Tandemworld eNewsletter for Jan 2013

This is solved for the interactive system access by the GreenHouse product SECOM ‐ but accessing GUI applications ‐ such as Visual Inspect, NSM/Web, or MXDM ‐ with a functional user still requires the related password.

In total GreenHouse developed four products controlling individual and ID‐mapping access are:

They are implemented as libraries and bring PCI‐security to FTP as well as NonStop GUI supplications.

So much has changed in just twelve months. It was only a short time ago when we all were immersed in SOA and Web services and in discussions about how best we can integrate current business logic with the work being done to improve the user interface. As momentum swung to the user’s experience, the potential to integrate the wealth of business logic developed over decades with information easily accessed from other sources, including the web, proved tantalizing and many have embraced architectures associated with SOA.

Along the way, early adopters quickly recognized how easy it became to apply logic designed for one channel to something completely different. Applications designed to support bank branch operations were enhanced to support online banking, ATMs and even mobile banking. However, this past twelve months has driven home just how important the use of Big Data and Clouds have become in terms of retaining business advantages and, as a result, so many discussions have started about the future of NonStop with respect to participation in Big Data and Cloud initiatives.
For those who read last month’s Musings on NonStop, you may recall that I wrote:

Clouds! Big Data! Only a few years ago not many of us had any inkling that these technologies would become as influential as they have become, or that they would prove to be powerful catalysts for change to the point where many CIOs believe that they see the possibility of a vastly different model for future enterprise IT deployments…

I was reminded of this as I exchanged emails with a number of vendors as well as the folks at Connect about the content of the May – June issue of The Connection where the theme will be Modernization. As you can imagine this is a pretty broad topic but what quickly materialized is that any discussion on modernization cannot be pursued without some reference to Clouds and Cloud Computing, so I am now working on an article featuring NonStop and Clouds. Again, who could have guessed – projects are under way to ensure Clouds are viable resource options for solutions vendors looking to complement components running on NonStop with other components farmed out to inexpensive cloud resources. As an aside, I have my fingers crossed that a couple of new products will make the presence felt on the HP NonStop stand at this year’s HP Discover event; but about that, watch for upcoming posts to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View.

As for Big Data, this is being pursued on several fronts – from monitoring solutions providers, including Integrated Research where you will find an opinion paper, Big Data Drives Monitoring Changes! This paper can be downloaded from IR site if you follow this link: http://realtime.ir.com/category/big-data-drives-monitoring-changes. I am also involved with a start-up that should be making its presence felt, too, among the NonStop community very shortly. And of course, I have written a number of opinion papers on Big Data for Attunity that will be the subject of a webinar that, fortunately, has been moved to later this month – March 27^th. Check the Attunity web site for more about it and join the webinar to hear what I have to say about Big Data.

When you visit the Attunity site, make sure you check out their blog by following the link: http://www.attunity.com/blog. I just finished reading two of the posts on Big Data posted earlier this month and I found what was discussed very useful. Both are by Attunity’s Matt Benato, VP Global Marketing - Data is a Leader's Best Friend (March 7, 2013) and Big Data Gives Decision Makers an Edge (March 6, 2013), and include the quotes:

Big data allows the creation of spontaneous and novel conclusions. Advanced analytics use is not like traditional business intelligence, in that it can accept questions that are open-ended and lead to unexpected places. Leaders with big data at their side can access a constant well of inspiration, all based on data sets too large to comb through manually.

Due to the rise of cloud computing, mobility and other IT trends, however, individuals are now working from virtually anywhere, creating challenges with implementing a single data set …leveraging replication tools will be increasingly important to ensure all executives have access to the same information, allowing for more consistent conclusions.

So much has changed in the past twelve months, but what hasn’t changed is that we are still talking about NonStop and the role NonStop systems will play in future solutions implementations. For that, HP has to be thanked as they continue to pursue a business model anchored around commoditization – an ongoing program to ensure every possible unnecessary cost is wrung from the platform. And for this, the NonStop community has to be pleased and with the acceptance of the latest Blades packages that I am seeing among the NonStop community. It would seem everyone is benefitting, and able to maintain discussions about use case scenarios of the future

Please register for the Mid-Atlantic Tandem User Group (MATUG) Meeting scheduled for May 3, 2013 in Chantilly, Virginia, USA. MATUG is open to any NonStop customer, partner, user, consultant, or interested party. Please contact Susan Loeliger (Chapter Secretary/Treasurer) at sbproductmanagement@gravic.com to register. Members are usually from the following states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia. MATUG provides members with the opportunity to participate in quality informational sessions, and learn about new HP products and services as well as interact with fellow HP NonStop users. Please visit the MATUG Connect Chapter web page for more information.

Gravic recently attended and presented its case study, One Bank’s March Towards Active/Active (A Strong Reminder Why Successfully Testing Your Business Continuity Plan Actually Matters) at recent meetings for N2TUG in Grapevine, Texas, SunTUG in Tampa and MRTUG in Chicago. We appreciated the opportunity to meet with customers and share ideas regarding how Shadowbase data replication could provide business solutions to their most pressing business issues within business continuity, data integration, data replication, and their synchronization needs. Our presentation is based on the case study that led to Gravic winning the HP and Intel 2012 Mission-Critical Innovation Award. If you missed our presentation and would like a copy, or have any questions about how Shadowbase can assist you in solving your business continuity, data replication, zero downtime migrations, or other real-time data integration needs, please contact us. To read an article based on the award submission, please click here.

Third Data Corporation

High Performance Switching and Secure Data Storage

888-301-2431 (USA)

Third Data Corporation provides numerous products which can reside on HP Nonstop and other HP hardware platforms.

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 good 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 cross platform environment it also runs on other non-Guardian HP supplied platforms.

SecureStore – If you are 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 three (or more) 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.

NxLib – NxLib provides a platform and utility libraries for developing a high performance multi-threaded applications on NonStop Guardian. The platform provides threading capability. 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.

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.

NxUndelete – Files accidentally deleted can be a real problem. Even when a backup is available, it is frequently a significant effort to retrieve it from a backup tape. NxUndelete implements a recycle bin function on the the HP NonStop system. Files deleted may be easily recovered using its GUI interface.

NxFile+ – NxFile+ provides compression and encryption to Enscribe structured files. The files are configured through a GUI 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 it’s 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 4k record size limitations. The savings in disk I/O typically pay for the overhead of the compression and encryption.

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.

www.thirddate.com

XYPRO’s extensive database management expertise is available to you as a service to help reduce risk and optimize your database, which in turn allows you to focus on bigger picture issues.

To see the " Solutions Chart " that indicates the categories and products that position NonStop more integral in the organization and contribute to the significant benefits associated with Standardization, go to - www.cail.com/nssc , www.cail.com/cabenefits

Compliance to key standards such as PCI/DSS is a mandated requirement, but being compliant does not mean that your HP Nonstop system is secure.

Visit and subscribe to the comForte YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/comforte21 to watch short product videos and replay some of our recorded webinars.

CommitWork Developer Suite (CDS),
for traditional NonStop software development on NonStop supports now:

OmnivoMobile
Enterprise users can now start connecting Smartphones and Tablets to HP NonStop with the new:

The OPTA suite of interception and trace utilities showcase TANDsoft’s expertise with interception technology. Our OPTA intercept engine includes an API that allows developers to write custom code to easily extend the capabilities of all HP Nonstop applications. OPTA solutions include:

Process Stack Monitor: Use this OPTA utility in development and testing environments to analyze an application’s stack usage for memory shortages within the call stack. Programmers get a clear snapshot of all their programs on one screen and can evaluate trace files globally or one file at a time. With Process Stack Monitor, programs don’t abend, unscheduled downtime is avoided, and users aren’t inconvenienced.

OPTATrace Online Process Tracer and Analyzer: OPTA-Trace seamlessly intercepts and traces procedure calls made to the NonStop Kernel operating system. Among other uses, it captures and records transaction flows and statistics, prevents deadlock situations, detects memory leaks, sets system procedure breakpoints, and adds user exits to procedure invocations.

Recycle Bin: Add Recycle Bin to your system for fast retrieval of your files. Purged files are stored in Recycle Bin until you decide to restore them or to delete them permanently. When Recycle Bin fills up, it automatically cleans out enough space to accommodate the most recently deleted files. Files can be compressed, and different Recycle Bin sizes can be specified as a percentage of the disk capacity.

Low Pin Optimizer: Managed ineffectively, NonStop Low-PIN (0 through 254) processes disrupt application environments and create operational bottlenecks. 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 low-PIN process creation failures by monitoring low-PIN processes in each CPU. When a CPU maximizes its low-PINs, process creations are redirected to a CPU with available low PINs.

EMS Alerts Online Startup and Termination Capture Utility: EMS Alerts traces an application’s startup and termination calls via EMS messages. When an application starts, EMS Alerts will display the Startup, Assign, and Param messages plus the process Defines used by the executing application. Prior to application termination, EMS Alerts will generate an EMS message as well as invoke a trigger for follow-on processing via a customer-provided user exit. Custom metadata can be added to application program object files.

TANDsoft’s “best of breed, best in price” philosophy offers highly competitive value for all TANDsoft solutions. In addition to the OPTA product suite, they include the OPTA2000 virtual clock- and time-zone simulator; Command Stream Replicator, which automatically logs and replicates NonStop SQL/MP, SQL/MX, Enscribe DDL and other HP utility (FUP, SQLCI, MXCI, SCF, TACL) commands to the backup system; FileSync for automatic file synchronization and replication; the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits, which offer flexible, affordable alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion techniques; and AutoLib, which automatically loads a user library or a DLL for executing processes.

TANDsoft products require no application source-code modifications, are available for all HP NonStop servers, and support major third-party applications. Free trials are available. For information about TANDsoft solutions, contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. Our Enscribe to SQL Migration Forum on LinkedIn is at 157 members and counting.

www.tandsoft.com

Availability Digest Introduces Nagios Open-Source Monitoring for HP NonStop, Courtesy of Bank-Verlag.

Bank-Verlag GmbH is a subsidiary of the Association of German Banks and provides IT services, including systems for card-based payment transactions and electronic banking, to private banks throughout Germany. When Bank-Verlag decided to adopt a common monitoring facility that would manage the broad range of systems found in its two data centers, it chose the open-source Nagios monitoring application. Nagios supports the company’s Windows, Unix, and Linux systems, but it does not support Bank-Verlag’s HP NonStop servers. To address this challenge, Bank-Verlag created its own monitoring subsystem for NonStop. BVmonitoring, as the software is named, fully integrates NonStop servers into the Nagios monitoring facility.

Guest author Wolfgang Breidbach, Bank-Verlag’s NonStop System Manager, introduces BVmonitoring to Digest readers. More than a Nagios client, BVmonitoring is a general-purpose monitoring tool and can act as a client to any system-monitoring facility. Bank-Verlag is currently modifying BVmonitoring so that it uses an Enscribe database, thereby eliminating the need for SQL/MP. Bank-Verlag plans to license the BVmonitoring software to other Nagios users with similar Nonstop integration challenges.

A Personal Failover Fault – Digest Editor Bill Highleyman was about to give a presentation on data-center outages when he became the victim of a failover fault. Availability is all about providing a service, no matter what. Learn how Bill was able to apply the principles of high availability to his own dilemma.

The Causes of Outages – The Availability Digest recently analyzed over 250 outages reported in our Never Again series. The outages represent a cross section of downtime triggers over the last seven years. “The Causes of Outages” identifies the ratio of hardware, software, network, and environmental factors that contributed to the outage events. What may be of most interest is that human actions were a contributing factor in 60% of all the outages.

Cyber Threats Surpass Terrorism – Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in early March, 2013, James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, testified that cyber threats have now surpassed terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States. This conclusion is documented in the United States Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to U.S. national security.

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 for achieving high availability.

Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com. Please visit our Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn. We’re at 535 members and counting.

Today, the task of building and maintaining IT systems is more complex than ever before. The need for business continuity, an increase in critical transactional links to other systems and personal privacy requirements, to name but a few, all place security into focus. This is all in an environment of increasing regulation by government and industry organisations.

Businesses now have to ensure that their investments in security are delivering on the promised protection of their IT environments. Does the business make best use of security products and services ? Does the business follow best practices ? Is exposure to risk minimised ?

Customers are finding that a Security Review from an independent third party is now welcome before they are exposed to a searching Security Audit.

This is where BrightStrand International can help. We have skilled and experienced NonStop Security consultants who can undertake detailed Security Reviews to ratify that your security is sound or to identify situations where it can be improved. BrightStrand can then work with you to apply any necessary changes to meet today’s stringent Security standards.

All, or some of these elements can be brought together in a Fully Managed Service that can be tailored to the particular needs of the customer – including remote bridging, hosting or operations support, adding further value to the BrightStrand quality services.

Call Dave Stewart today on +44 (0)7831 775115 or email him on dstewart@brightstrand.com for more information.

Customers should attend DISCOVER 2013 if their main focus is high-level and/or oriented toward seeing what “greater HP” has to offer as well as learning what is new in the NonStop world. NonStop participation at DISCOVER will include eight breakout sessions - divided between business/solutions, relatively high-level technical content such as Roadmaps, and a presence in the Expo.

Discover 2013 will be held in Las Vegas at the Venetian hotel and resort from June 11-13. Registration is now open: http://h30614.www3.hp.com/discover

Customers should attend the Connect NonStop Advanced Technical Boot Camp (TBC) and upcoming RUG meetings for NonStop-specific, technically-focused content from HP, Partners and Customers. Detailed technical content and the NonStop Availability awards presentation will be at the Boot Camp held in San Jose on November 3-5, 2013.

In 2012 there were 27 technical presentations and 25+ Partners available for questions/answers in the Partner Pavilion.

Elementary, my dear Watson

Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com. Please visit our Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn. We’re at 535 members and counting.