Migrations to Windows are game changers
December 14, 2015
Migrations have always been agents of change, and some of the changes are being triggered by another shift: from an older Windows to a newer version. We're talking Windows Server here, the host software that was once called Windows NT in the days when a 3000 needed an integration strategy with Windows. Plenty of former MPE shops run on Windows. It's been the top choice for migrated customers.
Windows 2016 is on the way, ready to push along the companies who've already moved from Windows 2003 to 2008 to Windows 2012. Application Portfolio Management is letting IT managers look forward to it with an eye toward making the most of investments. 2016 has changes to the datacenter game coming up, including a big hardware refresh. HP is counting on an uptick in its ProLiant business triggered by Windows 2016; the vendor's been looking toward that release date since early this year.
The Tech Preview 4 of 2016 dropped last month. Since there's been previewing and talk about this Windows change since last year, it's given IT managers time to conduct APM assessments. Or get one started, if they haven't already.
"It helps decide which investments need to be done, and when," said Birket Foster of MB Foster about APM. "For example, Windows 2016 uses Docker, and by May, it will be settled down for production use."
Docker will be helping Windows get into the cloud more easily. There are other benefits, payoffs for the Windows 2016 migrations. The open source project has a 1.5 release, one that aims to bring bigger IPV6 addresses to more systems.
Windows upgrades can trigger larger changes, according to another HP 3000 vendor. Dave Clements of Stromasys says that most of the company's Charon virtualizer customers "are on physical platforms. We see some of them moving to VMware when they upgrade from Windows 2003. It's a choice."
The Windows 2016 move is more accurately a re-hosting, to use one of the Five R's of APM Foster has discussed. The hardware stays the same, but it's likely to need an upgrade. Meanwhile, Docker looks like technology that could help in virtualization, too, according to our contributor and 3000 consultant Brian Edminster.
"Docker struck me as an easy mechanism to stand up Linux instances in the cloud -- any number of different clouds, actually," Edminster said earlier this year. According to a Wiki article he pointed out, Docker is based upon open source software, the sort of solution he's been tracking for MPE users for many years.
Docker is "a standardized software platform for delivering apps at scale," according to an article in Infoworld. And it's taking over the world, the article adds.
Two major operating system projects have already started integrating Docker as a fundamental part of how they work. CoreOS uses Docker to create a pared-down Linux distribution -- one now available on Google Cloud Platform, appropriately enough -- where all software is bundled into Docker containers. Red Hat's already started building major support for Docker into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and has plans for a major reworking of RHEL around Docker, Project Atomic.