An introduction to Wazi as a Service

In today’s hyper-competitive digital landscape, the rapid development of new digital services is essential for staying ahead of the curve. However, many organizations face significant challenges when it comes to integrating their core systems, including Mainframe applications, with modern technologies. This integration is crucial for modernizing core enterprise applications on hybrid cloud platforms. Shockingly, a staggering 33% of developers lack the necessary skills or resources, hindering their productivity in delivering products and services. Moreover, 36% of developers struggle with the collaboration between development and IT Operations, leading to inefficiencies in the development pipeline. To compound these issues, repeated surveys highlight “testing” as the primary area causing delays in project timelines. Companies like State Farm and BNP Paribas are taking steps to standardize development tools and approaches across their platforms to overcome these challenges and drive transformation in their business processes.

How does Wazi as Service help drive modernization? 

One solution that is making waves in this landscape is “Wazi as a Service.” This cloud-native development and testing environment for z/OS applications is revolutionizing the modernization process by enabling secure DevSecOps practices. With flexible consumption-based pricing, it provides on-demand access to z/OS systems, dramatically improving developer productivity by accelerating release cycles on secure, regulated hybrid cloud environments like IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services (FS Cloud). Shift-left coding practices allow testing to begin as early as the code-writing stage, enhancing software quality. The platform can be automated through a standardized framework validated for Financial Services, leveraging the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center service (SCC). Innovating at scale is made possible with IBM Z modernization tools like Wazi Image Builder, Wazi Dev Spaces on OpenShift, CI/CD pipelines, z/OS Connect for APIs, zDIH for data integrations, and IBM Watson for generative AI.

What are the benefits of Wazi as a service on IBM Cloud?

Wazi as a Service operates on IBM LinuxONE, an enterprise-grade Linux server, providing a substantial speed advantage over emulated x86 machine environments. This unique feature makes it 15 times faster, ensuring swift and efficient application development. Furthermore, Wazi bridges the gap between developer experiences on distributed and mainframe platforms, facilitating the development of hybrid applications containing z/OS components. It combines the power of the z-Mod stack with secure DevOps practices, creating a seamless and efficient development process. The service also allows for easy scalability through automation, reducing support and maintenance overhead, and can be securely deployed on IBM FS Cloud, which comes with integrated security and compliance features. This means developers can build and deploy their environments and code with industry-grade regulations in mind, ensuring data security and regulatory compliance.

Additionally, Wazi VSI on VPC infrastructure within IBM FS Cloud establishes an isolated network, fortifying the cloud infrastructure’s perimeter against security threats. Furthermore, IBM Cloud services and ISVs validated for financial services come with robust security and compliance controls, enabling secure integration of on-prem core Mainframe applications with cloud services like API Connect, Event Streams, Code Engine, and HPCS encryptions. This transformation paves the way for centralized core systems to evolve into modernized, distributed solutions, keeping businesses agile and competitive in today’s digital landscape. Overall, Wazi as a Service is a game-changer in accelerating digital transformation while ensuring security, compliance, and seamless integration between legacy and modern technologies.

How IBM Cloud Financial Service Framework help in industry solutions?

The IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services a.k.a IBM FS Cloud is a robust solution designed specifically to cater to the unique needs of financial institutions, ensuring regulatory compliance, top-notch security, and resiliency both during the initial deployment phase and in ongoing operations. This framework simplifies interactions between financial institutions and ecosystem partners that provide software or SaaS applications by establishing a set of requirements that all parties must meet. The key components of this framework include a comprehensive set of control requirements, which encompass security and regulatory compliance obligations, as well as cloud best practices. These best practices involve a shared responsibility model that applies to financial institutions, application providers, and IBM Cloud, ensuring that everyone plays a part in maintaining a secure and compliant environment.

Additionally, the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services provides detailed control-by-control guidance for implementation and offers supporting evidence to help financial institutions meet the rigorous security and regulatory requirements of the financial industry. To further facilitate compliance, reference architectures are provided to assist in the implementation of control requirements. These architectures can be deployed as infrastructure as code, streamlining the deployment and configuration process. IBM also offers a range of tools and services, such as the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center, to empower stakeholders to monitor compliance, address issues, and generate evidence of compliance efficiently. Furthermore, the framework is subject to ongoing governance, ensuring that it remains up-to-date and aligned with new and evolving regulations, as well as the changing needs of banks and public cloud environments. In essence, the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services is a comprehensive solution that empowers financial institutions to operate securely and in compliance with industry regulations, while also streamlining their interactions with ecosystem partners.

Get to know Wazi as a Service

Operating on the robust IBM LinuxONE infrastructure, Wazi as a Service bridges the gap between distributed and mainframe platforms, enabling seamless hybrid application development. The platform’s scalability, automation, and compliance features empower developers to navigate the intricate web of regulations and security, paving the way for businesses to thrive in the digital era. With Wazi, businesses can securely integrate on-premises core systems with cutting-edge cloud services, propelling them into the future of modernized, distributed solutions. In summary, Wazi as a Service exemplifies the transformative potential of technology in accelerating digital transformation, underlining its importance in achieving security, compliance, and the harmonious coexistence of legacy and modern technologies.

Source: ibm.com

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Data breaches: the threat is still real

News headlines regularly feature the latest data breach and ransomware attack. It’s happening all over the world, nearly every day.

I first wrote about this risk in 2018. Sadly, despite efforts to combat cyberattacks, the threat is still all too real. Even in my hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY, a healthcare provider was hacked recently.

According to some analysts, hackers are not just looking for tons of raw data. Today, they’re especially focused on very valuable records such as user passwords, card and account numbers and social security numbers. As a result, today’s breaches can have especially far-reaching consequences.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created additional security risks with so many employees working remotely. In this climate, pervasive encryption is critical. It enables a customer to protect data even in the event of a breach. As I explained in my previous blog entry, pervasive encryption helps our clients to make the protection of data as easy and affordable as possible. It provides compliance quickly. And it works!

My team has helped many organizations improve their security posture by running IBM z/OS security health checks, to identify weak points in their security defense, or to implement pervasive encryption to better protect their client’s data.

One of our major clients from the payment industry implemented z/OS dataset encryption, the “star” feature of pervasive encryption, in a first phase with Db2 to maintain their compliance with PCI-DSS. And, as promised, the overhead was unnoticeable.

This is hardly the only success story. From the insurance industry to the healthcare industry, I’ve supported other implementations with high client satisfaction feedback. From a mainframe perspective, and from an IBM Lab Services point of view, I can say that I am relieved I haven’t been back to a hacked client crime scene lately.

We continue to improve pervasive, delivering enhancements such as the capability to encrypt non-extended format datasets and new functionalities like JES2 spool encryption (and compression). We also made key management easy with EKMF Web Edition. It is a graphical user interface running on Z to manage pervasive encryption keys easily and securely.

But Lab Services is always ready to help. A pervasive encryption readiness assessment (PERA) can be a game changer. It is a one-day, on-site, in-person workshop (or two remote sessions while COVID restrictions persist), which provides in-depth education about pervasive encryption, readiness state assessment and an implementation roadmap. It is even easier for z15 clients to get help with the zForward program available at no additional charge.

Later on, Lab Services is also here to help you in your implementation journey, from what I call the fundamental bricks (such as ICSF and TKE), to the actual pervasive encryption implementation.

While cybercriminals become more and more sophisticated, our goal is to always be there, one step ahead. The threat may remain real, but the battle is far from over. So, if you are ready to fight, contact IBM Technology Lab Services now. We can help.

Source: ibm.com

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Spectrum Scale, SDI and my love of motorcycles

Motorcycle riding is my passion. I got my first minibike, a two-wheeled contraption powered by a lawn mower engine, when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been riding ever since. I love the ride itself, the sights and the smells. Equally important, the ever-evolving technology is pretty cool. I am always adding enhancements to my bike, to give it more power, comfort, capabilities, storage and speed. I cannot leave a stock motorcycle “stock”. Personalization is the way to go.

Read More: C2090-101: IBM Big Data Engineer

I have the same passion for IBM Spectrum Scale, high performance scale-out storage software and enterprise data services with global federated capacity, as well as Spectrum Scale RAID, simple scalable building blocks for high-performance IBM Spectrum Scale hybrid cloud storage solutions. I enjoy working with our clients to get the most out of their Spectrum Scale implementations, helping them to reach their business objectives.

I’ve written about this comparison between motorcycle riding and IBM Spectrum Scale before, explaining that scaling up and scaling out a motorcycle is much like Spectrum Scale capabilities.

I wrote:

The hardware that IBM Spectrum Scale runs on can be thought of as the engine of a motorcycle. If you want to increase the power of your engine, you scale up Spectrum Scale by upgrading to a more powerful system, adding more processing power, memory and so forth. The more horsepower a motorcycle has, the less effort is required to move me from one location to another. In the same manner, scaling up Spectrum Scale will allow it to operate faster and more efficiently.

The “scale out” process is akin to adding storage capacity to your motorcycle. Spectrum Scale can be scaled out by adding additional components — in this case, more disk or solid-state drive (SSD) storage. We can further scale out Spectrum Scale by adding additional NSD servers to the cluster. This would be similar to adding an additional motor to a motorcycle or replacing the two-cylinder motor with a four-cylinder motor. However, in Spectrum Scale, the process of scaling out is much easier!

Today, this analogy still feels like a good fit.

If you’re talking about motorcycles, you can buy a new model with new features. The new bike would have features such as “rear cylinder shutdown” so it does not overheat in traffic. This is applicable to air-cooled engines only. Another feature is software that controls the performance of the engine. For instance, many motorcycles now have a “regular, sport and cruising” selection which changes the handling, air and fuel ratios depending on which mode is selected. If you are into the gadgets, you can upgrade, or like me, you can keep your older motorcycle, and take advantage of the software updates that have new features. This would enable you to have some (GPS updates, satellite radio, ride mapping) features that may not be part of your original motorcycle. This will vary, because just like software and hardware, there are limitations to upgrades.

As for Spectrum Scale and Elastic Storage Server (Spectrum Scale GPFS Native RAID), new models and software have eclipsed the old models. Some of the software is no longer supported, and the base needs to be upgraded to support the new change. But there’s always the option of remaining on the current configuration until such time as you must upgrade/update or run the risk of not being supported. I don’t recommend that. It is better to upgrade before the end of life of a product/solution.

It’s always a matter of decisions, decisions. Do I purchase a new motorcycle? Or do I stay where I am and upgrade the software that manages and powers the bike? Spectrum customers have to make similar decisions when they think about upgrading the software that currently runs their Spectrum Scale, ESS or any other infrastructure in their data centers.

Software updates can, and do, fix issues, add features and functions, and further enhance the operation of the systems. It is something that should be considered, especially if you are N-2 or more releases behind. It is highly likely that that at an N-3 level, your software stack is no longer supported and upgrading is a necessity. Look at it this way, you have built a very reliable, comfortable motorcycle with a great rider experience (think GPS, music, comfort) that supports your “workload” reliably, and performs very well. The newer upgrades to the software and even hardware (engine, transmission) will further enhance your ride. Why not do the same for your software-defined infrastructure (SDI) and software-defined storage (SDS) infrastructure?

While motorcycles are perfectly fine and supported for decades, it is not the same with business-critical operations that have a direct impact on your customers. You must provide the most up to date, fastest, reliable SDI/SDS infrastructure. If you do not, then you risk customer satisfaction issues, and even more important, you risk impacting your business.

Customers need to look at all the possible changes. Some are critical. But others, need to be examined closely. How will they positively or negatively impact the business? “Who is this change going to impact”? What is the impact to “the Who“? And “Why” should I change? If you can answer the “Who, What and Why” question with more pros than cons, then it could be very beneficial to upgrade for more “scale out and scale up” capabilities.

Source: ibm.com

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Keeping your IBM Power Systems highly available

We’ve all heard of the “blue screen of death.” It’s the dreaded crash on a Windows-based computer. The potential loss of everything. If you’ve had the misfortune of seeing one, you know how upsetting it is. To put it mildly, it’s not fun.

Read More: C2150-609: IBM Security Access Manager V9.0 Deployment

An operating system crash of any kind leaves application users dead in the water. So avoiding single points of failure (SPOF) is a high priority. The UNIX® operating system is a potential SPOF, and this is true of all UNIX based operating systems including versions such as AIX®, HP-UX, iOS and all Linux flavors such as Ubuntu, RHEL, Android and SUSE.

IBM’s solution

Fortunately, thirty years ago IBM introduced high availability cluster multi-processing (HACMP) to combat this issue on its AIX RS/6000 systems. To state things in the simplest terms, two or more systems are paired in a cluster. When one system crashes, the other takes over. There is an application outage, but recovery is automated and downtime is primarily dependent on how long the applications themselves take to recover/restart. In the days without storage area networks, IP aliases or virtualized machines, HACMP/PowerHA® was a terrific way to go.

HACMP software is still widely used on the newest IBM Power Systems, having been renamed PowerHA SystemMirror®. But fourteen years ago, IBM introduced Live Partition Mobility (LPM). LPM gave users the ability to move fully virtualized AIX machines between physical hardware servers while the applications continued running. Ultimately, this is a game changer in high availability.

VM Recovery Manager High Availability (VMRMHA)

VMRMHA utilizes LPM simplified remote restart (SRR) technology for high availability. A user utilizing VMRMHA can set up an HA environment not just for selected virtual machines, but every virtual machine on an IBM Power® server. This includes Linux and IBM i virtual machines as well.

One drawback of using VMRMHA versus PowerHA is that with VMRMHA, the operating system must boot on a new physical server after an OS crash, and then the application restarts. In a PowerHA environment, only the application must restart. However, using VMRMHA has an advantage over PowerHA in that there are no “cluster of two AIX servers” that must be maintained or kept in sync.

To summarize:

No “cluster” to maintain.

– plus –

Only one AIX OS to maintain.

– plus –

Only one set of application code to maintain.

– multiplied by –

Number of PowerHA clusters

= equals =

Application High Availability is easier to maintain!

Converting existing PowerHA/HACMP clusters to a VMRMHA strategy is not a trivial task, but in the long term, it’s worth it because of reduced administrative overhead.

Source: ibm.com

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Get a health check for your SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems

We all know that seeing a doctor for regular checkups is important. Even if you aren’t having any problems, it’s always a good idea for your physical health. In some ways, a “health check” for your SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems is similar. You may be getting optimal availability and performance, but a regular review is very important.

Read More: C2070-981: IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.2

IBM Power Systems technology for HANA has numerous advantages such as flexibility, efficient resource utilization, server consolidation, performance and reduction in cost. An SAP-certified person is required to install and configure HANA using the tailored data center integration (TDI) model. During deployment, a certified HANA engineer sets up the system following IBM Power server and SAP HANA best practices as per SAP notes and runs the SAP HANA Hardware and Cloud Measurement Tool (HCMT). This ensures the environment has been configured for HANA prerequisites and for hardware performance to meet HANA key performance indicators (KPIs).

After deployment, however, organizations will eventually need to make changes to their workloads and infrastructure. The monitoring tools you use might not capture deviations from best practices. Some components of your system might require periodic checks like firmware updates, patches, backups, cluster operations and so on.

The need thus arises for a periodic health check for SAP HANA on Power Systems. Without periodic health checks, you might not be getting the best availability and performance from your systems, and you could be at greater risk for an unplanned outage.

What is an SAP HANA on Power Systems health check?

A health check involves inspecting your system in several key areas. These include:

◉ Ensuring up-to-date software levels

◉ Examining the adequacy of hardware resources

◉ Looking at system tuning based on your current workload pattern

◉ Doing checks for best practices in virtualization

◉ Checking for security hardening implementation as per your company security policy

◉ Checking the feasibility of adopting newly released features in the Power server/OS/HANA

Your HANA configuration, error logs, high availability and backup policies are also validated.

Minimum checks that need to be carried out as a part of SAP HANA on Power Systems health check

Here is a list of the minimum checks that must be covered as a part of SAP HANA on Power Systems health check. This is only a high-level list. You might need additional checks based on your results.

1. Physical hardware installation checks

◉ PCI adapter placement and memory dual inline memory module (DIMM) placement

◉ Active/inactive core/memory distributions

◉ Check for working links (link up status) for network and host bus adapters (HBAs)

2. Software-level checks

◉ Check to see the support of all installed software levels and their compatibility

3. Availability and redundancy checks

◉ “Working” redundancy at all levels such as I/O adapters, switches, storage, LPARs, frames and so on

◉ Business expectation of recovery point objective (RPO), recovery time objective (RTO) and infrastructure readiness to meet these numbers

4. Operating system configuration checks

◉ Checks to confirm OS installation as per best practices and as per SAP notes for SAP HANA on Power systems

◉ Checks to see security hardening implementation

5. LPAR/Frame-level resource utilization checks and performance

◉ Processor, memory, disk and network utilization and comparison with available capacity

◉ Check to see the tunable values associated with processor, memory, disk I/O and network I/O are optimal for the current load

6. HANA checks

◉ HANA file system checks

◉ Review of HCMT results

◉ HANA configuration verification

◉ HANA backup checks

◉ HANA resource utilization checks

Benefits of a HANA system health check

An SAP HANA on Power Systems health check offers numerous benefits:

◉ Identify any single point of failure and fix it

◉ Prepare you for handling unexpected downtime, if any

◉ Demonstrate current hardware utilization and growth trends, thus helping you plan for future growth or release a portion of your hardware for other workloads, saving on budget for any additional workloads

◉ Get better support by staying up to date with software versions

◉ Better manage your IT budget by knowing growth trends

◉ Identify new technologies that could be applied to your environment

◉ Improve productivity, security and confidence. May reduce the cost of acquiring additional hardware for new workloads

Who can perform an SAP HANA on Power Systems health check?

Anyone who has good knowledge of IBM Power Systems, Linux and HANA can do an SAP HANA on Power Systems health check. You could do it yourself or engage a team of experienced consultants such as IBM Systems Lab Services. Lab Services helps organizations build and optimize SAP HANA solutions with Linux on Power Systems with a tailored data center infrastructure strategy. Health checks are among the many services we offer to help clients optimize their SAP HANA environments.

Source: ibm.com

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Can your storage infrastructure support hybrid cloud?

The paradigm is shifting. The days of the monolithic application are dwindling in favor of applications built using the microservice model. Applications built upon the microservice model using containers are referred to as “cloud-native” and are the future of application development and delivery. For this very reason, organizations are deploying on-premises clouds to leverage this new application development and delivery platform. In many cases, organizations connect their on-premises cloud (also known as private cloud) to a public cloud provider, creating a hybrid cloud to take advantage of the flexibility and agility of workload placement.

In Cloud 1.0, the early days of cloud, the focus was around the cloud service models of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. This included the cloud consumption model of “pay only for what you consume”, also known as metered billing, and the OPEX nature of these cloud services. Summary: cloud 1.0 was about a new service delivery and consumption model.

In Cloud 2.0, the present day of cloud, the focus has shifted to the agility and flexibility of application development, application delivery and workload placement with an understanding that features of Cloud 1.0 are still desired and sought after. Summary: cloud 2.0 is about a new application development and delivery platform.

Knowing that on-premises cloud is a software stack that resides on clustered servers and relies on the underlying storage infrastructure, and knowing that user expectations of cloud native applications are that they are “always available, anywhere, at any time”, the questions for many in organizations who are contemplating implementing on-premises cloud or about to implement an on-premises cloud are: “Can my current storage infrastructure support on-premises cloud?” and “If not, what items do I need to address? …or… What actions do I need to take?”

Good news: IBM Lab Services has built the Hybrid Cloud Acceleration (HCA) assessment to answer those exact questions. For organizations that would like consultative assistance with deep storage infrastructure and cloud expertise, the HCA offering is a great vehicle to ensure your storage infrastructure is prepared for the onboarding of an on-premises cloud stack and can support hybrid cloud functionality.

Source: ibm.com

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Cyber resiliency 101: Required learning for all

Cyber threats like ransomware, which made its very first appearance in 1989 and has been on security teams’ and law enforcement’s radar for the past 7 or 8 years, are not fads. It’s not going away. In fact, the cash-rich ransomware industry is flourishing. As a result, organizations are moving from the era of possibility to the era of probability of a successful cyber breach. It’s not hyperbole to say that it’s no longer a question of if an organization will face a cyberattack but rather when.

Protecting against ransomware is a top priority for most organizations as they look to protect themselves against lost productivity, lost brand equity or trust, and lost revenue. Protection against ransomware should be a 2-pronged approach with a focus on security and resiliency:

◉ With cybersecurity, the objective is preventative in nature. “Lock the doors to keep any bad actors out in the first place.”

◉ With cyber resiliency, the objective is to prevail in the event of a cyber breach. “The odds are we will be breached. We need to plan and prepare in order to continue operations despite a breach.”

It’s important to note: Organizations should work towards being both cyber secure and cyber resilient.

Business continuity: 4 protection practices

In the past, business continuity was comprised of 3 protection practices. We now have a 4th protection practice. I will start by reviewing the 3 well-established protection practices and then talk about where cyber resiliency fits in.

◉ Backup: Protects files, folders, drives against corruption or accidental (and in some cases intentional) deletion.

◉ High availability: Protects against a larger, localized outage or event — for example, an outage within a site: a server or a storage array goes down, or you lose power to a portion of the data center.

◉ Disaster recovery (DR): Protects against an even larger outage — for example, an outage that affects an entire site, such as a catastrophic disaster like a fire, flood or earthquake that takes out an entire data center.

◉ Cyber resiliency: The newest protection practice under the business continuity umbrella. While these cyber resiliency practices are new, they shouldn’t be too tough to understand in that cyber resiliency practices are a blend of existing backup and DR practices, which is the reason why cyber resiliency is seated between backup and DR. Cyber resiliency is similar to backup in the protection method; it involves point-in-time copies. Cyber resiliency is similar to DR in the size and scale of the data loss. While the data center may not be lost due to a natural disaster — the building is still standing, the power is still on — a virus can cause widespread damage similar to a losing a site, requiring DR-like restore operations.

Thankfully, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a “Cybersecurity Framework” for safeguarding critical infrastructure. The framework integrates industry standards and best practices to help organizations develop or improve their cyber protection measures.

The NIST Framework is made up of 5 functions. You can think of these functions as steps, but notice that they are in a loop, signaling that there’s an expectation of continuous updates and improvements over time. Keep in mind that cyber resiliency is all about planning and preparing before a breach occurs. Not surprisingly, the first 4 functions — identify, protect, detectand respond — focus on planning and preparation to ensure a successful recovery.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework

Anyone can download and use the NIST Framework and corresponding white papers to aid them in their self-directed cyber-protection efforts. For those who would rather not go it alone, and would prefer some outside assistance and expertise, IBM System Lab Services has built the Cyber-Incident Response Storage Assessment (CIRSA) using the NIST Framework to expedite clients’ cyber resiliency protection efforts. For organizations that would like assistance and expertise, the CIRSA offering is a great vehicle for starting down the path to cyber resiliency.

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Health checks: You get them, so why not your storage?

Like many IT leaders, your IT environment is likely comprised of a mix of on-premises and cloud solutions. You’ve also likely found that a hybrid multicloud approach is better able to meet your and your customers’ needs. Whether your data storage is on premises or in the cloud, it’s critical that you keep your storage infrastructure in good health—after all, data can be a business’s most valuable resource. As an IT leader, you should be asking the question, “How healthy is my storage?”

What’s the best way to make sure your storage or software-defined storage (SDS) environment is in optimal health? Regular checkups. In this post, I want to address the concept and reality of storage health checks for software-defined storage (SDS) environments— why you need them and what they involve. Health checks for block, file or object SDS storage will be similar.  

Why your SDS needs regular health checks

Just like your health, the health of your storage environments can change over time. Workloads change, requirements change and use cases change. When they do, you need to review your infrastructure to make certain it can keep up with an ever-evolving environment. Your storage needs periodic checkups, just like you do.  

Think of it like this: as you age, there are changes in your health, some good, some not so good. To maintain good health, some people work out, change their diets and get regular preventative care. Others don’t adapt to the changing requirements and workloads of life and thus suffer from poor health. Your storage and SDS environments also need regular checkups to keep them in top shape. Moreover, as your use cases evolve, it’s important to make sure your storage or SDS infrastructure can meet those evolving needs.  

If you’re still wondering why you would need a storage health check, ask yourself: 

◉ Are there operational issues with your current SDS infrastructure? 

◉ Are you curious about the current configuration? 

◉ Does it meet best practices for the storage vendor and your use case? 

◉ Are there any areas of your SDS infrastructure you should be concerned about?  

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you might want to think about engaging your storage or SDS vendor to perform a basic health check and help you improve your storage performance. 

Storage and SDS health: What you need to think about 

When performing a storage health check, you should review the following areas. This is not an all–inclusive list, but it’s a good starting point. From this initial review, you can dive deeper as needed.  

◉ Networking – Software-defined storage such as IBM Elastic Storage Server and IBM Spectrum Scale, are highly dependent on healthy, well-functioning networking. To accurately review the health and performance of the different types of network dependent storage, you need to select the correct tools for the networks being used.  

◉ Performance – For SDS, specifically file storage, it’s important to do an assessment of the file system and the network using tools that mimic the writes and reads of the file system. For instance, when dealing with IBM Spectrum Scale or IBM Elastic Storage System, there are two tools that can mimic the protocol of the parallel reads and writes of Spectrum Scale. These tools are gpfsperf, which measures the performance of the file system, and nsdperf, which measures the performance of the Spectrum Scale or ESS high speed data or daemon network.  

◉ Storage media – How is it functioning? There are several tools to use when reviewing health and performance. Keep in mind that NVMe, SSD disks and HDD disks will all use different tools, so make sure to match the disks to the tools for storage media type. Disks are the most likely item to fail in a storage infrastructure, so consider taking a deeper dive into the performance and functionality as part of the health check. 

◉ Operating system – Do we have enough cores? What is the CPU usage? How much memory is being consumed?    

◉ Scope of the health check – What is the health check measuring and reviewing? Some health checks and assessments don’t evaluate performance but rather evaluate the basic health of the storage subsystem. You need to determine what type of health check or assessment you need, because it will require different tools and skills. 

Keep in mind: this list is by no means exhaustive. A health check could include additional assessments and recommendations, depending on your environment and reasons for seeking this type of service.

Source: ibm.com

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Gain insights into an ocean of documents with deep search

Do you have vast amounts of digital documents (such as PDF files, patents and corporate documents) piled up in your organization that are humanly impossible to read and digest? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could query against these document piles with questions like “List all the materials claimed by company X in the US patent office”? Deep search is an IBM Research® service that automatically analyzes enormous digital libraries and facilitates discovering unknown facts. It implements an AI-based approach to enable intelligent querying against document repositories. This capability has been demonstrated to aid innovation across various industries such as material sciences, insurance and drug discovery.

IBM deep search service

How does deep search work? Initially, as shown in figure 1, the digital documents are segmented into multiple components (heading, introduction, references and so on) using machine learning models and converted into structured data representations (such as HTML or JSON). These supervised learning models are customizable and highly accurate, making use of huge data sets and modern neural network topologies.

The second step of deep search involves using the existing data sources (corporate databases, publicly available data sets and the like) to identify the concepts (such as alloy, material) and relationships that are relevant to the context of knowledge discovery. Finally, a searchable and queryable knowledge base is built by linking the structured data formats of documents to the identified concepts and relationships.

Deep search in action

The document processing techniques coupled with the graph analytics provided by deep search can accelerate novel discoveries from document repositories across industries. The chemical company Nagase & Co has put deep search to extensive use in developing new compounds. ENI, an oil and gas company, is using the service for upstream exploration. Currently, deep search is also aiding drug discovery in COVID-19 research.

Knowledge discovery at scale

In addition to the knowledge engineering techniques described above, automatic analysis of a huge number of documents demands powerful storage, compute and network infrastructure. The deep search platform is currently available as a service through Red Hat® OpenShift® on IBM Cloud®. It can also be set up on your premises in an OpenShift environment on IBM Power Systems as well as Intel x86 servers. The software is designed as a group of cloud-based microservices that can scale along with the number of documents and hardware resources for large search applications. This hardware-software codesigned platform has demonstrated capability to ingest as many as 100,000 pages per day per core.

IBM Systems Lab Services can help your organization make better use of document repositories using the deep search platform. Our experienced consultants help you set up the OpenShift platform, work with your subject matter experts to build the knowledge bases and design queries to help you develop novel insights into your digital libraries.

Source: ibm.com

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Red Hat Ansible: A 101 Guide

You’ve probably heard a lot about Ansible recently. Are you curious to learn more about this rapidly growing DevOps tool? Here’s a guide to help you get started.

What is Red Hat Ansible?

Red Hat® Ansible® is an open source IT deployment, orchestration and configuration management tool. It allows IT teams to define how a client (or group of clients) should be configured, and then Ansible issues the commands to match that stated configuration. Using Ansible’s built-in modules, those clients we can control need not only be compute resources but other environments including storage controllers, network switches and on-premises and public clouds.

Why do we need Ansible?

If you think back to how we used to manage computing, it was often a very time-consuming and error-prone process. If we needed a new server to be built, we would ask the system administrators to manually build that instance. We might then require a certain software stack to be installed, along with a required configuration and user IDs and so forth. Once the server is active, we have the added complexity of keeping up with the developers requiring new software releases, configuration changes or issues around scaling. Ansible enables us to automate all these stages into efficient, repeatable tasks, allowing IT to align to flexible business requirements in this increasingly DevOps-driven world.

In the 2019 Gartner I&O Management Survey, 52% of respondents said they were investing and will continue to invest in infrastructure and operations automation. The same study highlighted that 42% of respondents said they planned to start investing within the next two years.

What can Ansible do?

Ansible gives us the ability to:

1. Provision servers or virtual machines, both on premises and in the cloud

2. Manage configuration of the clients, set up users, storage, permissions and the like

3. Prevent configuration drift of clients by comparing desired state to current state

4. Orchestrate new workloads, restarting application dependencies and so forth

5. Automate application deployment and lifecycle management

Advantages of Ansible

There are a number of advantages in using Ansible ahead of other orchestration and configuration management tools:

Agentless: No agents are needed on the client systems you want to manage. Ansible communicates with the clients over the standard SSH port.

Simple: Ansible uses “playbooks” to define the required state of the client(s). Those playbooks are written in human-readable YAML format, so no programming skills are required.

Declarative: Ansible playbooks define a declarative state required for the client, and the key principle that enables this is idempotency. Idempotency is a concept borrowed from the world of mathematics meaning that an operation can be applied multiple times without changing the results beyond the initial application. For example, if you declare a client should have a software package installed at a certain version, Ansible will only install it if it isn’t already installed at that version.

Reusable: We have the ability to break tasks into a repeatable items called roles. These can then be called from multiple playbooks. For example, we might have a role that installs a database, one that configures users and one that adds additional storage. As we write new playbooks we just include the role we required, meaning we don’t have to rewrite that functionality multiple times.

Open: Ansible is a vibrant and reliable open source project and as such has a very active community, writing roles and modules for everyone to use. Galaxy Hub is once such repository where (for example) over 25,000 roles are available for anyone to download.

Ansible Tower

Ansible Tower provides an intuitive UI and dashboard to allow role-based access so users can run and monitor their own template.

Using REST APIs, Ansible Tower also allows us to integrate with existing clouds, tools and processes. These include hybrid cloud endpoints such as IBM PowerVC, Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and VMware vCenter. In addition to endpoints, Ansible Tower provides the ability to interact with source code management repositories including GitHub.

Ansible and IBM Systems

Ansible and Ansible Tower can be used to deploy and manage workloads across the IBM Systems portfolio. Using the core OpenStack modules, we can create playbooks to build virtual machines running AIX, IBM i or Linux across IBM Power Systems estates. Using the extensive IBM collections on Galaxy Hub, we can build instances in the IBM Cloud, manage AIX, IBM i, Linux and z/OS instances both on premises and in a public cloud (where appropriate). We can also manage IBM Spectrum Virtualize storage using the modules freely available in Galaxy Hub.

Source: ibm.com

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Five key things to know about IBM Garage for Systems

What if you had access to experts who specialize in the IT solutions you were considering for your business? What if you could test-drive new IT hardware or software to make sure it’s the right fit?

IBM Garage for Systems gives businesses the opportunity to see firsthand how IBM IT infrastructure can support their business needs. Whether it’s through a co-creation workshop, a solution benchmark or a Redbooks training course, IBM Garage for Systems has infrastructure specialists who can help you gain confidence in your next infrastructure investment. We’ve helped organizations find the best platforms for their critical applications, take advantage of the security features in their systems to make sure their data is protected, put AI models to work on complex analytics and much more.

Interested to learn more? Here are the five essential things to know about us.

What sets IBM Garage for Systems apart?

1. Our mission is to deliver IT expertise that helps give you the best possible experience with IBM IT infrastructure.

We know that planning and implementing IT solutions is challenging, and our offerings are designed to help in the decision-making process. Working with IBM Garage for Systems gives you access to top-notch subject matter experts in IBM infrastructure technologies and solutions — from AI to hybrid cloud to enterprise security. We provide demos, benchmarks, proofs of concept and proofs of technology to help you find the right infrastructure solution for your business needs.

2. We co-create innovative solutions side-by-side with you.

Co-creation is a collaborative process for creating shared value between you and IBM, and it’s a fundamental approach to our work. The IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab helps organizations move IT projects from idea to implementation through workshops covering opportunity discovery, design and development. Co-creation gives you a chance to work side-by-side with IBM experts to create first-of-a-kind strategies and solutions together with IBM.

3. Our technical training content helps IT professionals build knowledge and skills on IBM Power Systems, IBM Storage, IBM Z and LinuxONE.

Experts from IBM Garage for Systems develop technical training courses and content to deliver the latest information about IBM Systems solutions to clients, Business Partners and IBM employees. IBM Redbooks content formats include online courses, videos, papers, books and other media. Here’s where you can find us:

◉ Online courses and certification programs are available through IBM Skills Gateway.

◉ Our Expert Speaker Series on YouTube provides short explanations of tech topics straight from the experts.

◉ IBM Redbooks offers print and web publications to help you grow skills and technical knowledge, and you can follow Redbooks on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to see the latest.

4. We offer expertise in AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing.

IBM Garage has skilled data scientists with expertise in AI who are ready to help you develop a new AI solution or advance an existing one. We also have teams specializing in hybrid multicloud and multivendor environments, bringing the capabilities of IBM Cloud and Red Hat to you wherever your business is on the cloud journey. Additionally, we host an active IBM Quantum System in partnership with IBM Research. We provide tours and briefings on IBM Quantum offerings and have several certified IBM Quantum Ambassadors ready to engage with you. In all these areas, our experts can meet you where you are and help you go to the next level.

5. We have expert teams located around the world and can offer most services virtually.

IBM Garage for Systems is a worldwide team with the capability to service businesses all over the planet. We offer virtual services leveraging our IBM Systems infrastructure hubs in North America and France, and we have skilled teams in key geographies around the world as well, so wherever you are, you can access our support. In addition to online training and consultations, Co-creation Lab workshops, benchmarks and proofs of concept can be done virtually.

Source: ibm.com

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Tackling volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in IT

2020 has brought unexpected challenges for individuals, governments, businesses and IT teams. Even before COVID-19, organizations had to be prepared for a range of risks: unplanned outages, security breaches, hardware and software challenges, natural disasters and unknown risks. The concept of VUCA — which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity — offers a useful way to think about how we can be prepared and respond to unanticipated situations.

VUCA accurately reflects the situation businesses are in today: we face international markets, restructuring, growth and downsizing, technological change, and cultural and societal shifts, to name just a few. Business and IT leaders have to be prepared to act quickly, with clarity and wisdom, in the face of these challenges. Recognizing the reality of VUCA gives teams the opportunity to identify likely and unlikely setbacks and mobilize around common objectives when the need arises.

Despite VUCA, collectively, we need to be hopeful and thoughtful about our future and foster a sense of trust. Trust can change everything. It is essential to build a culture of trust and transparency in our workplaces and our society. Leadership consultant Edward Marshall says that “Speed happens when people … truly trust each other.” Trust should be essential for our governments, companies, organizations and teams, especially in times of VUCA.

Pivoting from onsite to remote service delivery

Let me share a recent story that highlights the lessons of VUCA. In early 2020, as the pandemic was beginning to affect geographies around the world, some leaders started telling me that we needed to change our services approach — and quickly. Our teams provide onsite technical services to IBM clients across the globe, so our whole business model was based on the ability to travel and be in our clients’ data centers. Before we even realized how much COVID-19 would affect the world, it became clear that our services approach would have to evolve to protect our clients and employees. In a matter of weeks, we reimagined how to do our work, radically transforming to offer remote service delivery for the majority of engagements. It was a whirlwind, but I’m so proud of how quickly and effectively the team pivoted to virtual services. It was critical that I trust the team during this time, and that trust paid off. My thinking was, “Let it go to grow.”

The pandemic has exemplified all four elements of VUCA: it’s been volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. But having leaders who didn’t panic and instead looked for opportunity in the face of those challenges empowered us to act quickly to ensure that we could continue meeting our clients’ IT needs while keeping everyone as safe as possible. It’s one of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned in listening, trusting my team, staying open and flexible, and letting go of the status quo in order to come out ahead in a challenging situation.

Lessons of VUCA for IT

In IT, change has always been fast-paced, and uncertainty is nothing new. Reflecting on VUCA can help us mitigate the challenges we face today and in the future. It’s crucial in times like this that we build trust and mobilize for the greater good.

Volatility

No matter how much we plan, sometimes reality confounds our expectations. Volatile situations are stressful, and they challenge our implicit assumptions. The companies that prosper in spite of a crisis are often those that can adapt quickly to bring stability, without clinging to the past or freezing up when things go wrong.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty can be daunting, but trust can be an antidote to it. In IT, we can respond to uncertainty by seeking the collective wisdom of our teams and advisors. To me, that means listening to all voices and trusting the experts to counsel wisely.

Complexity

IT environments can already be complex, and businesses are always striving to bring greater simplicity to IT. When you add a crisis to that, things can get really complicated. I spent more than 20 years helping businesses with IT “crit sits” (critical situations), and one of the things I learned was how important health checks are to ensure you have a clear view of your technology estate and can address potential issues before they turn into a crisis.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is my favorite component of VUCA because it makes me think about opportunity. The definition of ambiguity is “the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness.” We live in a world that’s many shades of grey, and there can be multiple right answers to a single problem. Accepting the ambiguity and staying open to possibilities positions us to succeed.

IT support for uncertain times

In IBM Systems Lab Services, we’re a trusted partner for our clients in uncertain times. Every day, we help businesses reduce unknowns in their IT environments. You can’t always predict what might become an IT challenge in the future, but we can help you reduce risk and be proactive about the health of your technology estate.

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What an unexpected crisis teaches us about the role and future of IT

Our mission in the IBM Systems Client Experience Centers — to help organizations with their pressing IT challenges — gives us a rare window into the immediate needs clients are facing today. When the global pandemic hit, business and IT leaders were asking us a lot of questions: How do I ensure business continuity? How can I secure my IT with the increase of remote services? What will happen after the crisis, and how can we be prepared? What if this happens again? Do we have to work on a new IT model? What can we do better?

In the Montpellier Client Experience Center, we’re used to leading with empathy and genuinely addressing our clients’ needs with technical expertise. It was always the case, but more than ever, we’re learning from each other, as many organizations are facing unprecedented challenges with supply chain resiliency and business continuity, cybersecurity and maintaining agility and flexibility in the face of the global pandemic and its effects. Here are some of the lessons we’re learning from recent discussions with clients across industries as they pivot to address a new reality.

Preparing for the unexpected

Pressures on business continuity have intensified this year. If you operate in an essential industry — such as healthcare or food supply — you’re facing unprecedented demand while striving to protect your workforce. And all sectors are grappling with the difficulties of keeping business running while transitioning to digital revenue streams. If COVID-19 is teaching us anything, it’s that unexpected crises can happen, and being prepared for unlikely events makes good business sense.

Companies must also be ready to adapt to changes in people’s behavior — both in the short and long term. In some ways, unexpected events can accelerate changes that were already in motion, and in others they can rewrite the rules completely. For example, the pandemic is fast-tracking the move to cashless payments. People are shopping online more, and the convenience may encourage them to continue to do so long after COVID. As a result, enabling continuity for digital services is critical for organizations.

Preparing for the unexpected also means having a reliable and automated security strategy. Unfortunately, cybercriminals take advantage during times of crisis to attack companies when they’re vulnerable. Consider the central administration for a hospital in Paris, which was targeted while it was dealing with emergencies. Building in security features at every layer of your infrastructure is essential.

Feeling the pinch

Businesses are likely to see their IT budgets come under greater scrutiny than before, with an emphasis on cost-cutting and efficiency. It’s important, though, to think of IT economics over the long term rather than just the upfront costs of a technology.

Business resilience includes processes, logistics, provisioning and people. Technology that’s able to hyper-consolidate workloads would allow you to save on data center resource consumption and footprint, both of which lead to cost savings. When thinking about the cost of your server technology, it’s important to consider consolidation, operability and reduced complexity. Is this server able to deliver large-scale Linux environments and operate millions of containers through an open, secured environment that can sustain hybrid multicloud architectures?

Many companies were already moving towards more automation, more control and more options for empowering system administrators to react to a problem. The pandemic will convince those who were delaying such a move to make resilience a higher priority. No two crises are identical, and the best plan is to have multiple alternatives to address multiple potential risk scenarios.

Looking to the future

One thing is for sure: IT will play a key role in shaping the world, just as it has for decades. AI is placing new demands on computing power, since it requires huge amounts of processing capacity to build and train models. Enter quantum, which is ideal for tackling multi-parameter problems. Quantum computing will likely contribute to overcoming some of the most pressing industry challenges in the future. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, quantum could enable chemical simulations that help with the discovery of new drugs, better predict protein structures and identify the risks of a disease or its spread. The resolution of optimization problems could help optimize the chains of distribution of drugs, and the use of AI could speed up diagnoses and help us analyze genetic data more precisely.

Data centers of the future will be equipped with binary, biologically inspired quantum accelerators. Like an orchestra conductor, hybrid cloud will make it possible for these systems to operate harmoniously thanks to a layer of security and intelligent automation.

The IT industry has been in a significant transformation driven by data, AI and cloud, and recent events have demonstrated how essential IT is to keeping businesses running today and designing architectures for tomorrow. The unexpected teaches us that by bringing our talents and technologies together, we can find a faster route to IT innovation and navigate toward the future.

In the IBM Systems Client Experience Centers, we’re grateful to engage with clients and partners across a wide range of industries. We roll up our sleeves together to solve challenges by designing and delivering creative and timely solutions. Our mission gives us a window into what’s happening with IT across industries. We’d be pleased to help you innovate and elevate the value of your IT infrastructure.

Source: ibm.com

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How to pivot in challenging times with IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab

2020 has brought significant changes to the way we all do business, and many organizations are shifting priorities in response to current challenges. The IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab offers all of our workshops, consulting and minimum viable product (MVP) builds as virtual and digital co-creation engagements. We’re here for you as your organization pivots to address unexpected challenges or explore new business opportunities.

Co-creation gives you a chance to team up with IBM IT infrastructure experts to discover, plan and start building the IT solutions your business needs now. Here’s how virtual co-creation with IBM Systems works:

IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab offers flexible session options and focuses on defined objectives with the optimal group of participants, typically key stakeholders in your organization. Don’t worry about video conferencing fatigue — we’ve got you covered and will create a schedule that works for you. You get to work with leading technical subject matter experts in IBM Systems Worldwide Client Experience Centers who have a wealth of experience with hybrid cloud, enterprise security, AI and much more.

Co-creation workshops employ a proven set of collaborative tools, allowing for expert whiteboarding sessions using agile and Enterprise Design Thinking methodologies. Sessions are customized based on the current needs and priorities of your organization. Maybe you want to explore a brand-new opportunity in your business that came out because of current global events, or perhaps you’re working on an architecture design for critical infrastructure modernization that’s been in the works for a while. Wherever you are on the journey, we’ll tailor your virtual co-creation workshop to meet you there. You may even come into the session with a specific idea you want to explore and decide to change your use case based on its feasibility or new possibilities that emerge during the co-creation process.

At the end of a co-creation workshop, you’ll come away with an outline of the big ideas generated from the session, newly defined solutions and, most important, next steps to get you where you need to go.

“Inspiring ideas exchanged.”

—A large bank in Asia

“Intellectually stimulating.”

—A US-based healthcare startup

“Exceeded all of our expectations.”

—A financial startup in North America

Our team has co-created successfully with organizations across a wide spectrum of industries. We’ve delivered innovative, timely use cases focused on food safety, manufacturing floor physical distancing, healthcare diagnosis and wildfire management, to name just a few. With co-creation techniques, we can apply emerging technologies to help you optimize your business, including hybrid multicloud, modernization, cybersecurity, resiliency and high availability, AI and storage solutions.

Source: ibm.com

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Open treasures: Why we contribute to open source projects

Open source is the winning approach in software development today. Take modern cloud computing for example, which is built on open source projects governed by the Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Open source is having a transformational effect on the industry and driving innovation in the IT ecosystem. More and more organizations are leaning in and engaging in open source because, counterintuitively, it can pay off to allow your IT professionals to not just use open source software but contribute back to it.

Open source: The big picture

Consider enterprise open source for a moment: Next-generation data center solutions are software-defined, with concepts such as infrastructure as code and immutable infrastructure quickly gaining traction in the marketplace. In many areas, such as cloud, big data, machine learning and DevOps, open source software is on the cutting edge of innovation. Industry-leading open source projects include the Hadoop ecosystem, OpenStack, Docker, Kubernetes, Hyperledger, Ansible, TensorFlow, Kafka and many more. Such projects are embedded into ecosystems that promote the use of open source licenses by default. As a result, the industry at large is pivoting toward open source software.

IBM is committed to fostering the use of open technology. IBMers contribute more than 15,000 commits per month to open source projects, making IBM top 3 in the world, along with Google and Red Hat. IBM heavily invests in open source, and this trend is expected to continue and further increase following the Red Hat acquisition.

Three benefits of participating in open source for IT professionals

IT infrastructure professionals need to constantly gain new skills to remain essential for clients that are adopting next-generation data center solutions. Active participation in strategic open source projects and communities is an effective way to stay up to speed in a fast-moving industry. Active participation in open source communities helps you gather essential skills at the forefront of development.

Contributing to open source projects has further benefits for IT infrastructure professionals:

◉ Expand and sharpen skills: Adopting innovative technologies often means working with upstream (open source) projects, and active contribution to such projects allows you to acquire and deepen your knowledge. Clients implementing new applications learn by contributing as they receive feedback from more experienced users.

◉ Establish the community as a communication channel: Open source projects facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and asset reuse. This allows IT professionals from different companies to build an effective (virtual) community, breaking through the borders of their own department or company — and more collaboration across the industry means faster innovation, which all participants benefit from.

◉ Find the best experts to work with: Those looking for expertise in a particular area can find skilled consultants in open source communities. Clients have found consultants from my team, IBM Systems Lab Services, through their community contributions, resulting in improved reputation, eminence and ultimately in new service engagements. This is not only relevant to IT service consultants though; recognition and the feeling of producing value for others is “the fuel” of open source.

Source: ibm.com

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Four ways to get ready for Power Systems Virtual Servers in IBM Cloud

Are you investigating running your AIX or IBM i workloads in the cloud, but don’t know where to start? IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers in IBM Cloud provide significant value as an addition to your on-premises IBM Power Systems environment. Running AIX or IBM i workloads in the cloud makes it easy to use a pay-as-you-go model, handle seasonal bursts in computing demand without standing up hardware first, and transition from old hardware requiring expensive maintenance contracts.

If you’re intrigued by Power Systems Virtual Servers and wondering how to get ready for it, here are four tips for a smooth start with this new technology.

1. Know the solution

Some of the most common questions I get from clients are:

◉ How is IBM i or AIX running in the cloud?

◉ What does it look like?

◉ What is included, and what do I have access to?

◉ Where’s the documentation?

How is IBM i or AIX running in the cloud? AIX and IBM i workloads in Power Systems Virtual Servers are running in VMs (LPARs) on POWER9 processor-based hardware in IBM Cloud (existing POWER8 servers in some locations will be upgraded to POWER9). Those POWER9 servers are managed by the PowerVM hypervisor, virtualized with dual Virtual I/O Servers and NPIV-connected to Fibre Channel-attached storage. In other words, they’re using the same best practices as Power servers on-premises, but with the latest technologies (as of the time of this writing).

What does it look like? The best way to get an introduction is in this video. I recommend watching the whole recording, but the demo starts about 30 minutes in.

What’s included, and what do I have access to? Power Systems Virtual Servers are an infrastructure-as-a-service offering. What’s included is uptime of the underlying infrastructure and the operating system (IBM i or AIX) in each VM/LPAR with certain licensed program products. What you have access to is the IBM Cloud UI and APIs for managing the VMs and storage, as well as full access to the operating system within each VM. There’s no direct access to the Hardware Management Console (HMC), Virtual I/O Server or storage array.

Where’s the documentation? Start here and peruse all the topics in the “Learn” section on the left. Then proceed to the AIX- or IBM i-specific sections or the FAQ further down for specific answers.

2. Know your workloads

Consider the business criticality of your workloads, legal requirements and recovery point and time objectives (RPO and RTO). You want to start with applications that score lower in those categories. But let’s dig a little deeper. Power Systems Virtual Servers have minimum operating system (OS) levels for both IBM i and AIX (details here). You should create an inventory of likely migration candidates from a business standpoint and then compare them against the OS requirements. For those VMs/LPARs that don’t meet the requirements, it’s worth investigating the effect an OS upgrade would have on the applications running in those VMs. Last, consider the downtime available for each VM to migrate it, as some downtime will be required to save it on-premises, transfer it to and restore it in the cloud.

3. What about backups and HA/DR?

Appropriate backup and high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) options are must-haves for most AIX and IBM i workloads. Because backups are usually performed from within the OS, most of the options that exist on-premises are present in Power Systems Virtual Servers as well. However, the overall save and restore process has some differences and involves additional configuration and a bit of a learning curve. Keep in mind that physical tape drives or libraries are not available in the cloud. From an HA/DR standpoint, a key difference is that storage-based replication, which is the norm for many Power Systems clients, is not available with Power Systems Virtual Servers. HA/DR options for both IBM i and AIX involve logical or OS-based replication.

4. We have to talk about the network

How will these AIX or IBM i applications in the cloud be accessed? Do you need console-, interactive user- or application-level communication between your on-premises and Power Systems Virtual Server environments? Are you planning on using replication between your data center and the cloud for DR? These are all questions that will influence the network design and cost of your Power Systems Virtual Server solution. Multiple connectivity options exist. Finally, consider any non-Power Systems Virtual Server services or workloads you might want to use or have running in IBM Cloud. Having a complete multiplatform business solution in the cloud is one of the great benefits of Power Systems Virtual Servers, but it should also factor into your network planning.

Running IBM i and AIX in the IBM Cloud enables significant business opportunities for additional agility and growth. At the same time, it’s a new environment that carries a learning curve and requires thoughtful planning to use optimally.

Source: ibm.com

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