Tandemworld eNewsletter for February 2014

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Tandemworld eNewsletter for February 2014


Contents

XML, SOAP, or JSON processing by Nonstop applications using XML Thunder

BrightStrand NonStop Services

comForte - Business is heading to the Cloud

 

comForte near you in 2014

Log Management – Planning Ahead Saves Time and Resources

XYPRO and DeviceAuthority Introduce Device Centric Authentication

"The Device is the Key!"

GreenHouse

Pre-register for comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dumies' Book

Where we are in the World…

Join XYPRO at these upcoming events in 2014

Musings on NonStop! - February ‘14

XYPRO's Instructor Led Education Classes 2014

Register for the GTUG "PanEuropean NonStop HotSpot 2014" - April 2-4, 2014 in Hamburg, Germany

Stock Exchange and Clearinghouse Gain
Operational and Availability Benefits with Shadowbase Solutions

CSP- coming to a TUG near you!

Third Data Corporation

High Performance Switching and Secure Data Storage

Availability Digest Says, “Redundancy Saved North Carolina From Being Nuked”

Read All About It!  Availability Digest’s February Issue Reviews TANDsoft’s New FileSync Data Deduplication Feature

Opsol Integrators’ OmniPayments Provides Fingerprint Authentication

Lusis Proves to be a Trusted Partner in Bankserv's Core

NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2014

Browsers

Online Version

Current Subscribers 14891


XML, SOAP, or JSON processing by Nonstop applications using XML Thunder

 XML Thunder is a designer and code generator for HP NonStop servers having the requirement to process or create XML, SOAP or JSON documents.

The product can quickly and easily generate application source code that implements XML, SOAP, JSON parsing and manipulation logic, both for new and existing applications.

The generated source code is optimized for the HP NonStop platform.

 

Please learn more at http://www.canamsoftware.com/Products/XML,SOAP,JSON/XMLThunder%E2%84%A2XMLSOAPJSONforCOBOLorC/XMLThunderforHPNonstop.aspx

 

 


BrightStrand NonStop Services

BrightStrand International continues to deliver NonStop Services to its customer base. Its consultants have the skill and experience that make it the premier service deliverer in the NonStop sector. Services are tailored to individual customer needs to reduce costs and risk whilst getting the best from the environment.

Also by working closely with customers BrightStrand develop products to address customers’ needs, such as BrightStrand Netbatch/DR. This is a product that allows the customer to create a simple, automated disaster recovery solution for the HP NetBatch environment and incorporate it into an overall Disaster Recovery Plan.

BrightStrand continues to deliver a full range of services that include:

·       Systems and Operations Management

·       Performance and Tuning / Capacity Planning

·       Database Design and Administration

·       Communications Subsystems

·       Web Services

·       Security Reviews

·       IBM WebSphere MQ Series environments.

·       NonStop Integrity and Blade Migrations

·       System Healthchecks (Pre or Post-Migration)

·       Specialist Consultancy

·       Disaster Recovery and Service Continuity Planning

All, or some of these elements can be brought together in a Fully Managed Service that can be tailored to the particular needs of the customer – including remote bridging, hosting or operations support, adding further value to the BrightStrand quality services.

Call Dave Stewart today on +44 (0)7831 775115 or email him on dstewart@brightstrand.com for more information.

 


comForte - Business is heading to the Cloud

 

Cloud Computing is everywhere these days and it does not stop at NonStop. Are you wondering how to make use of Cloud technology in your HP NonStop system environment? Is your CXO talking about 'everything is Cloud from now on'? How can you bring NonStop into play?

 

Click HERE to read the Opinion Paper 'Business is heading to the cloud' written by Richard Buckle, CEO of Pyalla-Technologies.

 

The Opinion Paper looks at

·        HP NonStop and the Cloud

·        Cloud bursting with maRunga

·        Application modernization into the Cloud with CSL

·        Use cases for Cloud Computing and HP NonStop systems

 

Also on this topic, READ Thomas Burg's and Vadym Shkil's The Connection article 'Cloud-enabling NonStop systems: Why you should care'. In this article, the use cases mentioned above are discussed in more detail and comForte's cloud demo is highlighted.

 


comForte near you in 2014

Join us at these events:

 

SUNTUG

7-8 Mar 2014

Tampa, Florida

DUST

18 Mar 2014

Phoenix, AZ

MENUG

31 Mar 2014

Dubai, UAE

European GTUG

2-4 Apr 2014

Hamburg, Germany

NENUG Spring Meeting

24 April 2014

Andover, MA, USA

HP Discover 2014

10-12 June

Las Vegas

PCI Community Meeting, North America

9-11 Sept 2014

Orlando, FL, USA

EBUG Knowledge Forum

29-30 Sept 2014

London, UK

PCI Community Meeting, Europe

7-9 Oct 2014

Berlin, Germany

CONNECT Advanced Technical Boot Camp

16-19 Nov 2014

San Jose, USA

PCI Community Meeting, Asia Pacific

19 Nov 2014

Sydney, Australia

 

 

 

And there is more, join the security discussion in the HP NonStop [Tandem] Security Group on LinkedIn.

 

Last but not least, follow us on ...

comForteLounge BlogSpot

comForteLounge LinkedIn Group

comForteLounge Twitter

comForte on YouTube

 


Log Management – Planning Ahead Saves Time and Resources

Log data is an underutilized yet extremely important data resource for troubleshooting issues and supporting broader business objectives.

By effectively managing and monitoring NonStop application logs, you put themselves in an optimal position to detect issues and resolve them more quickly and efficiently.

Read how a little proactive planning in log management can help you work much more efficiently.

 

Learn more about LogWatch.

Phil Ly
TIC Software
www.ticsoftware.com
+1-516-466-7990


XYPRO and DeviceAuthority Introduce Device Centric Authentication

"The Device is the Key!"

DeviceAuthority D-FACTOR™ is a versatile, high performance authentication engine that is purpose-built for seamless, cost-effective mass adoption, addressing the ever-increasing security needs of the internet connected world. With D-FACTOR™, DeviceAuthority has tightly coupled its patented dynamic device key generation and device authentication technology with industry-proven security standards, and a flexible, high performance services-oriented architecture to deliver the industry’s first device-centric authentication engine for secure access to mobile and online applications.

Purpose-built for security-conscious enterprises and online service providers, D-FACTOR™ is ideal for organizations that are looking to implement more reliable online or mobile application security without undermining their users’ experience. D-FACTOR™ turns the device itself into a powerful authentication factor, delivering sub-second device authentication without requiring anything else for the end-user to have, know or do. D-FACTOR™ authentication enables customers or administrators to authorize and link specific devices to accounts and prevent fraudulent access from unauthorized devices.

Download Product Brochure


 PATHWAY System Security

Most applications on Tandem systems make use of PATHWAY as their run time environment: Apart from its general purpose to provide Nonstop applications with the fundamental basics to achieve scalability and availability, it provides an automatic load balancing, keeps track of servers and their status and restarts them, when needed, and is easy to use.

For system administration purpose it provides a very basic security system to prevent:

  1. PATHMON from being re-configured by unauthorized users
  2. PATHWAY programs from being executed by unauthorized users and
  3. PATHWAY servers from being called by unauthorized PATHSEND communication events

These pretty basic security features generate the impression of a good level of security.

However, apart from providing the basic security settings described above, an important aspect of security is missing: PATHWAY servers - in terms of the operating system - are processes, and a processes can be opened by anybody, independent of the user ID. When a process can be opened, it can be used to exchange information with requestors outside the PATHWAY environment. All that is needed is some knowledge of the expected message structure!

In other words: Everybody, knowing a PATHWAY server process and its message structure can abuse the server to deliver any information to the unauthorized requestor, e.g. to

  1. to retrieve and abuse unauthorized data, thus compromising confidentiality
  2. to manipulate data, thus compromising data integrity
  3. to "overheat" the server process through a large number of 'opens' and messages, thus compromising application availability

Not knowing the message structure can lead to the fact, that

  1. invalid messages may cause the server to end up in trouble, thus bringing the whole application down.
  2. a Denial of Service attack could be fired against the server process, in the best case causing response time delays, more likely causing response timeouts, or aborted transactions leading to loss of business.

There are only two methods currently available to prevent this:

  1. By SAFEGUARD ACLs on the servers process name.
  2. By adding logic in the server process, controlling open events and rejecting the unexpected ones.

This sounds easy to establish, but:

  1. To maintain SAFEGUARD ACLs, the processes in question have to have known/defined names. To maintain hundreds of process names is a night mare, and adding process names to production environments is not an easy task at all. In addition this approach is not viable, as processes are mostly started dynamically with their process names varying.
  2. From security assessments already delivered to customers it is our observation, that NONE of the Pathway servers examined include control of OPEN messages, in order to reject unexpected opens. To implement this logic, the servers have to be modified.

GreenHouse became aware of this lack of security by delivering a security review, and has developed a solution to this critical vulnerability, so customers can save time and budget for modifying thousands of servers on their system.

Product requirements were:

  1. No SAFEGUARD ACLs on processes
  2. No change in PATHWAY servers = no additional code to detect OPEN requests
  3. Plug-and-Play = easy to install and maintain
  4. Easy configuration of exceptions
  5. No re-start caused by configuration changes
  6. Action log
  7. Real time reporting

PATHWAY Security Shell (PS-Shell) combines all these requirements. In PRODUCTION mode, it prevents all unexpected OPEN events by generating an error 48 (security violation) to the OPEN request and reports those to a log file.

A more detailed description as well as a test program, disclosing servers in danger, is available at: www.GreenHouse.de/ZIPDownLoad/PS-Shell.pdf

 

 


Pre-register for comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dummies' Book

Get the book and ...

o   Learn more about HP NonStop systems - a lot has changed in the past few years

o   Find out why the platform is unmatched in the areas of high availability and linear scalability - all out of the box

o   Discover how to develop new applications on the platform and how to modernize existing ones - all using modern and standard technologies

o   Explore ways to better integrate your HP NonStop systems in the Enterprise IT infrastructure

 

If you would like to receive a free copy of the 'HP NonStop for Dummies' book please pre-register by following this link … http://www.comforte.com/ns4dummies

 

The book (printed or e-book, you choose) will be available in Q1 of 2014 and we will contact you then with further details.

 


Where we are in the World…

Join XYPRO at these upcoming events in 2014


SunTug
March 7-8, 2014
Tampa, Florida

 
 
MENUG 

March 31st, 2014
Dubai, UAE
More info

GTUG

April 2-4, 2014
Hamburg, Germany
www.gtug.de
 
SATUG
April 7-9 , 2014
Gauteng, South Africa
www.satug.org
 

ACI Exchange EMEA 2014
May 13-16, 2014
Lisbon, Portugal
www.vwebsol.com

 

 

ACI Annual User Group Conference
June 3-6, 2014
Salt Lake City, Utah
More info

 
HP Discover
June 10-12, 2014
Las Vegas, NV, USA
More info
 

 

PCI SSC North American
Community Meeting
September 10-11, 2014
Orlando, Florida
www.pcisecuritystandards.org

 

PCI SSC European
Community Meeting
October 8-9, 2014
Berlin, Germany
www.pcisecuritystandards.org
 
 
HP NonStop Technical Bootcamp

November 16-19, 2014
San Jose, CA
More info



 


PCI SSC Asia Pacific
Community Meeting
November 19th, 2014
Sydney, Australia
www.pcisecuritystandards.org

 
   

 

Stay Connected with XYPRO

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn Group
BlogSpot
YouTube

 


Musings on NonStop! - February ‘14

The opinions expressed here are solely
those of the now self-employed author

For those who follow postings to my social blog, Buckle-Up-Travel, you may think that Margo and I have a magical, Disney-like, fairy Godmother who at some point, and for goodness knows what reason, granted us a couple of wishes. The palate of colorful cars now in our garages was something neither of us could have imagined in our youth. In stories dating back to antiquity, in times of crises our heroes and heroines have happened upon characters who magically produce all they need at the time. In Biblical times, King Solomon was granted his wish choosing wisdom that, in time, proved invaluable.

Our family really likes cars even as it likes variety – and the cars in our lives are constant sources for material that regularly makes its way into blog postings and group commentaries. It hasn’t been through the granting of any specific wish but rather a little laziness mixed in with frustration that led to our family becoming reluctant to simply trade away cars we liked. However, there is some sanity in what we now have and there were elements of a plan all along. If only I could remember what that was; rationalizing our living situation and having just one residence did play a part, I’m told.

Making wishes has been a part of my blogging life for several years now. Having roots dating back to when I too was a Tandem product manager, it has always been my goal to stretch the limits of what shows-up on roadmaps. Sanitized as they must always be, left me wanting to say more and to point to what may happen two, three years out even if I had nothing tangible to reinforce such speculation. Danger lurked should I have been that cavalier, of course, and I was often reminded about staying focused on where revenues would be derived rather than portraying a fantasy world nobody could buy!

Times have changed, of course, and now I blog for a living. No such constraints entangle me anymore and I can speculate as much as I like. However, tying such speculations back to something that exists remains important as no amount of storytelling can keep you interested if you cannot see the connections – as I often state, connecting the dots is as important as ever when it comes to imagining good things to come. For almost a decade now, I have been blogging about my wishes, each time limiting myself to just three wishes as this seems to be the stock-in-trade number used by all the fairy tales’ magical characters and the latest set of wishes has made its appearance on the NonStop community blog, Real Time View.

In the post of February 14, 2014,
Yet three more wishes! I build on the two previous posts on this subject and connect the current set of three wishes back to all the wishes that came before. If you have as yet not read the former posts, then check out firstly, the post of February 12, 2008, "My Wish" for NS Blades and then the post of February 13, 2011, Three years on, and three more wishes! There’s also now a tab on the right hand side, under Labels, called Wishes to make it even easier to navigate to these posts – yes, there’s four postings so grouped, as last year, I posted an introduction to what I was thinking of wishing for in 2014 with the post of July 19, 2013, Are our wishes still important?

Astute eyes will pick up that for all four posts, I included photos of our cars and looking back at the photos chosen at the time where I made my first two sets of wishes, the cars in the photo are no longer in the garage. Perhaps an omen with respect to my prowess at forecasting what is to come and yet, I have been consistent about a couple of items in my sets of wishes.

Commoditization and the outcome from such commoditization have been central to all my wishes and with the plans of HP NonStop to support the Intel x86 architecture, along with InfiniBand (IB) for the interconnect fabric, my wishes are being fulfilled. I can see blades that are standard (and support multiple Operating Systems) being supported by NonStop even as I can see a shared infrastructure fabric supporting them – while a pretty obvious outcome of the investments made for many years, the outcome was never guaranteed. But along with everyone I have talked to, pleasing to see all the same!

In going down this path, NonStop has gradually morphed into a software offering and has pulled this off with no lessening of its key attributes – availability, scalability, and data integrity / securability. True, some may argue that for a brief period, and driven by a degree of uncertainty over the reliability of the underlying MIPS chips, NonStop capitalized on additional hardware to ensure uptime, but today we see no less levels of uptime that existed with the servers I last worked on – the groundbreaking S-Series (with ServerNet).

I am not going to go into any more detail about what I have wished for over the years or describe in detail what I now wish for as it’s all in the blog posts to Real Time View. However, what I will address is how much better HP NonStop has become in its dealings with middleware vendors. The ecosystem of vendor partnerships is continuing to work with HP NonStop development to fill several important elements everyone in the NonStop community can benefit from – and that’s to everyone’s benefit. HP comes into criticism on occasion for not always being sensitive to partner’s plans but a lot of this has lessened over the last couple of years. Certainly, in my discussions with Sean Mansubi and before Sean, Fred Laccabue, the openness to discuss opportunities with partner was all I could wish it to be; warm and encouraging and for that I am grateful and appreciative.

Accumulating a group of cars – and no, we are not by any means collectors – has proved relatively easy given that it’s the result of more than a decade of indecisiveness. However, retaining customers the way HP NonStop has done, even as it added new applications as well as a couple of new users along the way, has been outstanding. It’s always difficult for pioneers to retain a presence – you just have to look at Wang, Prime, Data General let alone the likes of Nixdorf and Fujitsu – but somehow the timelessness of the NonStop architecture still retains the value proposition on which it built its reputation. And with that I really cannot wish for too much more!

 

Richard Buckle
Founder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Email:            
richard@pyalla-technologies.com

Following my blogs? My web publications? My discussion Groups?

Check out (copy and paste to your browser):

Real Time View at
http://www.itug-connection.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, Real Time View

comForte Lounge at http://comfortelounge.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, comForte Lounge

Realtime.ir at http://realtime.ir.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, realtime.ir

ATMmarketplace at
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogger.php?id=130763

buckle-up at http://www.buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the SubGroup on LinkedIn, Pyalla Track Days


XYPRO's Instructor Led Education Classes 2014

To ensure customers get the best possible experience using XYPRO solutions, XYPRO provides formal instruction on all aspects of NonStop security as well as specific instruction on all XYGATE security products. With many years of industry experience, XYPRO trainers deliver engaging courses that are designed to provide instruction and hands-on practice on all critical product topics. This approach ensures students are more productive on their return to the workplace. Instructors draw on real-world experience to provide examples of how XYPRO solutions have been successfully deployed around the world.

XYPRO offers both General XYGATE Learning and Advanced XYGATE InstructionGeneral learning is for those just getting started with NonStop and XYGATE security and  those who wish to hone their XYGATE skills in a broad range of HP NonStop Security fundamentals using the XYGATE suite of security solutions. Advanced learning is for those wanting a mastery of a XYGATE product or security area.

Classes for up to eight (8) students are offered at XYPRO's education facilities in Simi Valley, California. Classes can also be held on-site at your facility and be customized to meet your unique requirements. To arrange for a class at your facility, contact your XYPRO Sales Specialist.

The classes currently scheduled are:
 

May 19-23, 2014
October 20-24, 2014

Register for the next General XYGATE Learning Class 


Register for the GTUG "PanEuropean NonStop HotSpot 2014" - April 2-4, 2014 in Hamburg, Germany

Attend the main NonStop Community event in Europe 2014! This conference & exhibition is presented in the tradition of ITUG Europe for the third time by GTUG and Connect Germany. It takes place every two years with a focus on NonStop (2012 in Dresden, 2009 in Darmstadt).

 

This is your chance to meet your fellow NonStop users and learn the latest on NonStop from users, HP and solution partners. The organizers are going to put together a strong international agenda, featuring keynotes from HP and others, as well as user and vendor presentations while also offering educational and networking opportunities for users of other platforms. Further more workshops will provide detailed insights in actual NonStop topics.

 

Enjoy the comfortable conference facilities at the luxury Hotel Atlantic Kempinski, located in the heart of Hamburg  next  to „Außenalster“. Discover the Hanseatic Spirit of Hamburg and get a glance of the tradition, present and future of this magnificent city.

A number of social events will provide a relaxed and inspiring environment for networking with your peers in the NonStop Community.

 

Conference language is English.

 

For more information and registration please go to … http://www.gtug.de/HotSpot2014/

Stock Exchange and Clearinghouse Gain
Operational and Availability Benefits with Shadowbase Solutions

Gravic recently published a new case study: Stock Exchange and Clearinghouse Gain Operational and Availability Benefits with Shadowbase Solutions. A South American stock exchange that used a trading system built with HP NonStop servers faced high data entry error rates and the resulting manual reconciliation process required to correct these errors prevented it from complying with its same-day or next-day clearing commitments. Working with its clearinghouse, the exchange chose the Shadowbase replication engine to re-architect its system to eliminate manual data re-entry. The re-architected system uses Shadowbase software to replicate a Sybase validation database from the clearinghouse’s AIX system to a NonStop SQL/MP database located on the exchange’s HP NonStop trading system. The exchange also utilizes Shadowbase heterogeneous replication in managing several Linux/MySQL data warehouses that provide trading history. The exchange replaced an earlier micro-batch updating approach with Shadowbase real-time transactional data replication from the HP NonStop SQL/MP trading database to the MySQL databases. The exchange also implemented Shadowbase solutions for disaster recovery protection of its trading system (providing active/passive data replication between the primary and standby HP NonStop servers). Shadowbase software now plays a major role in integrating the many systems in the exchange’s IT infrastructure, as well as providing continuous availability for its mission-critical business services.

For more information, please visit: www.gravic.com/shadowbase. Interested parties may contact us at +1.610.647.6250 or SBProductManagement@gravic.com to discuss their specific situation and to learn more about the solutions we offer.

Please Visit Gravic at these Upcoming 2014 Events

Please stop by Gravic’s booth or table at these upcoming tradeshows and meetings to speak with us about your data replication and data integration needs or just to say hello. We look forward to attending and presenting at the following events:

SUNTUG Summit, Tampa, FL, 7 March

MENUG Inaugural Chapter Event, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 31 March

GTUG Conference & Exhibition, Hamburg, Germany, 2-4 April

SATUG Conference & Tradeshow, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, 7-9 April

NENUG Spring Meeting, Andover, MA, 24 April

 https://twitter.com/GravicSB  https://twitter.com/GravicSB

http://www.linkedin.com/company/gravic-inc./shadowbase-data-replication-305119/product  http://www.linkedin.com/company/gravic-inc./shadowbase-data-replication-305119/product

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gravic-Shadowbase/116969767814  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gravic-Shadowbase/116969767814

https://plus.google.com/b/117288516055822969721/117288516055822969721/posts https://plus.google.com/b/117288516055822969721/117288516055822969721/posts

Trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

 


CSP- coming to a TUG near you!

SUNTUG

CSP will be attending the upcoming SunTUG Conference in Tampa, Florida on March 7th, 2014.

MENUG

We will also be attending the inaugural MENUG event in Dubai on March 31st.

GTUG-IT Symposium

CSP is a Platinum Sponsor at the GTUG-IT Symposium on April 2nd-4th in Hamburg, Germany, and we will be giving two presentations at the Symposium:

 

1) Access Governance on OSS and Linux-based systems, and

 

2) Take Control: Change Management for NonStop Systems.

 

Plan to drop by our booth and discuss “What’s New” with us.

 

For more information on CSP including:

 

·        A recent customer case study on security and compliance

 

·        CSP’s solutions for Change Control

 

·        Solutions for change management and real-time detection,

 

visit www.cspsecurity.com  


Third Data Corporation

High Performance Switching and Secure Data Storage

888-301-2431 / sales@thirddata.com

 

               Third Data Corporation provides numerous products which can reside on HP Nonstop and other HP and Non-HP  hardware platforms. In addition we provide custom high performance software design and development for our clients.

FastBuild Switch – When building a switch be it ATM-POS, Wire Transfer, EFT, Medical, or any other type of data that needs to get from one place to another, you are usually faced with three choices. Take an existing package and modify your system to match it. Get the vendor to “enhance” their system to meet your needs. Write a new system from scratch. The FastBuild Switch integrates with your existing system, or if you are building from scratch gives you a great start. The switch is also built around the latest HP technology to maximize performance. It integrates several of our other products to maximize cost savings and security in a fault tolerant manner. In a cross platform environment it also runs on other non-Guardian HP supplied platforms.

SecureStore – If you are security conscience trying to become compliant (PCI, HIPAA, etc) then you know that you can not leave sensitive data readily viewable. SecureStore does three things for you. The data is encrypted so that you can become compliant. The data is compressed so that your hardware costs are reduced. As part of disaster recovery your data is sent to multiple locations so it will be available when you need it. As a bonus for those having trouble with Guardian 4K limits there is no record size. It supports Big Data with up to 18 Exabytes. It can also integrate with SQL systems (SQL MX/MP, Oracle, Postgres etc)

NxLib – NxLib provides a platform and utility libraries for developing a high performance multi-threaded applications on NonStop Guardian. The platform provides threading, queuing and network capabilities. This enables development of an application written single threaded style to perform as multi-threaded.   Extensible command processing and help are supported.  Development time can be cut to a fraction of the time it would normally take.  This results in fast  application development with consistent look and feel across multiple projects.

NxWeb – A high performance web server which provides support for NxLib applications.  It also can be used without NxLib.  It provides for secure connections, virtual domains, full http support and interfaces to pathway and IPC communications.

NxFile+ – NxFile+ provides compression and encryption to Enscribe structured files.  The files are configured through a GUI interface and the results are provided seamlessly to your applications, typically without any code changes.  In addition this provides for dynamic key changes on the fly so data stored at-rest may have its encryption keys changed as required.  Because the records can be compressed prior to encryption, it’s also possible to have records which significantly exceed the 4k record size limitations.

NxSSL – NxSSL is an SSL proxy which may be used to provide SSL encryption and authentication services to TCP/IP connections.  It provides full support for certificates and multiple encryption standards.  It has been carefully tuned to provide the highest performance available for any NonStop SSL connection.

NxUndelete – Files accidentally deleted can be a real problem.  Even when a backup is available, it is frequently a significant effort to retrieve it from a backup tape.  NxUndelete implements a recycle bin function on the the HP NonStop system.  Files deleted may be easily recovered using its GUI interface.

 


Availability Digest Says, “Redundancy Saved North Carolina From Being Nuked”

On January 24, 1961, two nuclear bombs broke loose from a crippled B-52 bomber and fell on North Carolina. Three out of four safety mechanisms on one bomb failed.  Only one low-voltage switch prevented the bomb from detonating. Redundancy counts. The 400-megaton Mark 39 hydrogen bomb had a 100% kill radius of 17 miles.  Radioactive fallout from the blast would have spread over the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., impacting Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.  This incident, long classified, recently was made public and reveals just how close to disaster the United States came.  We can’t repeat it often enough – redundancy counts.   

Other Digest articles in our February issue:      

Should Hope Trump Failover? – Failover faults occur all too frequently.  A primary reason for this is that companies are reluctant to invest the time and expense required for thorough failover testing.  As a result, they replace failover testing with faith and hope that the backup system will never fail.   

Banks Worldwide Suffer From IT Legacy – Decades-old legacy applications, designed originally for batch processing, are complicating the abilities of banks worldwide to modernize their data centers. New systems interfaced with legacy systems via middleware and data centers cobbled together due to mergers and acquisitions have led to an increasing number of bank outages that have seriously impacted customer services. 

TANDsoft FileSync Adds Deduplication – A common technique for guaranteeing system availability is to configure a backup system that can take over processing should a production system fail. TANDsoft’s FileSync synchronizes NonStop production and backup systems via file replication. FileSync’s new data deduplication feature enhances synchronization efficiency by replicating only changed data, not entire files, to the target system. 

The Availability Digest offers one-day and multi-day seminars on High Availability: Concepts and Practices. Seminars are given both onsite and online and are tailored to an organization’s specific needs.  We also offer technical and marketing writing services as well as consulting services for achieving high availability. 

Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com.  Please visit our Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn.  We’re at 615 members and counting. A recent thread was “Delayed Failover Decisions.” Follow us on Twitter @availabilitydig.   


Read All About It!  Availability Digest’s February Issue Reviews TANDsoft’s New FileSync Data Deduplication Feature

 

You can find “TANDsoft FileSync adds Deduplication” via the following Availability Digest link: http://www.availabilitydigest.com/public_articles/0902/filesync_dedup.pdf. Simpler yet, Bitly the article via http://bit.ly/1mi5wID. However you navigate, the article you reach describes in detail how deduplication enhances FileSync’s file-replication capability by streaming only data that has changed within a file or database. Redundant data is not transmitted. Data deduplication is now available to all FileSync customers via Version 3.1.

FileSync is one of TANDsoft’s most popular products. It ensures that the configurations of two HP NonStop data-processing systems are kept synchronized by replicating Enscribe and OSS file changes between them. FileSync keeps backup systems synchronized with their respective production systems, it propagates upgrades between systems, and it migrates applications from one system to another. The software works closely with all NonStop real-time data replication products to provide a comprehensive solution for maintaining duplicate system and application environments.

FileSync automatically monitors, replicates and synchronizes source files, program environments, application environments, configuration files, programs – anything non-database that needs to be kept current across the network. It supports qualified expressions and referential integrity as well as the synchronization of SQL/MX catalogues, schemas, tables, partitions, and indices. In addition, FileSync supports the SQL/MX filter, SQL/MX 3.2.1, and all earlier SQL/MX versions.

The new data-deduplication feature allows FileSync to improve synchronization / replication times for large files. Only changed data, not entire files, are sent to the backup database. FileSync deduplication – or client deduplication - takes place at the system hosting the primary database. The FileSync deduplication algorithm detects what changes have been made to an already replicated file and transmits only the unique data. In addition to reduced backup sizes and bandwidth requirements, FileSync deduplication decreases disk loads, increases Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and reduces Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

FileSync supports all Enscribe files – audited, non-audited, structured and unstructured; all OSS files; NonStop SQL/MP Catalogs, Tables and Partitions; NonStop SQL/MX Catalogs, Schemas, Tables and Partitions; program source and object files; and configuration and TACL files.

TANDsoft’s “best of breed, best in price” philosophy offers highly competitive value for all TANDsoft solutions. In addition to FileSync with data deduplication, they include: the OPTA2000 virtual clock- and time-zone simulator; the OPTA suite of interception and trace utilities (OPTA­Trace Online Process Tracer and Analyzer, Recycle Bin, EMS Alerts Online Startup and Termination Capture Utility, Low Pin Optimizer); Stack Monitor, which alerts developers to the impending threat of a stack overflow; Command Stream Replicator, which logs and automatically replicates TMF-audited/unaudited FUP, SQL/MP and SQL/MX DDL structure and other environment changes to target systems; AutoLib, which automatically loads a user library or a DLL for executing processes; the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits and the new Enscribe-2-SQL Data Replicator, all of which offer flexible, affordable alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion techniques; E2S-Lite, which permits efficient, low-cost Enscribe modifications without the need to change a program’s source code; and SDI (Sensitive Data Intercept) for Enscribe and SQL/MP.

TANDsoft products require no application source-code modifications, are available for all HP NonStop servers, and support major third-party applications. Free trials are available. Visit www.tandsoft.com, or contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. Our Enscribe to SQL Migration Forum on LinkedIn is at 183 members and counting. TANDsoft will exhibit at SunTUG on March 7, 2014.


Opsol Integrators’ OmniPayments Provides Fingerprint Authentication

Checks and credit cards are not as popular as is the use of debit cards or cash in Colombia and other Latin American countries.  However, individuals remain reluctant to use even debit cards out of fear that their personal identification numbers (PINs) will be stolen.  To address this challenge, Colombia is installing technology that will allow citizens to use their fingerprints instead of PINs at ATMs and Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals. Fingerprints aren’t forgotten, they can’t be stolen, and they cannot be imitated by another person.  OmniPayments, the HP NonStop financial-transaction switch from Opsol Integrators, has been selected to play a key role in authenticating Colombian users’ fingerprints via Opsol’s relationship with Carvajal, S.A., a leading technology and consulting services company. 

Fingerprint authentication has been in use for some time in Colombia whenever large cash transactions take place.  For this reason, the Colombian government has added fingerprints to its national database of all citizens.  Fingerprints are digitized via WSQ (Wave Scalar Quantization) technology for storage in the database of the National Civil Registry (RNEC). To extend fingerprint authorization to the use of debit cards, the Colombian government has established the use of Biometric Operators. These organizations are tasked with routing transaction requests comprising debit-card numbers and fingerprints to the RNEC database for authentication. If the transaction is authenticated, it will be routed to the issuing bank for processing, just as if it were a card number with a valid PIN.

The fingerprint server is built on HP NonStop and leverages the high-throughput capabilities of HP NonStop database technologies. The information is part of the OmniPayments Party Model and has been stress tested with SQL/MX for high-volume lookups and parallel inserts. Various applications from Colombian court rooms, government offices, etc., all interact with the fingerprint server using standard SOA XML interfaces.

Fingerprint authorization must be continuously available, or customers may be unable to use their debit cards. To ensure continuous availability, the OmniPayments switch in Bogotá, Colombia, is backed up by HP NonStop systems in Opsol’s disaster-recovery cloud.

With successful implementations at many customer sites, OmniPayments is just one member of the Opsol family of solutions for the financial industry. Opsol Integrators specializes in NonStop mission-critical applications and offers customers all the requisite functionality to manage credit/debit-card transactions. Based on SOA architecture, OmniPayments is easily expandable to provide additional functionality when needed.

OmniPayments supplies complete security functions for every financial transaction that it handles, including encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-flight. Available around the clock, OmniPayments will survive any single fault, requires no downtime for maintenance or upgrades, and supports a range of disaster-recovery solutions. For further information, visit www.omnipayments.com. You can contact Yash Kapadia at +1 408-446-9274 or at yash@omnipayments.com.

Opsol will exhibit at NonStop Hotspot, a NonStop-specific IT event co-sponsored by GTUG and Connect, in Hamburg, Germany, from April 2nd through April 4th.


Lusis Proves to be a Trusted Partner in Bankserv's Core

- Based on the high availability, strong performance and rapid development capabilities of the TANGO technology, Lusis Payments forms strong partnership with its clients.


Excerpt: "The unqualified success of the pilot project proved that not only did TANGO deliver the full capability to replace  our existing solution but furthermore it delivered on the promises of flexibility, agility, capability and quality.’  Pieter Cilliers, CEO, BankservAfrica said. ‘The pilot very clearly proved the rapid development and deployment capabilities of TANGO. From the sign off of the system specification to delivery of the full code only took 3  months, and full testing and acceptance/completion took only a few months more. Going forward, these rapid  development and deployment capabilities will allow us to be proactive in addressing our business needs and to  offer our member clients additional products and services in a much improved timeframe." Cilliers continued.  

Read the complete case study at: http://www.lusispayments.com/case-studies/bankserv

For more information about this success story or to see the complete interview videos contact Brian Miller at brian.miller@lusispayments.com for more information.

Lusis Payments, North America

Brian Miller

(415) 829-4577

Brian.Miller@lusispayments.com

San Francisco, CA

 


NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2014

Save the Date!  The Connect NonStop Technical Boot Camp will be held once again in San Jose on November 16-19. 

This year’s venue is Dolce Hayes Mansion:  www.hayesmansion.com

More info to follow!  Please help us plan for a fantastic NonStop Event:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VVZDNZD

The 2013 Boot Camp saw approximately 450 people in attendance.  There were 27 HP technical presentations and over 30 Partners available for questions/answers in the Partner Pavilion as well as Vendor presentations and SIG meetings. 

The Partner SIG looks forward to reuniting with Customers and HP this fall!

Kathy Wood

NonStop Partner SIG/Vendor Chair

kwood@blackwood-systems.com


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