ETI-NET: Leveraging NonStop community events for the betterment of product functionality

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to seasoned NonStop conference attendees to hear that NonStop systems have morphed into a predominantly software offering and that the world of Hybrid IT is now inclusive of NonStop. Logic suggests that as the premier platform in support of mission critical applications, particularly those driving many of the world’s financial industries payments processing offerings, NonStop would become an integral part of the financial ecosystem these institutions are a part of. When it comes to cash, credit, debit, loyalty, gift and more NonStop often times finds itself in the center of all the transaction flows involved in any one of these activities.

As the NonStop community has watched the NonStop journey progress through blades, racks, x86 processors, virtualization and a reckoning with clouds, to suggest that today’s modern NonStop systems have lost any relevance is to ignore the continued support they are given by major financial institutions worldwide. All the while the HPE NonStop team has protected the NonStop community’s investment in software in that applications developed for NonStop decades ago continue to run today without change. This continuation is at the heart of all that ETI-NET has been doing as the goal of the company has been to ensure that our product suite has tracked this NonStop journey with every new capability delivered by the HPE NonStop team.

When it comes to recent experiences with engaging the NonStop community, the pan-European E-BITUG event in Edinburgh, Scotland, proved to be a good example of just how valuable participation in conferences that bring together all the many constituents that together make up the NonStop community. As a Platinum Sponsor of E-BITUG we were well situated when it came to the visibility of ETI-NET; attendees joining any of the plenary sessions had to pass by our stand. The conversations with the NonStop customers and with the NonStop team highlighted just how far ETI-NET has come in its relationship with the NonStop community. Whether the NonStop customer was part of the financial services industry or not, there was always something to be learnt about NonStop in each engagement we initiated.

“I shouldn’t be surprised to hear our customers talk about their implementations of our products and the value they provide,” said ETI -NET COO, Benoit Caron. “The plenary session given by our Director of Business Development, Mirko Buzolitch, ‘BackBox VTC and Ransomware Protection’ was well attended but most important of all was to hear from those NonStop users already capitalizing on our VTC components that now include support of the Quest QoreStor® product – BackBox With QoreStor®. Not only using the product but now coming to ETI-NET with new requests for additional capability as they become more familiar with the properties of the product. And yes, there is plenty of room on our side to continue fine tuning of catalogue syncing and in general, post-availability cleanup that is only natural following a product introduction.”

The extent to which the NonStop customer can leverage the existing capabilities of our Virtual Tape Controller (VTC) product become apparent very quickly. The need to backup files critical to the ongoing operation of a business hasn’t lessened through the years. The beauty of BackBox is that it not only delivers in this regard but importantly for the NonStop community, there are many options open to them to ensure a level of fault tolerance across the connections, controllers and critical NonStop subsystems such that ETI-NET together with the HPE NonStop team can assure continuous operation irrespective of what outages may occur. QoreStor® with its deduplication properties simply allow this level of operation to proceed for a more affordable price.

There are further benefits to the NonStop customer when they elect to leverage the combination of BackBox VTC and QoreStor®. With the support for QoreStor® on multiple VTCs and with paths between them, we are delivering an even greater level of fault tolerance than was previously possible with just our VTC solution. What is equally as important is that now we have become another avenue for those NonStop customers looking to leverage the affordability and flexibility of today’s cloud services offerings. “This flexibility in how best to configure your deployment of VTC / BB (vBB) and QoreStor® is completely up to the NonStop user,” said Benoit. “What ETI-NET is providing is for the customer to choose which path to go down as there are numerous ways to enhance potential fault tolerance at the VTC level.”

When conversations start with members of the NonStop community, there has been one topic that has risen above almost everything else when files are the subject of the discussions: RansomWare. The most widely accepted first step in any strategy to respond and then restore operations is to replicate data to a system that has been “air gapped.” According to Gartner, “An IDV (immutable data vault) is an immutable, air-gapped tertiary independent copy of the backup in a secure environment for safeguarding backups against ransomware and insider attacks.”

Gartner also suggests that, “Having an immutable copy of the backup is the most important item to start protecting backup data. All other initiatives are complementary.”

“At ETI-NET we recognize that the conversation has turned to not only how best to optimize usage of cloud resources but how best to leverage cloud provided services (e.g., S3) to air gap systems for the purpose of recovering from Ransomware attacks,” said Benoit. Which is to say, that as the NonStop team continues on its journey from a proprietary, traditional, system package comprised of hardware and software to where it is simply a software solution virtualized for deployment on server farms inhouse or collocated or perhaps on private or public clouds, ETI-NET is committed to embracing these changes and to delivering the backup protection our NonStop customers’ demand.

As we look ahead to upcoming events it would be remiss of us not to reference this year’s major CTUG event. What we heard in the presentations further highlighted for us the accelerated pursuit of virtualization that is taking place. Virtualized NonStop (vNS), once considered an outlier and potentially meeting the requirements of just a few NonStop users, it now seems as though the future of NonStop lies in providing multiple virtual options. “All we can add at this time,” said Benoit, “is to get ready for vNS as it is truly on its way!” What we were privy too at CTUG was the numerous positive responses to out BackBox With QoreStor® . “From the feedback we were given it’s become clear to us that it is performing even better than we had hoped for.” As for one other talking point, we were pleasantly surprised by the interest expressed by the NonStop community in the MultiBatch offering – a workload scheduling offering from our sibling, Insider Technologies Ltd.     

Anticipate too further ETI-NET presentations at NonStop community events throughout 2023 where you will be provided with further updates on BackBox With QoreStor® including updates on how better to recover from Ransomware attacks. However, should you not have an opportunity to talk to us at any of these upcoming events you can always reach the ETI-NET team through the use of the contact information, below.

Web – http://etinet.com
Phone – (514) 663-0501