Striim is cautiously optimistic about HPE’s plans for both NonStop X and vNonStop!

It’s hard to imagine that we are seeing the dawn of NonStop in a box. By this we mean, not in the manner of a traditional data center system but rather, NonStop populating a number of off-the-shelf Intel® x86 servers. Sign a license for vNonStop, access a HPE web site and download the NonStop as per HPE instructions so that you have all you need to run on a virtual machine that you have configured on top of these commodity boxes. Yes, NonStop is coming to a box you may already own and yes, your IT professionals may not know you have it deployed in support of your mission critical applications. Yes, few would have predicted this eventuality but it’s coming to fruition shortly but it’s just one of a number of initiatives HPE is pursuing with NonStop.

For a software vendor like Striim, it’s important that investments in products is minimized such that only what needs to be addressed (to accommodate something new) in order for the solution to work is reviewed. If an API or utility continues to function across technology boundaries, the better and it’s not just a case of not needing to review code and make changes but rather, being able to expend effort on more functionality of value to the customer. This is the case today with NonStop and something we hadn’t expected – what we validate on the new NonStop X systems will continue to run, without change, on vNonStop. And this has material impact on our plans to support NonStop going forward.

This year we expect to see a gradual shift to NonStop X systems. Whether it’s part of a program to upgrade all existing NonStop BladeSystems or simply a deployment of NonStop X in support of a new application, there are a number of customers already making plans for migrating to NonStop X systems. For NonStop as a whole, embracing x86 is a game-changer and not something we promote lightly – in today’s changing requirements on IT, there’s simply no room for proprietary systems. The data centers are littered with the ghosts of past endeavors with custom systems and while there may have been an immediate boost in IT productivity or end-user experience, in time, the value decreased as ongoing maintenance costs (in terms of fees and the retention of skilled personnel) escalated rapidly. Industry standards and open systems are proving instrumental in keeping costs in check while addressing productivity and ensuring flexibility and choice.

NonStop X also brings with it two secondary opportunities that would have been impossible prior to embracing x86. Of course, we cannot ignore the potential that the Yuma project provides. Now being marketed as NSADI, the NonStop Application Direct Interface, this is an API that allows applications running on NonStop to directly access memory of open systems connected via the NonStop interconnect fabric. A program can simply place data in a buffer in an adjacent open system without any involvement of a communications stack or even the operating system itself. This has the potential for Striim to significantly increase the performance of Striim as data base and application logs, of interest to Striim, can have data written directly to a Striim implementation say on an adjacent Linux system supported by NSADI.

The second opportunity has to do with IoT. In the post IoT Edge Processing with Intel and Striim of December 1, 2016 Steve Wilkes, Co-founder and CTO, Striim, noted that “the data explosion arising from the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) will outgrow the infrastructure and technical capabilities to transport, store and analyze those data. Moreover, transmitting all data to a central location or the cloud for analysis would be cost-prohibitive.” Probably more importantly, “The edge processing power of the Striim platform running on a gateway based on the Intel® x86 architecture, offers efficiency and expediency to the development and deployment of IoT applications. With the power of the Intel® x86 technology, the Striim agent can seamlessly ingest, processes and analyze data in real time, generating insights in milliseconds.”

HPE has now announced its own Edge products based on x86 and as the NonStop community has heard in recent presentations, HPE is actively looking to ensure vNonStop can be deployed on their products. And for a good reason! While there is considerable “digital exhaust” being generated when, for instance, GM’s OnStar reports a serious car crash, the Edge needs to be up and running if lives are at risk. Supporting the Intel® x86 architecture as well as servers will surely breathe new life into NonStop and for these reasons, vendors like Striim will continue to make the investments in NonStop.
NonStop in a box: NonStop on physical servers as well as on virtual machines; inside the data center and out on the edge; connected to clouds, private and very soon, public – there is going to be many new ways to leverage the benefits of truly the world’s only remaining viable fault tolerant mission critical system! Are you as excited by the total transformation of NonStop as we are here at Striim? If so, we sure would like to hear from you – just give us a call and let us tell you how we can integrate the world of real time analytics with even the most demanding transactional environments.

Katherine Rincon | Vice President, Marketing
d 650.241.0680 x215 | katherine@striim.com
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