Why is High Availability so Important for Mainframe Data Modernization on the Cloud?

by Joseph Brady, Director of Business Development and Cloud Alliance Leader at Treehouse Software, Inc.

Many customers embarking on Mainframe-to-Cloud data replication projects with Treehouse Software are looking at high availability (HA) as a key consideration in the planning process. All of the major Cloud platforms have robust HA infrastructures that keep businesses running without downtime or human intervention when a zone or instance becomes unavailable. HA basic principles are essentially the same across all Cloud platforms.

In this blog, our example shows how the AWS Global Infrastructure and HA is architected with Treehouse Software’s tcVISION real-time mainframe data replication product. A well planned HA architecture ensures that systems are always functioning and accessible, with deployments located in various Availability Zones (AZs) worldwide.

The following example describes tcVISION‘s HA Architecture on AWS. During tcVISION ’s Change Data Capture (CDC) processing for mainframe data replication on the Cloud, HA must be maintained. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which contains the tcVISION Agent, is part of an Auto Scaling Group that is spread across AZs with Amazon EC2 instance(s).

tcVISION and AWS overall architecture…

Upon failure, the replacement Amazon EC2 instance tcVISION Agent is launched and communicates its IP address to the mainframe tcVISION Agent. The mainframe tcVISION Agent then starts communication with the replacement Amazon EC2 tcVISION Agent.

Once the Amazon EC2 tcVISION Agent is restarted, it continues processing at its next logical restart point, using a combination of the LUW and Restart files. LUW files contain committed data transactions not yet applied to the target database. Restart files contain a pointer to the last captured and committed transaction and queued uncommitted CDC data. Both file types are stored on a highly available data store, such as Amazon Elastic File System (EFS).

tcVISION and AWS HA architecture…

For production workloads, Treehouse Software recommends turning on Multi-AZ target and metadata databases.

To keep all the dynamic data in an HA architecture, tcVISION uses EFS, which provides a simple, scalable, fully managed elastic file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. It is built to scale on-demand to petabytes without disrupting applications, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, eliminating the need to provision and manage capacity to accommodate growth.

More information on AWS HA

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Treehouse Software helps enterprises immediately start synchronizing their mainframe data on the Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Open Systems to take advantage of the most advanced, scalable, secure, and highly available technologies in the world with tcVISION…

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data replication for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Cloud, Open Systems, Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms.

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Contact Treehouse Software for a Demo Today…

Just fill out the tcVISION Product Demonstration Request Form and a Treehouse representative will contact you to set up a time for your tcVISION demonstration. This will be a live, on-line demonstration that shows tcVISION replicating data from the mainframe to a Cloud target database.

tcVISION from Treehouse Software: Replicate Data Between Mainframe, Cloud, or Hybrid Cloud While Maintaining Your Legacy Environment

by Joseph Brady, Director of Business Development and Cloud Alliance Leader at Treehouse Software, Inc.

Visit Treehouse Software’s tcVISION dedicated website, where customers can learn how to keep data in synch in hybrid IT architectures with Z mainframe, distributed, and Cloud platforms through instructional videos, blog articles, and slide shows: https://www.tcvision.com/

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Contact Treehouse Software Today…

Treehouse Software is the worldwide distributor of tcVISION, which provides mainframe data replication between Db2, Adabas, VSAM, IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA DATACOM, or sequential files, and many Cloud and Open Systems targets, including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Kafka, PostgreSQL, etc. Just fill out the Treehouse Software Product Demonstration Request Form and a Treehouse representative will contact you to set up a time for your online tcVISION demonstration.

What are the Benefits of Replicating Mainframe Data on Cloud or Hybrid Cloud Systems?

by Joseph Brady, Director of Business Development and Cloud Alliance Leader at Treehouse Software

Enterprise customers with mainframe systems have begun their movement of data to the Cloud or hybrid Cloud (a mixed computing, storage, and services environment made up of on-premises infrastructure, private Cloud services, and public Cloud) to benefit from new and powerful technologies that deliver significant business benefits and competitive advantage. Compared to the number of mainframe shops that are in the planning stages of their Cloud projects, existing adopters’ numbers are still relatively small.

Today, it is easier than ever for customers to take advantage of cutting edge, Cloud-based technologies, changing the way they manage, deploy, and distribute mission-critical data currently residing on mainframe systems. During the planning phase of a Cloud or hybrid Cloud modernization strategy, some benefits that are quickly discovered include:

Trade Capital Expense for Variable Expense – Instead of having to invest heavily in data centers and servers before customers know how they are going to use them, they pay only when they consume computing resources, and pay only for how much they consume.

Global Deployments – Cloud platforms span many geographic regions globally. Enterprises can easily deploy applications in multiple regions around the world with just a few clicks. This means there can be lower latency and a better experience for customers at minimal cost.

Economies to Scale – By using Cloud computing, customers can achieve a lower variable cost than they can get on their own, because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the Cloud. Providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, etc. can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay as-you-go prices.

Scale of Services – Cloud-based products offer a broad set of global services including compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning and AI, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security, and enterprise applications. These services help organizations move faster, lower IT costs, and scale.

World Class Security – All major Cloud platforms offer advanced and strict security that complies with the most stringent government and private sector requirements.

Extreme High Availability (HA) – Major Cloud platforms span many geographic regions around the world.  By designing services and applications to be redundant across regions, HA is enhanced far beyond a single on-premises data center.

Testing at Scale – Cloud servers and services can be created and charged on demand for a specific amount of time.  This allows customers to create temporary large-scale test environments prior to deployment that are not practical for on-premises environments.  Large scale testing reduces deployment risks and helps to provide a better customer experience.

Auto Scaling and Serverless Deployments – Major Cloud platforms have many serverless and autoscaling options available, allowing for scalable computing capacity as required.  Customers pay only for the compute time they consume – there is no charge when the code is not running. Another example is the ability for a Cloud database to automatically start up, shut down, and scale capacity up or down based on the application’s needs.

Customer Agility and Innovation – In a Cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only a click away, which means that customers reduce the time to make those resources available to developers from weeks to just minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, since the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.

Many companies who haven’t started their modernization journeys yet are looking for tools that allow their legacy mainframe environments to continue, while replicating data – in real time – on a variety of Cloud and open systems platforms. Treehouse Software is the worldwide distributor of tcVISION, a software tool that provides an easy and fast approach for Cloud and hybrid Cloud projects, enabling bi-directional data replication between the hardware source and many targets, including (mainframe): Db2 z/OS, Db2 z/VSE, Adabas, VSAM, IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA DATACOM, etc. and (Cloud and open systems): AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Kafka, PostgreSQL, etc..

If your enterprise is planning on a Mainframe-to-Cloud data modernization project, we would welcome the opportunity to help get you moving immediately with an online demonstration of tcVISION. Contact Treehouse Software for a tcVISION demonstration today!