2021. What an interesting year. With the world turned upside down by a pandemic that seemingly had its sights set on...
ETI-NET participating in NonStop Technical Boot Camp and will talk about the latest release of BackBox
ETI-NET
DanIf you have been checking out our articles and posts over the last month you will have noticed the frequent references to change, together with comparisons being made to cars. To be more specific, references to changes taking place that are less about appearance and more about substance. Like many members of the NonStop vendor community, we have witnessed a lot of development taking place within HPE that has helped bring NonStop back into the conversation after years of taking a backseat to other platforms. However, the work being done by HPE in support of NonStop has led to a major rethink by the NonStop vendors about the future of NonStop and its role at both the edge and the core.
In the article published last month in NonStop Insider, we wrote of how this reference to doing work that wasn’t just skin deep and that much “the same can be said today about Tape and Backup technology – while the requirements and objectives for Tape and Backup haven’t changed all that much over the years, what has been evolving ‘under the hood’ is anything but trivial.” This then led us to make the observation of how, “this is the positive outcome from the collaboration of HPE and ETI-NET engineers that came about as they worked together to improve Backup product offering. Even if nothing is visible, the end results are very noticeable.”
Of course, the work we did at ETI-NET in support of much larger block size was the biggest update made to BackBox – and this is something that ETI-NET is very proud to be addressing to the benefit of all our BackBox users. It was the benefits from the cooperative effort between ETI-NET and HPE that were the focus of a recent post to the LinkedIn blog, Pulse – ETI outperforms the competition with the latest BackBox product offering. Equally as importantly, apart from the demonstration of cooperation between ETI-NET and HPE, it was a demonstration of just how well both companies listen to customer requests. Enterprises have requested to go faster and to process more – and this is exactly what was provided in the latest release of BackBox.
“Following a cooperative effort on the part of HPE and ETI-NET, customer requests have been addressed,” began the post to the LinkedIn blog, Pulse. “As a result, there is now support for large block sizes which many NonStop users will find gives them improved performance when it comes time to run file backups.” However, even as early adopters called for speed across the board, the requests coming from NonStop users today have more to do with security than practically anything else. “Whether this has to do with the state of the industry where every business is encountering cyberattacks as intruders look for vulnerabilities on an almost daily basis or because the performance provided by modern NonStop systems has really lifted the bar much higher,” suggested ETI-NET COO, Sylvain Tétreault. “We cannot ignore this topic whenever we build new releases of BackBox and this latest release is no exception.”
As noted in the blog post referenced above and in case you missed the significance of the work ETI-NET undertook, with as much press coverage as was given to such systemic attacks on enterprise security defenses with attacks like Meltdown and Specter, ETI-NET couldn’t take chances with performance. Yes, “ETI-NET was at the forefront of addressing these ruses looking to exploit vulnerabilities in the Intel architecture together with vulnerabilities within Microsoft’s offerings, this too was an area where performance was a consideration – if the corrective steps taken to address these vulnerabilities degraded the overall performance of the NonStop system, then this would have been a major concern for NonStop users,” said Tétreault.
Change will continue: Systems will only get faster and data will only get bigger. And yes, NonStop will face additional security challenges as more NonStop users consider moving to virtual machines with the availability of virtualized NonStop (vNS) in general and the new NS2 system in particular. However, the NonStop vendor community is fully engaged when it comes to protecting the interests of its customers and as this latest update to BackBox so clearly demonstrates, ETI-NET cooperates with HPE and with its customers.
The past commentaries’ reference to Porsche cars wasn’t by accident as it was at the European user event in Leipzig where attendees were given the option to tour the Porsche factory and in a matter of a few days’ time, we will all be gathering in Burlingame, California, for the premier NonStop user event of the year – the NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC). ETI-NET will be a participant and you will be able to find us at Booth #21 and will demonstrate the results of the cooperative efforts taking place between ETI-NET and HPE.
Make sure you find the time to sit in on the joint presentation by ETI’s Sylvain Tetreault and HPE’s Ozen Ercevik and and to the technical BackBox update presentation by ETI’s CTO Fernand Lussier. Of course, if you have any questions about this latest release of BackBox or would like to know more about our new vBackBox that is another demonstration of the cooperation that exists between the two companies, don’t hesitate in seeking us out at TBC. Furthermore, you can always email us or give us a call – we would be only too happy to respond to any questions you may have.