As 2019 comes to a close, many of the posts and news releases coming from Striim have focused on the bidirectional data movement support between traditional databases and the cloud. For the HPE NonStop community, this is becoming a topic of conversation, as in many cases this is a compelling alternative to other options available.
While many NonStop users rely on multiple NonStop deployments geographically separated – their business continuity requirements – having the option to back up mission critical data to the cloud has its merits. The most compelling is the attraction of a lower cost option to more traditional approaches to business continuity through global distribution, as is the case with some of the larger financial institutions.
There are instances too where implementing hybrid configurations involving NonStop and private, on-prem, clouds necessitates the movement of data between the cloud and NonStop – particularly with the increased interest in NonStop SQL supporting database as a service (DBaaS) to applications running in the cloud.
Having the opportunity to move the data in both directions allows for a risk-reduced operation, whereby data can be moved in phases knowing that, should something fail in the process, the application can continue to run uninterrupted. This lends itself to satisfy needs of those NonStop users who are running mission-critical applications.
In her post On-Premises-to-Cloud Migration: How to Minimize the Risks to the Striim blog, Irem Radzik writes about the inherent value that comes with Striim having embraced a change data capture (CDC) model to better ensure consistency between source and target databases. This is of great importance to the NonStop community and has been at the heart of the business continuity implementations for more than a decade. According to Radzik:
“Here comes the good news that I love sharing: Today, newer, more sophisticated streaming data integration with change data capture technology minimizes disruptions and risks mentioned earlier. This solution combines initial batch load with real-time change data capture (CDC) and delivery capabilities.
“As the system performs the bulk load, the CDC component collects the changes in real time as they occur. As soon as the initial load is complete, the system applies the changes to the target environment to maintain the legacy and cloud database consistent.”
Bi-directional data replication featuring CDC was the theme of the article News from Gartner and news from Striim; one objective – (bi-directional) movement to the cloud! published in the December 2019 issue of NonStop Insider. In this article, Alok Pareek, Co-Founder and EVP of Product at Striim is quoted:
“Responding to requests from marquee customers who use Striim to enable their hybrid cloud infrastructure, our engineering team has delivered a robust bi-directional data replication offering. These enterprise customers finally have a next-generation, zero-downtime, zero-data-loss solution for online phased database migrations, allowing them to seamlessly run their new cloud environments in parallel with the legacy systems for a gradual transition for their end users.”
For now, however, the extent of the opportunity for the NonStop community to leverage this capability (available in Striim release 3.9.7) requires additional input from NonStop users. As it was noted in the article in NonStop Insider, when it comes to the NonStop community:
“Striim is still canvassing the NonStop community members for further feedback about their own use-case potential as Striim is to prioritize support of bidirectional NonStop SQL to / from Cloud based solely on these NonStop users requirements.
Mr. Pareek goes on to state (and NonStop users would agree):
“These enterprise customers finally have a next generation zero-downtime, zero-data-loss solution for online phased database migrations, allowing them to seamlessly run their new cloud environments in parallel with the legacy systems for a gradual transition for their end users.”
Should you have any trouble at all with the above hyperlink to the article published in the digital publication NonStop Insider, you can always cut and paste this link into your browser:
For now, should the functionality of this latest release of Striim be of interest to you as a NonStop user and you would like to know more about the capabilities on offer with Striim Release 3.9.7 please email us or give us a call and make sure you check out our web site for all the news as it breaks at https://www.striim.com/.
