By the time you read this, our NonStop TBC 2024 event will be over. 50 years of existence is certainly something we can be proud of and celebrate but at the same time we know we must think about the new generations embarking on their NonStop journey. How do we transfer 50 years of knowledge to the young new hires who did not go through all those decades that saw the introduction of Unix, relational databases, Internet, application frameworks, virtual machines, micro-services and artificial intelligence. Many concepts and products introduced over the years still participate in what exists today, so a lot of the history of IT is important to understand the relevancy of a particular piece of software, its scope, its potential and its impact. On the positive side I find that very often young people have an immense thirst for knowledge and if you explain things clearly enough, they will very rapidly catch up. On a personal experience note, it has been my career long goal to make sure not only to learn but to always share what I learned with others. I always question why anyone would keep information to themselves and I believe that one grows not only by learning but also by transmitting that knowledge to others. These were the thoughts going through my mind when recently I was asked by an intern, “what’s an RVU?”.
Of course it starts with answering what the acronym stands for, Release Version Update. OK, fair enough I get an idea that this is some kind of new version of software. If this is all I must go by I wonder why the 3 words, aren’t they all synonyms in a way? We often say “a new release” or “a new version” interchangeably. And an update would implicitly be a new version or release. I’m being facetious here but it’s immediately obvious that defining the acronym alone is not sufficient. An RVU is a scheduled release vehicle. And to understand this some NonStop context is required because we also have what we call independent products (IP) or specific patches that are not on a regular schedule. An IPVU is an independent product version update. For patches we have Software Product Revision (SPRs). Now the last part to understand is what participates in those scheduled vehicles. The OS. In fact, the version naming scheme for the OS is typically associated with the word RVU. For example, we just released the L24.08 RVU. That naming scheme includes an “L” for the processor type (x86), 24 represents the year and 08 the month. So, the L24.08 OS was released in August 2024. But the RVU may also include other software that are attaching themselves to that “vehicle”, which we also call the “SUT” (Historically “Site Update Tape” but supplied on other mediums today). For example, NonStop TS/MP, NonStop SQL, Measure and others will join the RVU to release their updates along with the OS. While an L24.08 RVU refers to the OS, these other software may also join the party, if they have been purchased by the customer.
Is this it? Well, that took a little more than defining the acronym and I did not cover some additional details such as what are Tnumber and their SPR levels, the building blocks of those software updates. But there is still one more step we can take to increase the knowledge we transmit here on what an RVU is. When we defined RVU as opposed to IP and SPRs we gave it a little more NonStop context. How about some industry context? Sometimes it is the hardest one to define because it requires a comparison with other models in the industry. Yet it highlights another crown jewel of NonStop as RVUs ensure customers have this fine-tuned balance between standard software yet customized specifically to their environment.
- An RVU ensures that individual products have been tested together
- It makes update efforts at customer site simpler
- It reduces effort to manage dependencies at the customer site
NonStop customers know the software combination they receive has been tested, yet it is specific to each customer’s needs. And now the term “Site” in the SUT acronym also starts to make more sense! In conclusion, you could think of this last part of the definition of an RVU to be the marketing angle, yet it is a significant benefit for our customers and to our new hire it gives a lot more context and sense to understand what an RVU is.
Before I close this newsletter, I’ll include the contents of L24.08 below. Another great update of our software stack.
L24.08 Release Version Update is generally available
HPE is pleased to announce the general availability of L24.08 RVU for select systems including HPE x86 based NonStop systems, HPE Virtualized NonStop systems and HPE Virtualized Converged NonStop systems. Customers can order L24.08 based SUTs for their current NonStop systems from Scout. This RVU is not yet orderable with new NonStop systems shipped from the factory. Those systems should continue to be ordered with L23.08 or earlier RVUs until further communication.
The following sections summarize the key enhancements made in this RVU.
New hardware products supported in this RVU
None
New software products introduced in this RVU
None
Product Enhancements
NonStop TS/MP Enhancements
The following enhancements have been made in TS/MP Utilities:
· NSMPT features
o Auto generation of rules for DRL, rules that govern scalability operations of the NSMEF subsystem, are now automatically generated.
o The YML configuration files are now defined with a versioned schema.
o Provision to specify the number of units for scaling out and scaling in.
· NSMEF features
o The NSMEF subsystem (including the Drools libraries) have been certified to work on the NSJ 17 (ported binaries based on OpenJDK 17) virtual machine and run time environment (JVM & JRE).
· TS/MP ACS release includes the following new features
o The new limit for $RECEIVE’s ”receive depth” of linkmon process is increased to 14,990 from 8,191 per CPU.
o Increased limit for Pathsend requests to 14,990 and Pathsend Client processes to 58.
o Linkmon can acquire beyond 8191 links to process additional requests.
NonStop TMF Enhancements
A new API called ARPARTOFUPDATE has been added to the TMF audit reading library. This API can be used to find out whether a delete or insert audit record is generated as part of an update operation.
NSJ 17 – Ported Binaries on HPE NonStop Servers, based on OpenJDK 17
NSJ 17 is a certified implementation of OpenJDK 17.0.8. It implements the application programming interfaces (APIs) and tools that are defined for a headless configuration of OpenJDK 17. Features added after OpenJDK 11 up to OpenJDK 17 are listed at https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/. Salient features of NSJ 17 are:
· Improvements to Switch….Case statement syntax, Multiline strings, Lightweight classes called Records & Sealed classes, compact number formatting and enhanced pseudo random number generation.
· A few optimizations have been added to the G1 Garbage Collector. One feature is for automatically returning unused committed heap memory to the operating system.
· Java Flight Recorder (JFR) now allows to access the data being recorded in real time. This is called JFR Event Streaming.
· CMS and Parallel Old Garbage Collectors have been removed.
· Read the support note S24003 – NSJ 17 Availability and Migration Considerations. The support note provides detailed information including the pre-requisites to run NSJ 17.
NonStop HTTP Server 2.4 Update 1 (NSHTTP Server 2.4 U1)
NSHTTP Server 2.4 Update 4 (NSHTTP Server 2.4 U4), released in this RVU includes the following new features.
· OAuth2.0 Protocol
This release brings support for RFC 6749 The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework. OAuth 2.0 helps ease the practical difficulties involved in securely offering a service or a resource to a client by a server. You can now secure NonStop applications hosted on the NSHTTP Server using the OAuth2.0 authorization mechanism without requiring any changes to themselves.
· OpenID Connect (OIDC) Support
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an authentication protocol built on top of OAuth 2.0 that is designed to provide a standardized way for web applications to authenticate users and obtain their identity information. OIDC is standardized by the OpenID Foundation. OpenID Connect has emerged as an efficient solution to address the complexities of user authentication across different websites and applications. You can now secure NonStop applications by leveraging the authentication mechanisms/services provided by external Identity Providers. This reduces your burden of managing user credentials for each service and promotes Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities.
SQL/MX R3.9
SQL/MX R3.9 release includes the following new features:
· A new tool, SQL/MX WebDBS, is released. This is a web-based interface to the SQL/MX Database Services (DBS).
· A new MXCS subsystem, OSS MXCS, provides the ability to share the same port for all the database connections.
· The mxdbs utility now supports new commands “dbs-upgrade” and “dbs-downgrade” to perform UPGRADE and DOWNGRADE of metadata for DBS databases.
· PL/MX provides many new features including the ability to execute User Defined Functions (UDF) in master executor, ESPs, and in DP2 (with restrictions). New routines have been added to the DBMS_CRYPTO and UTL_RAW system packages to handle RAW data types.
· SQL/MX supports a new AUTHORIZATION clause for CREATE DDL statement.
· SQL/MX supports a new administrative privilege called UPGRADE_DOWNGRADE.
· The Statement Specific Defaults (SSD) feature allows specifying one or more default attributes (CQDs) to specific SELECT statements, without application change and/or data source changes.
· The new Java release, NSJ17, can be used with Stored Procedures in Java (SPJs), SQL/MX health check tool and JDBC applications.
· SQL/MP Alias related DDL commands now use default catalog and schema if these are not explicitly provided by the user.
XYGATE Merged Audit (XMA)
XMA has the following new enhancements:
· SYSLOGQ table has an additional column “SEND_STATUS” to more effectively monitor each record’s progress.
· Enhanced the XYGATE Access Control (XAC) mover to support larger XAC audit messages.
NonStop SSH
NonStop SSH is enhanced with the following features:
· Support for two new RSA Public Key Algorithms: rsa-sha2-256 and rsa-sha2-512.
· A new parameter, ALLOWEDRSASIGALGORITHMS has been added to set the signature algorithm(s) for HOSTKEY type RSA.
NonStop SSL
NonStop SSL is enhanced with the following new features:
· Security improvements related to certificate chain processing.
· The version of OpenSSL incorporated into this release, including the SSL Library and the SSL-AT library, has been updated to 3.0.14.
· Customer builds no longer require the use of the -lrld switch for both SSLOBJ and SSL-AT libraries.
· The versioning system for SSL library has been modified.
· Remote Proxy is now Java 11 compatible.
Firmware
New firmware updates are available for D3700 and D3710 SAS Disk enclosure to level 5.04.
Networking Enhancements
CIP software places the IPSec capability under the control of NSK core License. All customers who are not subject to US Export Control restrictions will have this feature licensed on their systems.
Obtaining SUTs and SPRs:
SUT requests can be submitted through Scout for NonStop servers, which can be accessed via the HPE NonStop eServices Portal. You may also query the complete list of product versions and software product revisions (SPRs) included in the RVU and download the required SPRs from this portal.
For more information:
OpenJDK (the “Name”) is a trademark of Oracle America, Inc. (“Oracle”) (the “Trademark Owner”).
Java and Oracle are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
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