Tributary Systems’ Observations on Bootcamp 2018

For this month’s submission to the NonStop Insider, Richard asked for observations on the 2018 NonStop Bootcamp. Well I have some, of course. But before I delve into those, I think it’s important to recognize all those that plan, facilitate, and in a sense “operate” the event. A few folks come immediately to mind, Stacie Neall, Kathy Wood, Kelly Luna, Karen Copeland and Kristi Elizondo just to name a few. Without the dedication of these folks, plus all the others that volunteer their time and effort for what really is a huge undertaking, Bootcamp just wouldn’t run as smoothly as it does, or perhaps it wouldn’t happen at all.

Now for the observations: First, the EOL of Itanium (J-Series) late next year. While totally expected, saying goodbye to J-Series is also saying goodbye to ServerNet. This proprietary communications architecture was developed by Tandem beginning in 1992, and was first shipped back in 1995. It’s remarkable that over 20 years later HPE is still shipping new systems with this protocol. We’ve been acclimated to the use of (mostly) industry standard hardware as the basis of NonStop systems for years; I view the move to InfiniBand along with the EOL of J-Series as the culmination of this effort.

Another big announcement was the retirement of Randy Meyer. As far as I’m aware, Randy was the most highly placed ex-NonStop executive at HPE. While I realize that in his latest role, he had far more responsibilities than just NonStop, Randy has always understood the unique value proposition of NonStop. As I observe the replacements for various management positions recently vacated at NonStop, they’ve been filled with long term “HP” employees from outside the NonStop organization. While this is natural given the continued and necessary integration of NonStop into the “greater HPE”, I’m hopeful (like we all are) that HPE continues to recognize the prominent position this platform occupies in the Business Critical Enterprise marketplace.

Overall attendance of the Bootcamp seemed to be about the same as last year, however, I understand that there were in excess of 100 first time Bootcamp attendees this year, along with two new exhibiting suppliers. That’s really encouraging, as is the emphasis on the under 40 NonStop crowd. Obviously, continued existence of our preferred platform requires that new customers and new applications are identified and their requirements met. To that end, there were over 50 individual break-out sessions conducted during Bootcamp, some large, like the Keynote Address, most smaller, but all important to the consistent flow of information.

Discussion of new technologies was evident at Bootcamp. A couple were of particular interest, the first being vNonStop. We here at Tributary Systems are pleased to see HPE and NonStop Product Development moving the platform into the Virtual and Cloud deployment arenas. However, our belief is that the primary Enterprise use case in production environments for NonStop’s largest customers will retain conventional converged on-premise deployment for some time to come. This does not mean that test/development environments, which are particularly suited to a virtual deployment, won’t take advantage of vNonStop much more quickly. On-premise Cloud based backup and restore was another new technology that multiple customers are now investigating. NonStop in the past has seemed to be commonly operated in a “silo” environment, with dedicated hardware, personnel, floor space and storage. This thought pattern is changing, assisted by the introduction of vNonStop as well as secure on-premise Cloud storage options, like Tributary Systems’ Storage Director.

Storage Director is a policy-based, tiered, and virtualized software solution especially designed for secure backup, which can be seamlessly integrated with any media, including tape, disk, virtual environments and NonStop or other proprietary server types, plus open systems. Storage Director can group data into different pools and apply different protection policies at different times across any storage medium, including on-premise Cloud, simultaneously. In addition, Storage Director incorporates AES 256-bit encryption, and fully supports erasure-coding in the ICOS storage tier. Tributary Systems has gained a massive strategic edge as it has entered into synergistic partnerships with both IBM and Hitachi to revolutionize enterprise cloud data backup/restore, archive and DR. Combining the capabilities of Storage Director while endorsing long-term archival to Object Storage is where Tributary believes the data backup and retention market is evolving. Storage Director is the only single-solution product currently offered that can backup all NonStop mission-critical servers (legacy or current).

As a personal note, I’d like to wish all those who read and enjoy the “NonStop Insider” Happy Holidays and a wonderful 2019.

As always, if you’d like additional information on Storage Director, visit www.tributary.com, or call Matt Allen at 817-786-3066 (office) or 713-492-7434 (cell).

Storage Director allows NonStop professionals to “augment what they have and use it in creative new ways!”