Application Virtualization for HP Integrity NonStop servers

Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 2
Business challenges.............................................................................................................................. 2
Virtualization....................................................................................................................................... 2
Application Virtualization for HP Integrity NonStop servers ................................................................... 3
NonStop Advanced Architecture (NSAA) ............................................................................................ 3
NSAA software................................................................................................................................ 4
Application Virtualization in detail ..................................................................................................... 5
Business solutions................................................................................................................................. 6
Customer puts Application Virtualization to work ................................................................................. 6
Summary ............................................................................................................................................ 7
For more information............................................................................................................................ 8


Applications Virtualization -- Synchronize Business and IT
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Abstract: Application Virtualization is the set of software
and techniques that allows users to build more robust
applications that can scale in size up to 2,000 times in a
very manageable way.
This paper describes the features and benefits of the
Application Virtualization capability, which is enabled as
part of the new HP NSAA (NonStop Advanced
Architecture).
HP has developed new capabilities to help customers
become even more competitive. The Application
Virtualization for HP Integrity NonStop server capability
inherent in the HP NSAA allows customers greater
flexibility in deploying their applications.
Based on the virtual capabilities built into the architecture,
this flexibility provides extended levels of scalability and
availability in a very manageable environment. Download
this white paper to learn more about the types of
applications that can benefit from this new capability.
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Executive summary
This paper describes the features and benefits of the Application Virtualization capability, which is
enabled as part of the HP NonStop Advanced Architecture (NSAA) capabilities. This paper also
provides examples of the types of applications that can benefit from this new capability.
Application Virtualization is the set of software and techniques that allows users to build more robust
applications that can scale in size up to 2,000 times in a very manageable way.
Business challenges
As the global economy continues to force enterprises to become even more competitive within their
own markets, there is increasing pressure to build information technology infrastructures that enable
the highly cost-effective and flexible deployment of business-critical applications. At this enterprise
level, HP has created its Adaptive Enterprise strategy, focused on synchronizing business and IT to
leverage change for competitive advantage. As part of this overall strategy, HP has developed
exciting new capabilities to help customers become even more competitive; for example, the
Application Virtualization capability is an integrated virtualization approach for HP Integrity NonStop
servers, which helps customers to rapidly deploy new server resources to meet high growth or extreme
availability requirements.
At the heart of many Fortune 1000 enterprises, there is a NonStop server supporting key business
requirements, in which application downtime is not an option. As everywhere else, there is pressure in
this mission-critical arena for even higher levels of service at a significantly reduced cost. This is
precisely the impetus behind the NSAA, which delivers the highest levels of application availability
with fail-safe data integritycomplemented by virtually unlimited scalabilityto satisfy the worlds
most critical computing requirements. The Application Virtualization capability is the part of NSAA
that delivers the most flexible application deployment choices to optimize both availability and scale.
Virtualization
Virtualization is an approach to IT that pools and shares resources so that utilization is optimized and
supply automatically meets demand. Traditional IT environments are often silos, where both
technology and human resources are aligned around an application or business function. With a
virtualized infrastructure, people, processes, and technology are focused on meeting service levels,
capacity is allocated dynamically, resources are optimized, and the entire infrastructure is simplified
and flexible. HP offers a broad spectrum of virtualization solutions that allows customers to choose the
most appropriate path and optimization focus for their IT infrastructure resources. HP defines these
strategies in the following terms:
Element virtualization
Integrated virtualization
Complete IT vitality
Three levels of virtualization are shown in figure 1.
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Figure 1. Three levels of virtualizationproviding increasing business value.



Application Virtualization for HP Integrity NonStop servers
Application Virtualization as part of the NSAA is a prime example of integrated virtualization, where
the server, storage, application, and database resources in an NSAA environment are all optimized
to meet stringent service-level agreements as business volumes fluctuate. Application Virtualization for
Integrity NonStop servers leverages many capabilities from HP NonStop S-series servers. With the
introduction of the NSAA, HP is adding a pricing model that promotes the flexible deployment of this
capability, which is built in to HP Integrity NonStop servers.
Over time, HP will be developing more features to support this well-differentiated capability, as the
industry evolves toward true utility computing. To fully understand the features that Application
Virtualization provides, it is necessary to explore the basic software virtualization capabilities
delivered within the NSAA.
NonStop Advanced Architecture (NSAA)
The NonStop Advanced Architecture (NSAA) is an evolutionary approach to improving the original
and well-established NonStop system architecture. The NSAA encompasses the new Integrity NonStop
server, related NSAA software, and the ability to deploy advanced HP StorageWorks storage area
network (SAN) products.
A comprehensive suite of services is available to enable customers to fully leverage the Integrity
NonStop server, HPs premier platform to meet the most stringent service levels for the most
demanding applications.
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NSAA software
The common standards and uncommon advantages provided by NSAA software are shown in
figure 2.

Figure 2. The common standards and uncommon advantages of NSAA software.



A major benefit of the new NSAA is that it inherits all the capabilities of the traditional NonStop
software architecture that have been production-proven over the last 30 years. Also, because HP has
retained the takeover characteristics of the software architecture, the complete software fault-tolerant
environment of previous NonStop system servers is identical in the new platform.
The software fault-tolerant capabilities of the Integrity NonStop server derive from key NonStop system
design points that have been preserved in the NSAA. First, the operating system is message based;
for example, programs executing in the processors (called processes) use messages to communicate
with processes in other CPUs. These system resources are geographically independent, in that they do
not need to reside physically in the same processor in order to communicate. As a result, applications
can be distributed across as many processors as a user has, resulting in higher levels of availability
and scale.
A second design point is that all HP NonStop operating system processes comprise a process pair.
Process pair is the term used to describe the situation in which there are both a primary and a backup
process. In the Integrity NonStop server, the backup process is located in a different processor than
the primary process, so the backup process can immediately take over if the primary process fails for
any reason. This is the basic operation of software fault tolerance in the Integrity NonStop system.
A third design point of the NonStop software environment is the ability to partition data across all
available disks. This powerful feature makes it possible for application objects and entities in different
processors to access data in different partitions in parallel, significantly reducing the time needed to
perform tasks such as large queries. This also makes it possible to handle large transaction volumes
while having little impact on response times.
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Another way to think about this is that the ability of a backup process to take over the work of a failed
process is possible because in a NonStop server all the resources are virtualthat is, they are not
physically linked to an executing program (called a process), but are instead pooled so that in the
event of a failure new resources can be allocated to the work that the failed process was handling.
Another benefit of using virtualizing resources for availability is that it makes it easy to scale the
application by simply adding new resources (more processors, storage, and so on) to the application
in a scalable manner, because extra copies of the processes that make up the application can be
cloned and put into the newly available resources very easily.
Another key feature is the ability of the operating environment to keep track of the workloads being
handled by individual processes, so that if that particular resource is failing to deliver the necessary
service level (for example, response time), it can add a copy of the overworked process, split its
workload queue, and divert half of its workload to the newly added process. This workload
management facility allows for the dynamic handling of transaction peaks.
It is important to note that these features and capabilities are completely transparent in the
development and deployment of applications; in fact, the Integrity NonStop platform removes the
complexity from creating 100 percent reliable and easily scalable applications.
To summarize, the key features of the original NonStop software that are preserved in the NSAA are
the following:
Message-based operating system
Geographic independence of resources
Process pairs
Parallel processing
Application Virtualization in detail
The NSAA does not simply incorporate these proven software features; it also supports an extension
of these concepts to more effectively leverage the clustering capabilities of the NonStop architecture
this is called Application Virtualization.
In the previous discussion regarding the fault-tolerant nature of the NonStop software, the premise
was that the processes are contained within a single system, which in an Integrity NonStop server can
be up to 16 processors. This is indeed a limitation for fault-tolerant processes, as it is impossible for a
process running locally to have its work taken over by a backup process running hundreds of miles
away. However, all the other benefits of the software architecture still exist, that is, application
processes and data can be distributed over more than 16 processors in a linear fashion without
changing the application at all or writing complex scripts to manage the multi-node environment.
In this case, application processes and data are spread across the cluster, with each node capable of
providing a fault-tolerant environment for the part of the application it is managing.
More than that, transactions that span the nodes are looked after by HP NonStop Transaction
Management Facility (NonStop TMF) Software, which keeps a single log of database changes and
transaction completions, so that should any problems occur, the consistency of the application at the
node level can be maintained.
In addition to the support for distributed transactions in an Integrity NonStop cluster, the other key
component of building an application that can be virtualized is the database itself. The HP NonStop
SQL Database is a fully ANSI SQL standard database that is fully distributable across a cluster of
Integrity NonStop nodes. Tables in a NonStop SQL Database can be partitioned across multiple CPUs
for availability, scalability, and performance reasons. Typically, in a clustered NonStop environment,
there is only one database schema so that management of a large multi-terabyte database is greatly
simplified.
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This provides not only easy, manageable scalability up to 2,000 times; it also extends the fault
tolerance beyond a single node, in that if a node fails, the remaining nodes will be able to continue
processing the application, and if HP NonStop Remote Database Facility (NonStop RDF) Software is
used, a copy of the data on the failed node will be available for use on the surviving nodes.
In the past, this clustering, which can be done in a metro cluster, locally, or a continental cluster,
globally, was only used to grow an application beyond the 16-processor system limitation or to have
a disaster-tolerant configuration for business continuity. This was primarily an artificial constraint
caused by the pricing of the operating software that only allowed the operating system to be
purchased on a per-system basis, so that every time a new system was required there was a step
function in the pricing.
With the NSAA, all software is licensed on a per-processor basis, allowing for completely linear,
predictable, and flexible configuration choices. To aid in the management of large applications, the
NSAA continues to support the concept of nodes or groups of processors. However, configuration
throughput is defined by the total number of processors, rather than the number of nodes.
A customer can choose to deploy a single 16-processor system as 2 times 8 processor nodes; or also
4 times 4 processor nodes; and so on, with no price penalty. This gives users extreme flexibility in
deploying their applications to meet their service-level expectations.
Because of the geographic independence feature mentioned above, the application appears as a
single application domain, which means the management of applications in this type of multi-node
configuration does not increase in complexityit is as simple as managing a single server. Such
configurations can provide greater flexibility for management of planned outages while achieving
100 percent uptime.
Business solutions
Some HP customers have already experienced the benefits of using the features previously available
with the NonStop server to support the rapid growth requirements of the deployed application without
impacting its service levels while accommodating growth. A great example of this is Japans leading
mobile phone service provider, which used the platform for its text, voice, and picture application.
Customer puts Application Virtualization to work
In 2004 our customer was the fastest-growing mobile phone service provider in Japan, with over 2.7
million new subscribers; the next largest service had more than 2.4 million new subscribers; the next
competitor after that had fewer than a million new subscribers. The challenge here was adding new
subscribers, including their mailboxes, and so on, to the single application domain while having no
impact on the current subscribers who were 24 x 7 users.
Using the clustering features of the NonStop system environment, coupled with the virtual application
support features described above, our customer was able to grow its infrastructure on a massive scale
without disruption to its existing subscribers. The mobile phone service provider managed its
subscriber base on the basis of the mobile cells it was supporting. Each cell supports around 20,000
subscribers, defined as 2 nodes of 12 CPUs and the attendant application processes to deliver the
mobile mail service.
An overview of the service is shown in figure 3.
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Figure 3. Overview of service.



When a new cell is needed, the cellular service provider is able to add the two nodes to the running
system, without taking the existing system down, and then starting up the new services seamlessly.
This customer will continue to deploy future cells on the new HP Integrity NonStop server.
Summary
The Application Virtualization for HP Integrity NonStop server capability inherent in the new
HP NSAA allows customers to deploy their applications in a very flexible manner. This flexibility,
based on the virtual capabilities built in to the architecture, provides extended levels of scalability
and availability in a very manageable environment. This approach removes complexity from the
deployment of applications, such as the cellular mail system customer example, which exemplifies an
Adaptive Enterprise solution in which business and IT are truly synchronized to capitalize on change.

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For more information
www.hp.com/go/integritynonstop

2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained
herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and
services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such
products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or
omissions contained herein.
05/2005

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