NonStop ™ Newsletter for September 2020

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Contents

 Who doesn’t love a Farmer?

Let's Talk About Performance

One of the questions we at NuWave are often asked about our products is "What is the performance like?".  While our own internal benchmarking shows that LightWave ServerTM and LightWave ClientTM can process thousands of transactions per second with minimal impact on CPU utilization, the answer to that question is generally a little more complicated.

Any product's performance in any given NonStop environment will be based on many factors, including:

·        Capabilities of the platform it is running on (CPU, disk etc)

·        Priority of the process relative to the other processes on the system

·        Type of work being done by the product (i.e is it I/O bound or CPU bound?)

In the case of products of client-server middleware products like LightWave ServerTM and LIghtWave ClientTM , you can add to this list the following:

·        Size of messages being parsed

·        Complexity of messages being parsed

·        Network capabilities

·        Any security implications, e.g. TLS sessions being established or signatures being generated as part of the measured period

And there likely will be other specific issues to consider in your environment. Having said all that, LightWave products include a range of features to help you determine how your implementation is performing in your own environment.  When combined with standard tools available on the NonStop and elsewhere, it's not too difficult to get an accurate idea of how well your entire solution is performing, and even to improve performance, often by addressing some low-hanging fruit.

The complete article, How to Get the Best out of the LightWave Products, Pathway, and NonStop, will give you some guidance on how you might set up a performance benchmarking test that takes into account all of your specific application and environmental requirements.  

Virtu-NUG had its challenges: but what to present?
Next Generation Reflex process to be a good choice

With the announcement that the planned NonStop Technical Boot Camp has gone virtual means many of us will be fine-tuning our presentation skills. In front of a camera, no less! And while this may be natural for some, there are few vendors with Hollywood credentials. Fortunately, with the Virtu-NUG events of late, we have at least been given the opportunity to brush up on skills.

Few of us facing a video “tapping” have access to studio-level equipment nevertheless the quality of the videos used during the last series of virtual events met the needs of participants. Fortunately, the year 2020 will not finish with the equivalent of Academy Awards but as we adjust to this global pandemic and the isolation and self-distancing it calls for, with practice comes confidence and who knows, the NonStop community might enjoy such interactions.

I have been presenting, training and pronouncing on the advantages of Insider Technologies product set for over 20 years, across various User Groups, customer installations and training sessions but not one of them has involved the use of video. When Karl Gilbank, Insider Technologies Managing Director, looked at the new Reflex UI and suggested to me:

“Dave, you need to make a video presentation about the latest UI, how it was developed, the advantages of LightWave Server for the development process and then then introduce it at the upcoming Virtu-NUG”.

Looking to retain full employment I dutifully accepted the challenge and proceeded to write a script even as I weathered numerous rewrites, and when the time came, it seemed to do the job even as I have to admit, it felt a little odd watching myself taking my turn in the spotlight. Yes, I couldn’t help it but I just had to see what the finished product looked like even if it did seem strange.

As I was later to admit, I wasn’t too keen on watching it but vanity, intrigue and masochism prevailed.  In the end, I was glad I did, because I was quite proud of my little self and it did stand up to other presentations in VIRTU-NUG.

My presentation just happened to be the second part of a two part presentation that called upon NuWave to precede me – Insider Technology and NuWave are now partners and NuWave’s LightWave Server just happens to be representative of our first collaboration. A report on this and more, appeared recently in the July – August 2020 issue of The Connection – look for the article Next Generation Reflex @ VIRTU-NUG.

If this hyperlink doesn’t take you to the article, then cut and paste this URL into your browser:
https://connect2nonstop.com/next-generation-reflex-virtu-nug/

With as much discussion as there is today about the new normal and what seminars, conferences and events will look like there is no escaping the reality that virtual is here to stay. Is it a step forward in user – vendor interaction that delivers the same social networking opportunities that we have been used to is still very much up in the air – or just temporary awkwardness ?

However, what cannot be discounted is that this is the normal for now and that for many of us, myself included, we will just have to spend more time in front of a mirror, practicing! For now, we still have our web site and the phones still work. Should you like to know more about Insider Technologies and about our next generation Reflex, then visit our site or email us directly. We welcome all opportunities to discuss these latest developments with you!

hello@insidertech.co.uk

Q/Restore

In an article from Yahoo News Business Wire, July 8, 2020.  Sam Werner, VP, Storage Offering Management at IBM is quoted:

“LTO technology’s inherent air-gap along with its low cost of ownership make tape technology one of the most secure and most cost-effective data storage options for enterprises that require reliable long-term archival storage to manage the surge in data generation.”

Tape still has a place in HPE NonStop but because of the way NonStop Restore retrieves files recovering those files can take a very long time.  However, we don’t have to live with long restore times.  Q/Restore from QSA Enterprises greatly reduces the time it takes to restore files backed up on large capacity tape volumes.  This is how…

Anatomy of a backup tape:

The HP Nonstop backup program has always built backup tapes using the same basic format.  At the beginning of the tape is written a number of records describing the backup and the tape being written to.  This is followed by the files.  For each backed up file, there is a metadata record followed by multiple blocks of file data.  The backup is then concluded with a number of trailer records.

To keep the contents of the backup tape set in a predictable order the files are backed up in alphabetical order.  This way, if the restore process reads a metadata record from the tape that refers to a disk file name that is alphabetically greater than the file that the restore process is attempting to find, it can be assumed that the target filename is not present on the tape.

Down side of this architecture:

The problem with this is the restore process has to read the metadata record for every file on the tape until the target file is reached.  This takes time.  And considering the I/O has to complete before the restore process can issue the command to skip to the next file, it takes a lot of time. 

Large capacity tapes exacerbate the problem:

The time it takes for the restore process to find a file has become a huge problem with the large capacity tape cartridges.  The restore process might have to do hundreds of thousands of reads before the target file is found, and that means many hours of wasted time.

The solution:

Q/Restore examines the catalog entries deposited by any of the existing cataloging technologies (Q/Tos, DSM/TC and TMF) to determine where the target files are located within the tape set.  Then the correct tape volume is requested and the tape is positioned to the exact location of the target file and control is passed to the restore process.  In doing this, we have reduced the number of reads from an undetermined number to just one and there are no delays waiting on I/O completion to advance the tape by one file at a time.

Flexibility:

Until now we’ve addressed restoring one (1) file from a backup tape.  But there is more to Q/Restore than that.  Q/Restore accepts multiple filesets and repositions the tape at the completion of each fileset.  If the multiple filesets span multiple tape volumes Q/Restore will skip directly to the next required tape volume without reading to the end of the tape.  And the next volume doesn’t have to be the next tape volume in the tape set.

How fast is it?

Tests at our lab and at customer sites show ad hoc restores completing in 10% to 15% of the time it takes to restore the same file(s) without using Q/Restore. 

The results are dependent upon the speed of the tape drive and the makeup of the files backed up.  A backup of few but large files won’t show the performance improvement of a backup containing many files.

Here is an example from our lab using a DAT drive:

Backup elapsed time: 4 hours 9 minutes

Tapes used: 2

Tape1 files: 4420

Tape1 bytes: 3644978480

Tape2 files: 6175

Tape2 bytes: 3458110941

File restored from Tape2, file offset 6168

Legacy restore elapse time: 50 minutes

Q/Restore elapse time:          5 minutes

For more information email us.

Lower Costs

Gravic recently published a new HPE Shadowbase Technical Brief on Managing Latency. One of the most critical aspects of data replication performance is latency, and this brief reviews the two most important types: replication latency and application latency.

Application latency is primarily noticeable when using the Shadowbase Zero Data Loss (ZDL) solution for synchronous replication. When the source application calls transaction commit to make its data changes permanent, Shadowbase ZDL must ensure that the data changes are safe-stored on the target system before allowing the source transaction to commit. A consequence of this process is that the time taken for the source application’s transaction commit to complete may be extended. This additional commit time is known as the application latency. For more information, read the solution brief: https://www.shadowbasesoftware.com/publications/solution-briefs/managing-latency-technical-brief/.

The Toolkit can also be used to extend the SOLV loading capabilities to allow for reading and injecting events from flat files into the Shadowbase replication engine for processing. For more information, read the solution brief: https://www.shadowbasesoftware.com/publications/solution-briefs/solv/.

For more information on the release features, please see: Shadowbase Version 6.610 Release.

For more detailed information on this release, please see: Shadowbase Product Releases (SPRs).

We are concerned for all of our friends in the HPE and Connect communities and pray that they remain safe through this unprecedented and dangerous situation! For the duration of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gravic and its Shadowbase Products Group are open and operating with remote support and access. To reach Shadowbase Support, please use your normal Support contact information or use Support. Please use Contact Us for all other inquiries.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise globally sells and supports Shadowbase solutions under the name HPE Shadowbase. For more information, please contact your local HPE Shadowbase representative or visit our website. For additional information, please view our Shadowbase solution videos: https://vimeo.com/shadowbasesoftware.

 The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for businesses and society worldwide.  In the face of this global crisis, our top priority has always remained about the safety of our employees and the continuity of business for our clients. Our team’s dedication to business continuity over the past six months has yielded some major strides for our company’s continued global expansion.

Here are a few highlights of our past six months:

• Lusis has increased our Canadian user base to four customers.
• Lusis launched our first North American support center, based in Toronto Canada.  North America is now our primary market. The new support center is a major step in solidifying our footprint in North America. Until recently, Lusis had only sales and consulting teams in North America. The addition of this facility and the team that was assembled will dramatically accelerate new and current project deployments of TANGO. “We are happy to achieve this milestone which has been brought on by our success with North American companies. We look forward to new challenges with enthusiasm and determination," Philippe Preval.
• Our growth over the past six months also extends South as we have added two new customers from Latin America and have also added additional direct representation in the region.

• Since 2017, Lusis has had a team dedicated to Artificial Intelligence, responsible for working on Machine Learning / Deep Learning approaches mainly applicable to fraud detection on payments and trading strategies in the financial markets. In early 2020, Lusis R&D in France, in joint venture with CentraleSupélec University launched the Chair "Artificial intelligence applied to the detection of payment fraud and trading". Through this partnership, Lusis and CentraleSupélec are strengthening their collaboration in the field of artificial intelligence applied to the banking sector.  Following the joint venture, in April of 2020, Lusis proudly unveiled it TANGO AI Fraud solution. By deploying TANGO AIF™ our clients get a leading-edge solution for fraud monitoring, detection and action. Our technology provides the latest methods for processing secure transactions, irrespective of source, nature or market segment. With tighter payments regulations; evolving platforms, and new initiatives, such as PSD2, GDPR and 3DS2.0, etc., advanced fraud technology is a requirement. Implementing a solution like Tango AIF to enrich detection to combat fraud is critical. As service providers, retail banking organizations need to maintain control over these issues while upholding compliance and protecting revenues. Recently, TANGO AIF was chosen by a top US bank for testing. Thus far results have been incredibly positive, and we look forward to a permanent installation.
• TANGO continues to be the industry leader in replacing legacy and in-house solutions that are quickly becoming obsolete. Organizations continuously choose Lusis Payments TANGO for three simple reasons: 1) Technology – TANGO is built on a highly performing micro-service architecture designed to implement a transactional, mission critical, Service Oriented Architecture that is hardware and database agnostic. As a technology company, Lusis focuses on R&D, innovation, performance, & time to market. 2) Delivery - Our CBSD approach leads to reduced development and maintenance costs which provides faster time-to-market and an ongoing, cost-effective payments solution. Our support centers in Europe and North America provide 24x7 support. 3) Ease of Transition – With a versatile common architecture, TANGO removes issues regarding integration associated with disparate legacy systems and can be deployed on one hardware platform, or multiple hardware platforms, from the same or different hardware vendors all running the same TANGO infrastructure and code base. TANGO's unique design removes complexities and reduces migration time frames.

We look forward to the next six months being as productive as our last. Lusis Payments hopes everyone is staying safe through these unprecedented times as we all navigate the changing business landscapes.

For more information on Lusis Payments TANGO, please contact Brian Miller at Brian.Miller@lusispayments.com.

www.lusispayments.com

 

 

 

Whether you need to provision users on one or multiple HPE NonStop servers, XYGATE Identity Connector (XIC) elegantly integrates your NonStop servers with your SailPoint enterprise solution.  Achieve user governance, provisioning and reconciliation of HPE NonStop user accounts directly from SailPoint.

Many organizations are adopting solutions like SailPoint to manage their technology assets. SailPoint, the market leader in Identity Governance and Administration, allows businesses to automate an ever-growing technology landscape while addressing security and compliance risk.

XYPRO and SailPoint have partnered to provide the first and only SailPoint certified integration for HPE NonStop servers. XIC for SailPoint provides complete control over who has access to your NonStop servers from your enterprise SailPoint instance.

●      Automated User Provisioning - Give users the access they need as they join an organization

SailPoint’s industry-leading, powerful access certifications, governance controls and logical workflows allow NonStop customers to take full advantage of the capabilities provided by SailPoint that have long been available for other platforms.

XYGATE Identity Connector is a lightweight, easy to deploy, executable using a micro service framework and standard SCIM 2.0 protocols.

Simply configure the service XML with the specific HPE NonStop server properties and run the deployer. XYPRO’s NonStop Identity Connector deploys quickly in a JAVA Virtual Machine (JVM) on OSS. No other software is required. Installation is simple, quick and secure.

Join our Webinar

Join SailPoint and XYPRO on Wednesday, October 7, 2020 for a joint webinar where we’ll discuss the benefits of integrating SailPoint and your HPE NonStop server environment with XYGATE Identity Connector. We’ll walk through the most common use cases that have simplified HPE NonStop administration activities.

www.tandemworld.net

+44 (0) 20 8304 7979

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