Oncall Group

There is a revolution happening in computer hardware. Memory speed access to large volumes of data, stored on non-volatile NAND memory is becoming a reality, and it is becoming cost-effective.

The challenge is an age-old issue in processing. Storing large volumes of data then delivering it fast enough to keep up with today’s processor and memory speeds.

A modern answer lies in Solid-State Disks. These units bring massive increases in speed. But an SSD still behaves like a disk, and has connectors and housing built around it to fit into a disk bay.

Now adapters and appliances built with NAND memory can take over the role of disk, and provide memory-like speeds for large volumes of data. IO can be 10 times faster, or more, than SSDs. Without the constraints of having to behave like a disk, the appliance offers a small footprint with much lower power and cooling needs than SSD or HDDs.

We are now at the tipping point, where it is the same price or lower to build a solution with the new technologies rather than traditional disk.

The pursuit of speed in Hard-Disk Drive technology is reaching a limit. To increase performance you need to add more and more disk drives.

At the same time, NAND based units like IBM’s Flash840 are coming down in price. The price of HDDs is static. Today, if you need 100+ disks, the IBM Flash840 will compare favourably. Especially when you consider the performance delivered would need a rack or two filled with HDDs, with all the resulting power and cooling needs. A NAND appliance, 2U high in the rack can provide the same performance.

Garry Barker, now at Infrascale, used to be at IBM and is one of Australia’s most experienced Storage consultants. Garry led the successful introduction of IBM Flash Storage technology into the ANZ marketplace. I was lucky enough to catch up with Garry recently and managed to “pump” him with questions about this new technology.

Garry has some interesting comments, based on research carried out by IBM. Part of a $1 billion investment IBM has made into Flash. A key point is that once disk access is running at memory speeds, it impacts the entire ‘stack’. The balance changes and many clients have experienced a 5% to 10% increase in utilisation per processor core, after introducing Flash, indicating the ability to get more work done per core.

The benefits of Flash impact the whole performance story. It can lead to fewer cores to run the same workload. One client had a 460% increase in server utilisation! Their work was being processed 5 times as fast.

On straight acquisition, Flash is about the same cost each GB as high end HDDs for the IBM DS8000 range. Once you add in the implications for the whole workload the benefits quickly tip to Flash.

Then, of course, a new way of doing things can open. As highlighted in a recent case study by IBM, Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the US found they could change batch processing. What used to take all night could now be run 8 times a day. This dramatically improved service levels and profitability. There’s a YouTube video on the case study if you’d like to watch it:

The revolution is just beginning and is coming on strong! Just think what you could do if all your data was available at memory speed, whenever you want it!

This is a quick technical update for all those out there on an RPG based version of Movex.

We recently went through testing of RPG Movex on V7R1 at the IBM Innovation Centre in Sydney. IBM provided a Power system with V7R1. IBM provides a world-class testing and proof-of-concept environment through their Innovation Centres. Best of all the service is no charge!

The result was to prove the backward compatibility inherent to IBM’s i Operating System. We also proved that an older, RPG based, version of Movex (developed on V5R1) can run on V7R1 – as long as the correct interface modules are in place.

This test used real client data, taking a full system save off their production server, restoring it to the Innovation Centre system and upgrading it to V7R1. The client has since gone on to replace their ageing and badly performing AS/400 with a new, lower cost (!) and ‘future proofed’ Power System.

So what’s the issue? Well, many clients have been stuck on IBM i V5R4 for years now. However, V5R4 does not run on the latest Power System servers with the Power7+ processor. The latest technology offers many advantages, not the least of which is a massive increase in performance compared to the older systems running V5R4. Also, in many cases, the ongoing cost of hardware and software maintenance for the older system will be greater over a 3 year period than the price of a new system with 3 year hardware warranty and 3 year software maintenance.

Why are the clients stuck on V5R4? This is to do with RPG Movex and the use of interfaces to the system. If you have an external application that needs to interface with Movex, it will need to use an IBM supplied API called Get Profile Handle. The API assigns a user-id to the interface, and enables security controls. Two key modules that are commonly used are IES902 and MEUSER. These need to be at the correct level, or they will not work on V6R1 or V7R1.

When IBM came out with V5R4 they changed the number of parameters that get passed to the API. So as to reduce the impact, a temporary reprieve was put in place using a PTF (Program Temporary Fix), which masked the new requirement and allowed programs written to the old API to still work.

When IBM came out with V6R1, and subsequently V7R1, this PTF was removed and application vendors needed to re-jig their interface modules to now pass the correct parameters.

This was back in the days when Movex was owned by Intentia, then Lawson (now, of course, it is an Infor product). Lawson did indeed develop a new version of the interface modules, so they will work properly; however this was not widely publicised and many clients still on the RPG version are unsure of the way forward.

So the point of this article is to reassure all RPG Movex clients there is a way forward! With the correct interface modules in place you can take full advantage of the new systems and all they have to offer.

This is where Oncall Group can help, having gained the experience of helping several clients get on to the latest systems and significantly reduce ongoing costs. It is very often the case that a new system is cheaper than staying on the old one.

Then, of course, there is the ability to take advantage of the newer technologies the latest systems offer. One significant area is disk. It won’t be too long before NAND based appliances, and Solid-State Disks, replace disk drives as primary storage for transaction systems. The latest Power 7 systems support both NAND adapters (mounted on a PCIe bus) and Solid-State Disk drives. A single SSD can provide equivalent performance to 20 ‘traditional’ spinning disks, attached to a high speed controller. SSDs can be driven to 100% full without missing a beat. As you can imagine, despite the higher cost of an SSD, using this technology can save a lot of money when configuring new systems for high performance.

We hope this has been of some interest! Please feel free to contact us if you would like more details on the testing done and how your company can take advantage of the ongoing march of technology and the ever-improving price/performance of the latest systems.

Have you ever come across the story of ‘The Blind Ones and the Matter of the Elephant’? Sometimes IT can be like that!

In the story, a group of 6 blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. They each explore what they can, and then get back together to describe their ‘findings’ on the form and shape of the mighty beast.

One says, “An elephant is a large and rough thing, wide and broad like a rug.” He had been feeling the elephant’s ear. Another had reached the trunk, he says, “No, no, I know the real facts. An elephant is like a straight and hollow pipe, awful and destructive.”

The one who reached the tusk says, “It is like a heavy, smooth solid pipe.” The one who had felt the feet and legs says, “It is mighty and firm, like a pillar.”

“It is like a rope” says the one who reached the tail. One man had reached the elephant’s belly, “It is like a wall” he says.

IT has many parts. For many companies it can be ‘the elephant in the room’, often with the largest budget, or close to it, and yet not reaching its full potential.

Does anyone have the full picture? IT can look simple on the surface, but scratch a few centimeters down and it explodes in complexity. People have to specialise, and that often means they only get to see their own piece of the puzzle.

Data analytics is a great example from current times. The focus on Big Data needs skills in database, networks, infrastructure, user interfaces, monitoring social media, gathering the data, and of course skills in designing the analysis and interpreting the results.

And here comes the crunch. The analysis has to ‘do’ something for the business. What is IT for this business? What will help each department be more productive? What will sell more products, more service, make more profit? Very often the people with the answers to these questions are not in IT.

So what happens to the 6 blind men? It depends which version of the story you pick up. In some more pessimistic versions they argue forever, even become violent, and never agree. The more optimistic version has them all realising their own limitation and inability to see the whole picture – so they collaborate. They talk to each other (you might say they swap roles for a while, to see things from someone else’s point of view). Eventually they figure it out and learn the true form and shape of an elephant.

Are you virtualised? I often feel I could do with an internal Hypervisor to squash more time into the day. But that’s another story.

In today’s infrastructure environment the benefits of virtualisation can be huge. The rate of change in hardware throughput has outstripped the needs of many business applications. What used to need a mid-range system is often covered by an entry level system these days.

That means spare ‘grunt’! Which in turn has led to the rise and rise of virtualisation. It makes sense to maximise the use of that valuable hardware.

And that leads us to the array of choices out there. It’s a growing list. If you can run on Linux, IBM i, or AIX, then IBM’s PowerVM is well worth looking at. But have you ever wondered what’s best for Windows, especially when it comes to the two big choices in HyperV and VMware?

The other day I was trawling through some IT blogs and came across the excellent blogs from Mitch Garvis, http://garvis.ca/ That led me to a head-to-head battle comparing VMware and HyperV. Fantastic!

Two experts go through the key features, first of each product individually, then a head-to-head comparison. For VMware there is Sean MacArthur, and for HyperV Mitch Garvis.

This is a great series. Very interesting material and I learnt plenty about each product.

So who wins? Check it out at http://www.vmtraining.net/technical-webinars/

Welcome to ONCALL Group’s first blog. We hope you find these posts interesting, informative, sometimes funny, sometimes it may even be sad.

There are many, many technology blogs out there. Some are good, some are not. From time to time we may re-post someone else’s blog, just because it was so good!

Meanwhile, I love the way there is nothing new in the world – even Big Data, BYOD and ‘new paradigms’ for ‘ubiquitous computing’ were thought of centuries ago, … have you ever come across the story of ‘When the Waters Were Changed’? Sometimes IT can be like that.

In the story, mankind is warned that all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.

If you’ve been around IT for a while (let’s say more than a year) you’ve probably seen the water change a few times already. Only one man listened, in the story, and he hoards water and hides it away. Eventually the streams stop running, the wells go dry, and the man who had listened goes to his retreat and drinks his preserved water. Ever been a specialist in a particular programming language, Operating System, or some ‘latest’ technology; only to find that you wake up one morning and everything you know is suddenly out of date?

The man who listened sees the water returning again and comes out of hiding and tries to take his place in society. But everyone else is different. They think and talk differently. When he tries to talk to them, he realises they think he’s mad. They don’t understand him. They either show hostility or compassion.

So what does he do? Well at first he sticks to his plan. He drinks none of the new water, and draws on his own supplies. But that soon gets tough. He can’t bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else.

So he drinks the new water. He becomes like the rest. He forgets all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

There’ve been a few changes lately.

IT as a utility is gathering pace. Is it in the Cloud? How do you cope with Big Data? What’s your BYOD policy? Does this water taste different to you?

I got this from ‘Tales of the Dervishes’ by Idries Shah, who attributes it to Dhun-Nun, the Egyptian (died 860)