Dan2021. What an interesting year. With the world turned upside down by a pandemic that seemingly had its sights set on...
A view into the world of NonStop – one HPE NonStop sales team member’s insights …
HPE
Dan
From the earliest days of Tandem Computers there was something very unique in the way Tandem went about availability. There was plenty of redundancy including dual paths to everything, not forgetting simple items like dual power supplies, with chords, and multiple cooling fans. Even the design of those early Tandems such that there were no top side cooling vents that may attract an errant cup of coffee spilt by accident. The engineering that went into the earliest of Tandem Computers also had something very unique in its makeup – what in time became known as the Tandem Special Sauce!
Just as Colonel Sanders had his mix of spices under lock and key and the formula for Coca Cola was likewise stored in a safe, there was truly something special in the way Tandem functioned. Whereas early competitors simply ran multiple copies of code in lockstep, Tandem was magical in the way it fully utilized all resources – nothing within the configuration was left to idle waiting for that occasion to step in and pick up the load. Certainly, there was guidance over just how much CPU utilization was wise just as there was encouragement given to running more than just two CPUs, nevertheless, when a component or subsystem behaved erratically or simply stopped running at all, Tandem kept on running without any visible interruption to the application.
In his latest video, HPE Account Executive Steve Kubick relates a recent conversation with some very smart people. “These are the guys that make really complicated stuff work together seamlessly and maintain seven nines of availability with mind-boggling throughput,” said Steve. But here’s the thing; during this conversation one of them made the statement that to make even the smallest virtualized NonStop (vNS), takes thirty cores!” What in the world takes thirty cores? But then I remembered, “Everything on the NonStop is used for throughput and is fully redundant.” Adding up all the cores, VMware in support of NonStop, Windows in support of two consoles, Linux in support of CLIMS – communications and storage – and then cores to actually run a four CPUs system well, you get to twenty-six plus cores maybe more. “Saying you need thirty cores doesn’t sound unreasonable,” concluded Steve.
But here’s something else. You can go to a cloud provider and configure Linux or Windows environment to mirror some aspects of today’s modern NonStop systems but what you will not get is the seven nines only NonStop provides. Availability remains the single most important feature of NonStop and to achieve the level of availability enterprises routinely experience, all the time, you need to seriously consider the value that comes with the special sauce that originated with Tandem Computers four plus decades ago.
You need to view this latest video by Steve as he explores this topic in more detail including highlighting how few resources are required to manage NonStop versus even the most basic of Windows systems. The level of continuous patching required to keep up with security not to mention simply keeping it all up simply highlights the true TCO of NonStop and how affordable NonStop is now. Add to this the call-outs at all times of days systems managers receive versus the NonStop system managers who can spend time at home, and suddenly the pendulum swings back to favor NonStop. And with the Unix Posix implementation with OSS, the need to “learn NonStop” or to even view a NonStop system as anything other than being industry standard essentially becomes a non-event!
This latest video, simply called Special Sauce is now accessible on YouTube and is a must-view as we head into this year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp:
And of course Steve would like you to connect with him on LinkedIn –
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-kubick-0463783/
