richard Greene. He discusses how their solutions impact the NonStop community, what customers can expect from their services, and how their new cloud delivery method is opening doors to even the smallest companies.
XYPRO looks forward to seeing you throughout 2015
Calendar of Events
April 27-29, 2015 – GTUG
Munich, Germany
April 29, 2015 – E-Crime
Singapore
May 4, 2015 – MENUG
Dubai, UAE
May 4- 8, 2015 – SATUG
Rivonia, South Africa
May 12, 2015 – LittleSIG
The Queen's Walk, London
May 12, 2015 – DUST
Phoenix, AZ
June 2-4, 2015 – HP Discover
Las Vegas, NV
June 8- 11, 2015 – ACI EXCHANGE
New Orleans, LA
June 24, 2015 – N2TUG
Arlington, TX
September 17, 2015 – MATUG
Herndon, Virginia
September 29 - October 1, 2015 – North American PCI SSC Community Meeting
Vancouver, BC, Canada
October 14-15, 2015 – Asia Pacific PCI SSC Community Meeting
Tokyo, Japan
Oct. 19, 2015 – NENUG
Boston, MA
October 21- 22, 2015 – CTUG
Mississauga, Ontario
November 3-5, 2015 – EMEA PCI SSC Community Meeting
Nice, France
November 15-18, 2015 – Connect NonStop Boot Camp
San Jose, CA
Stay Connected with XYPRO
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Twitter
LinkedIn Group
BlogSpot
YouTube
comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dummies' Book!
This book is for anyone with an interest in HP NonStop systems. This
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If you would like to receive a free copy of the 'HP NonStop for Dummies'
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Availability Digest Examines ISIS’ Effective Efforts in Cyber Warfare
ISIS has opened a new front in its attacks against the West – cyber warfare. It has managed to hack thousands of web sites and social networking sites to post threatening messages, including the Facebook page and Twitter account of the U.S. Central Command, the agency responsible for coordinating the air attacks against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. ISIS even succeeded in taking down eleven French TV channels for almost 24 hours. Many of the hacked systems were thought to be exceptionally secure. It indicates that ISIS has developed a sophisticated and effective hacking capability.
“ISIS Turns to Cyber Warfare” examines the success so far of the ISIS hackers, or CyberCaliphate, as they call themselves. It is just one more example of how modern terrorism looks to the Internet for a variety of purposes – propaganda, recruitment, fund raising, data mining, etc.
In addition to “ISIS Turns to Cyber Warfare,” read the following articles in the Availability Digest’s April 2015 issue (http://bit.ly/1czUfDT)
Bank of England Suffers Major Outage – On Monday, 20 October 2014, the Bank of England suffered a serious outage that affected its customers for over a day. Although the system had a backup, IT staff decided not to fail over because the backup had not been tested thoroughly. The outage was particularly embarrassing because BoE recently had criticized other U.K. banks for the lack of technical robustness in their financial systems.
Managing Your Private Cloud – Virtualization has enabled IT infrastructure to become a utility platform. Resources are pooled and are applied to computational loads only as needed. The result is an unparalleled efficiency in the use of computer, storage, and networking infrastructure in a data center. However, a cloud needs constant managing as its mix changes and as application workloads grow.
VMTurbo – Managing Virtualization – VMTurbo is a monitoring and management tool that maintains a virtualized data center in the “Desired State.” It defines the “Desired State” of a virtualized environment as that which eliminates inefficiencies without compromising application performance.
@availabilitydig – The Twitter Feed of Outages - This article highlights some of the numerous @availabilitydig tweets that were favorited and retweeted in recent days.
The Availability Digest offers one-day and multi-day seminars on High Availability: Concepts and Practices. Seminars are given both onsite and online and are tailored to an organization’s specific needs. We also offer technical and marketing writing services as well as consulting services.
Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com. Please visit our Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn. We’re at 686 members and counting. Our latest thread discusses the challenges faced by financial institutions in replacing decades-old legacy systems. Follow us as well on Twitter @availabilitydig.
Working with Large XML Documents in COBOL
Overview
XML documents can be very large. Those adhering to the schemas defined by organizations such as SWIFT and ACORD can contain thousands of different nodes. Others, such as those created for batch processing, can contain thousands of occurrences of a given repeating structure (e.g. a list of orders for the month). It is not uncommon for an XML document to exceed 25MB in size.
Using a technique called “streaming,”
XML Thunder from Canam Software Labs supports the efficient and effective reading and writing of large XML documents in COBOL.
Challenges of Working with Large XML Documents in COBOL
Working with large XML documents in application programs can present several challenges. This is especially true for programs written with procedural languages that require pre-defined, static variables such as COBOL. These challenges include:
· Poor response times – The elapsed time from the start to finish for parsing or creating extremely large XML documents may be prohibitive for real-time applications.
· Inefficient use of system resources - To create or parse an XML document all at once in a program will require:
o One field large enough to hold the entire document
o One or more fields to hold the contents contained in the document
Consider the program declaration area below where a 30,000,000 byte field has been declared to hold an entire XML document and a nested repeating structure has been declared to hold up to 1,000 Banks – each with up to 1,000,000 accounts.
Figure 1: Sample program data structures for XML document and contents
Declaring variables of this size will require a large amount of program memory at runtime. Even more troubling is that only a portion of this memory may ever be required. The variables must be declared to work with the most extreme case anticipated – a 30,000,000 byte XML document. The reality may be that documents approaching anything close to this size will rarely - if ever - be encountered.
· Compiler limitations - In addition to an inefficient use of program memory, declaring variables to hold the largest XML document anticipated is sometimes not even possible. In some cases, the variable declarations required will exceed compiler size limits and the program will not compile.
·
Proper handling of unbounded structures - The main cause of large XML documents is usually an “unbounded” repeating structure. In XML terms, “unbounded” means that the structure can repeat an unlimited number of times (i.e. there is no upper bounds). For practical purposes, an upper bound can be established to support the most extreme case expected. However, using this approach means that the program is limited arbitrarily to processing a certain number of occurrences of a structure. If that limit is ever exceeded, the program will not be able to process the additional occurrences.
The Solution – “Streaming” XML
The solution for working with a very large XML document in a COBOL program is to “stream” the document and process it one portion at a time. When done properly, streaming enables COBOL developers to work efficiently with XML documents of unlimited size without hitting compiler or resource limitations.
While there are several approaches for streaming, Canam Software recommends streaming based on repeating structures in a document. This is accomplished by working with a “flattened” structure for program data fields and processing repeating structures, one iteration at a time. Instead of defining structures with OCCURS clauses, “count” fields are added to control the repeating structures. Consider the example shown earlier modified for a streaming approach.
The above declaration allocates significantly less storage (30,030 bytes vs 9,030,009,000 bytes).
In the upcoming issues of Tandem World, we’ll cover in detail how XML Thunder uses a streaming approach to read and write XML documents of any size.
For more information on how XML Thunder can help with your XML and JSON processing needs, contact Canam Software Labs at info@canamsoftware.com or visit www.XMLThunder.com.
comForte at events near you in 2015
The Event Calendar is filling up quite quickly. Join us at these events:
Int'l GTUG 27-29 April 2015 Munich, Germany
MENUG 4 May 2015 Dubai, UAE
SATUG 4-8 May 2015 Jo'burg, RSA
BITUG Little SIG 12 May 2015 London, UK
HP Discover 2-4 June 2015 Las Vegas, USA
MATUG 17 Sept Herndon, VA
NENUG 29 Sept 2015 Boston, USA
PCI Community Meeting, North America 29 Sept - 1 Oct 2015 Vancouver,
Canada
The Payment Knowledge Forum 2015 5-6 Oct 2015 London, UK
PCI Community Meeting, Asia Pacific 14-15 Oct 2015 Tokyo, Japan
CTUG 21 Oct 2015 Toronto, Canada
PCI Community Meeting, Europe 3-5 Nov 2015 Nice, France
Connect NonStop TBC 15-18 Nov 2015 San Jose, CA, USA
And there is more, join the security discussion in the HP NonStop
[Tandem] Security Group on LinkedIn.
Last but not least, follow us on ...
NEW - comForteLounge Blog
comForteLounge LinkedIn Group
comForteLounge Twitter
comForte on YouTube
NENUG Welcomes NonStop Users from Northeast Region
NENUG has historically been known as the New England NonStop user group, but this year we are welcoming all NonStop users in the northeast region. The conference will be held on October 19th (save the date!) at the HP offices in Andover, Massachusetts, and we are pleased to announce that Tom Moylan will be our keynote speaker.
If you are a user and would like to give a user presentation, please contact Gabrielle at gguerrera@nuwavetech.com or (603) 546-7379 (vendors will be able to register for a presentation slot on Eventbrite at a later date). Keep your eye out for email updates, and if you don't think you are on the NENUG email list, contact Gabrielle.
The new comForte Newsletter is available
The latest comForte Newsletter is now available providing you with company and product updates.
www.comforte.com/cF_NewsletterQ2_2015
Don’t Let Low Pins Put the Brakes on your High-Speed CPUs
It is a challenge that is amplified whenever CPU processing power increases. No matter how fast the latest CPU technology, no matter how advantageous it may appear to replace existing CPUs with fewer, measurably enhanced performers, there remains one unalterable reality. CPU consolidation reduces the already limited low-pin process resources still required by so many applications. Nowadays, thousands of processes can run simultaneously in one CPU. Of those thousands, only 255 (0 – 254) per CPU can be allocated to low-pin activities. Reduce the number of CPUs, and you decrease the number of low pins. That alone slams the brakes on systems with otherwise highly impressive transaction capacities.
TANDsoft’s OPTA-Low PIN Optimizer comes to the rescue, yet another example of TANDsoft’s years of experience as an interception specialist.
Although ample low-pin resources may exist throughout the system, an excess low-pin demand in any single CPU will lead to low-pin process creation failure. Managed ineffectively, low-pin processes disrupt application environments and create operational bottlenecks. OPTA-Low Pin Optimizer automatically redirects and balances low-pin process creation across a server’s CPUs to ensure efficient allocation of system resources. It reduces failures by monitoring low-pin processes in each CPU. When a CPU maximizes its low-pin allotment, process creations are redirected to a CPU with available low pins. OPTA-Low Pin Optimizer does not provide additional low-pin resources. Instead, it efficiently manages your existing supply.
TANDsoft OPTA-Low Pin Optimizer
● Reduces the need to buy additional CPUs just to increase the number of low-pin resources.
● Monitors HP Nonstop low-pin activity per CPU.
● Significantly decreases low-pin process creation failures by automatically selecting a CPU with available low pins.
● Customer can specify the CPU order in which low pins spill over.
● Ensures that all low-pin system resources are used effectively.
● Requires no application source-code modifications.
● Supports in-house, HP, and major third-party solutions, even those where source code is unavailable.
● Available for NonStop X and all other NonStop servers.
In addition to OPTA-Low Pin Optimizer, TANDsoft solutions include FileSync for automatic file synchronization, replication, and data deduplication; the OPTA2000 virtual clock- and time-zone simulator; the OPTA suite of interception and trace utilities (OPTA-Trace Online Process Tracer and Analyzer, Recycle Bin, EMS Alerts Online Startup and Termination Capture Utility); Stack Monitor, which alerts developers to the impending threat of a stack overflow; Command Stream Replicator, which logs and automatically replicates TMF-audited/unaudited FUP, SQL/MP and SQL/MX DDL structure and other environment changes to target systems; AutoLib, which automatically loads a user library or a DLL for executing processes; the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits and the Enscribe-2-SQL Data Replicator, all of which offer flexible, affordable alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion techniques; E2S-Lite, which permits efficient, low-cost Enscribe modifications without the need to change a program’s source code; and SDI/LOG (Sensitive Data Intercept), which logs Sensitive Data access to Enscribe files and SQL/MP tables.
For information about TANDsoft solutions, contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. Free trials are available. www.tandsoft.com.
Opsol Integrators’ Custom Development Services – Fixed Price, Rapid Turnaround
Opsol Integrators Inc. (www.opsol.com) specializes in the custom development of HP NonStop mission-critical applications. “Opsol” is short for Open Solutions. We founded Opsol twenty years ago as a means to address customer interest in what was then the new development model of open source. We have built and ported numerous open-source solutions to NonStop servers running under OSS, NonStop’s “open” environment.
Nowadays, the NonStop architecture is even more “open,” thereby reducing the challenges once encountered to port Linux/Unix code. Yet considerations remain at times in mapping open-source solutions to the NonStop OSS architecture. That’s when companies turn to Opsol, recognized in the IT industry as a leading HP NonStop system integrator.
Opsol is known for fixed-price application development and for meeting our deadlines. In fact, our team of 100-plus NonStop programmers can complete just about any project within six months. We implement solutions from scratch, and we customize and enhance existing system components to operate cost-effectively, more efficiently, and with less risk.
Our professional services include architecture design and reviews, programming, web integration, quality assurance, staff training, production, and deployment. We build applications on all NonStop platforms, including NonStop X. From our seven worldwide locations, we serve as a managed services provider for remote production monitoring.
Those same custom development skills allowed Opsol Integrators to create the popular OmniPayments financial-transaction switch. Now produced by OmniPayments, Inc. www.omnipayments.com, Opsol’s product arm, OmniPayments is a comprehensive architecture by which financial institutions acquire, authenticate, route, switch and authorize transactions across multiple input channels such as ATMs, POS terminals, kiosks, IVRs and the Internet. It supplies a full set of functionalities to support payment transactions. Based on a modern Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), OmniPayments’ service components are all built for HP NonStop.
Even more impressive is OmniPayments’ guarantee that its financial transaction switch will save a company at least 50% of its current transaction processing costs.
OmniCloudX is a SaaS cloud platform implemented on the new NonStopX. It hosts numerous instances of OmniPayments on a pay-for-use basis and at a price so attractive that mid-size retailers now can afford the benefits of NonStop’s legendary, mission-critical platform. Each OmniCloudX customer pays only for the amount of CPU resources, storage, and networking that it uses. OmniCloudX provides backup systems so that a system outage will be recoverable immediately by switching the retailer to another system in the cloud, perhaps even at a different physical location. OmniPayments, Inc. supplies all of the IT staff needed to manage the transaction switches running in its cloud. Also supplied are complete security functions for every transaction handled, including encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-flight. OmniCloudX uses tokenization to comply with PCI-DSS specifications.
Available around the clock, OmniCloudX will survive any single fault, requires no downtime for maintenance or upgrades, and supports a range of disaster-recovery solutions. It is easily expandable to provide additional functionality when needed. Additionally, OmniCloudX can manage multiple devices, can host application interfaces, and can interoperate with third-party products or other systems if required. Like OmniPayments, OmniCloudX supports EMV smart-card technology.
Opsol Integrators’ commitment to the quality of its OmniPayments solution extends to the commitments it makes for its professional services. For further information, about Opsol’s custom development offerings, the OmniPayments financial transaction switch, or OmniCloudX SaaS solutions, contact Yash Kapadia at +1 408-446-9274 or at
yash@omnipayments.com.
Visit OmniPayments in the Partner Pavilion at the 2ND Annual Middle East NonStop User Group (MENUG) on May 4th at the Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Resort.
Third Data Corporation
Securing Data and Accelerated Applications
888-301-2431 / sales@thirddata.com
Third Data Corporation provides numerous products which can reside on HP Nonstop and other HP hardware platforms. In addition we provide custom high performance software design and development for our clients. Don't forget to download the latest version of Sysbusy. It's FREE at www.thirddata.com/dwnlds.html
Securing Data in Flight
NxSSL – NxSSL is an SSL proxy which may be used to provide SSL encryption and authentication services to TCP/IP connections. It provides full support for certificates and multiple encryption standards. It has been carefully tuned to provide the highest performance available for any NonStop SSL connection.
NxWeb – A high performance web server which provides support for NxLib applications. It also can be used without NxLib. It provides for secure connections, virtual domains, full http support and interfaces to pathway and IPC communications.
Securing Data at Rest
SecureStore – If you are security conscience trying to become compliant (PCI, HIPAA, etc) then you know that you can not leave sensitive data readily viewable. SecureStore does three things for you. The data is encrypted so that you can become compliant. The data is compressed so that your hardware costs are reduced. As part of disaster recovery your data is sent to multiple locations so it will be available when you need it. As a bonus for those having trouble with Guardian 4K limits there is no record size. It supports Big Data with up to 18 Exabytes. It can also integrate with SQL systems (SQL MX/MP, Oracle, Postgres etc).
NxFile+ – NxFile+ provides compression and encryption to Enscribe structured files. The files are configured through an XML interface and the results are provided seamlessly to your applications, typically without any code changes. In addition this provides for dynamic key changes on the fly so data stored at-rest may have its encryption keys changed as required. Because the records can be compressed prior to encryption, it’s also possible to have records which significantly exceed the current record size limitations.
Accelerated Development of High-Speed Applications
NxLib – NxLib provides a platform and utility libraries for developing a high performance multi-threaded applications on NonStop Guardian. The platform provides threading, queuing and network capabilities. This enables development of an application written single threaded style to perform as multi-threaded. Extensible command processing and help are supported. Development time can be cut to a fraction of the time it would normally take. This results in fast application development with consistent look and feel across multiple projects.
FastBuild Switch – When building a switch be it ATM-POS, Wire Transfer, EFT, Medical, or any other type of data that needs to get from one place to another, you are usually faced with three choices. Take an existing package and modify your system to match it. Get the vendor to “enhance” their system to meet your needs. Write a new system from scratch. The FastBuild Switch integrates with your existing system, or if you are building from scratch gives you a great start. The switch is also built around the latest HP technology to maximize performance. It integrates several of our other products to maximize cost savings and security in a fault tolerant manner. In a cross platform environment it also runs on other non-Guardian HP supplied platforms.
Find out more about us at
www.tandemworld.net
+44 (0) 20 8304 7979
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