Continuous availability presentation in 2006, updated

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Continuous availability

The slide deck tells me that it was in 2006 that I created a set of slides for “Kees” with an overview of the continuous availability features of an IBM mainframe setup.

The deck’s content was interesting enough to share here, with some enhancements.

What is availability?

First, let’s talk a little bit about availability. What do we mean when we talk about availability?

A highly available computing setup should provide for the following:

  • A highly available fault-tolerant infrastructure that enables applications to run continuously.
  • Continuous operations to allow for non-disruptive backups and infrastructure and application maintenance.
  • Disaster recovery measures that protect against unplanned outages due to disasters caused by factors that can not be controlled.

Definitions

Availability is the state of an application service being accessible to the end user.

An outage (unavailability) is when a system is unavailable to an end user. An outage can be planned, for example, for software or hardware maintenance, or unplanned.

What causes outages?

A research report from Standish Group from 2005 showed the various causes of outages.

Causes of outages 2006
Causes of outages

It is interesting to see that (cyber) security was not part of this picture, while more recent research published by UpTime Intelligence shows this growing concern. More on this later.

Causes of outages 2020 - 2021 - 2022
Causes of outages 2020 – 2021 – 2022

The myth of the nines

The table below shows the availability figures for an IBM mainframe setup versus Unix and LAN availability.

Things have changed. Unix (now: Linux) server availability has gone up. Server quality has improved, and so has software quality. Unix, however, still does not provide a capability similar to a z/OS sysplex. Such a sysplex simply beats any clustering facility by providing built-in, operating system-level availability.

Availability figures for an IBM mainframe setup versus Unix and LAN
Availability figures for an IBM mainframe setup versus Unix and LAN

At the time of writing, IBM publishes updated figures for a sysplex setup as well (see https://www.ibm.com/products/zos/parallel-sysplex): 99.99999% application availability for the footnote configuration: “… IBM Z servers must be configured in a Parallel Sysplex with z/OS 2.3 or above; GDPS data management and middleware recovery across Metro distance systems and storage and DS888X with IBM HyperSwap. Other resiliency technology and configurations may be needed.”

Redundant hardware

The following slides show the redundant hardware of a z9 EC (Enterprise Class), the flagship mainframe of that time.

The redundant hardware of a z9 EC
The redundant hardware of a z9 EC

Contrasting this with today’s flagship, the z16 (source https://www.vm.ibm.com/library/presentations/z16hwov.pdf), is interesting. Since the mainframe is now mounted in a standard rack, the interesting views have moved to the rear of the apparatus. (iPDUs are the power supplies in this machine.)

The redundant hardware of a z16
The redundant hardware of a z16

Redundant IO configuration

A nice, highly tolerant server is insufficient for an ultimately highly available setup. Also, the IO configuration, a.k.a. storage configuration, must be highly available.

A redundant SAN setup

The following slide in the deck highlights how this can be achieved. Depending on your mood, what is amusing or annoying and what triggers me today are the “DASD CU” terms in the storage boxes. These boxes are the storage systems housing the physical disks. At that time, terminologies like storage and disk were more evident than DASD (Direct Access Storage Device, goodness, what a code word for disk) and CU (Control Unit, just an abstraction anyway). Then, I ignore the valueless addition of CSS (Channel SubSystem) and CHPID (Channel Path ID) for this slide.

What a prick I must have been at that time.

At least the term Director did get the explanatory text “Switch.”

A redundant storage setup for mainframes
A redundant storage setup for mainframes

RAS features for storage

I went on to explain that a “Storage Subsystem” has the following RAS features (RAS, ugh…, Reliability, Availability, Security):

  • Independent dual power feeds (so you could attach the storage box to two different independent power lines in the data center)
    • N+1 power supply technology/hot-swappable power supplies and fans
    • N+1 cooling
    • Battery backup
    • Non-volatile subsystem cache to protect writes that have not been hardened to DASD yet (which we jokingly referred to as non-violent storage)
    • Non-disruptive maintenance
    • Concurrent LIC activation (LIC – Licensed Internal Code, a smoke-and-mirrors term for software)
    • Concurrent repair and replacement actions
    • RAID architecture
    • Redundant microprocessors and data paths
    • Concurrent upgrade support (that is, the ability to add disks while the subsystem is online)
    • Redundant shared memory
    • Spare disk drives
    • Remote Copy to a second storage subsystem
      • Synchronous (Peer to Peer Remote Copy, PPRC)
      • Asynchronous (Extended Remote Copy, XRC)

Most of this is still valid today, except that we do not have spinning disks anymore, but everything is Solid State Drives nowadays.

Disk mirroring

Ensuring that data is safely stored in this redundant setup is achieved through disk mirroring at the lowest level. Every byte written to a disk in one storage system is replicated to one or more storage systems, which can be in different locations.

There are two options for disk mirroring: Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) or eXtended Remote Copy (XRC). PPRC is also known as a Mero mirror solution. Data is mirrored synchronously, meaning an application receives an “I/O complete” only after both primary and secondary disks are updated. Because updates must be made to both storage systems synchronously, they can only be 15 to 20 kilometers apart. Otherwise, updates would take too long. The speed of light is the inhibitor for such a limitation.

With XRC, data is mirrored asynchronously. An application receives “I/O complete” after the primary disk is updated. The storage systems can be at an unlimited distance apart from each other. A component called System Data Mover ensures the consistency of data in the secondary storage system.

PPRC and XRC
PPRC and XRC

The following slide highlights how failover and failback would work in a PPRC configuration.

PPRC failover and failback
PPRC failover and failback

The operating system cluster: parallel sysplex

The presentation then explains how a z/OS parallel sysplex is configured to create a cluster without any single point of failure. All servers, LPARs, operating systems, and middleware are set up redundantly in a sysplex.

Features such as Dynamic Session Balancing and Dynamic Transaction Routing ensure that workloads are spread evenly across such a cluster. Facilities in the operating system and middleware work together to ensure that all data is safely and consistently shared, locking is in place when needed, and so forth.

The Coupling Facility is highlighted, which is a facility for sharing memory between the different members in a cluster. Sysplex Timers are shown; these ensure that the time of the different members in a sysplex is kept in sync.

A parallel sysplex
A parallel sysplex

A few more facilities are discussed. Workload Balancing is achieved with the Workload Manager (WLM) component of z/OS. The ability to restart applications without interfering with other applications or the z/OS itself is done by the Automatic Restart Manager (ARM). The Resource Recovery Services (RRS) assist with Two-Phase commits across members in a sysplex.

Automation is critical for successful rapid recovery and continuity

Every operation must be automated to prevent human errors and improve recovery speed. The following slide kicks in several open doors about the benefits of automation:

  • Allows business continuity processes to be built on a reliable, consistent recovery time
  • Recovery times can remain consistent as the system scales to provide a flexible solution designed to meet changing business needs
  • Reduce infrastructure management costs and staffing skills
  • Reduces or eliminates human error during the recovery process at the time of disaster
  • Facilitates regular testing to help ensure repeatable, reliable, scalable business continuity
  • Helps maintain recovery readiness by managing and monitoring the server, data replication, workload, and network, along with the notification of events that occur within the environment

Tiers of Disaster Recovery

The following slide shows an awful picture highlighting the concept of tiers of Disaster Recovery from Zero Data Loss to the Pickup Truck method.

Tiers of Disaster Recovery
Tiers of Disaster Recovery

I mostly like the Pickup Truck Access Method.

GDPS

The following slide introduces GDPS (the abbreviation of the meaningless concept of Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex). GDPS is a piece of software on top of z/OS that provides the automation solution that combines all the previously discussed components to provide a Continuously Available configuration. GDPS takes care of the actions needed when failures occur in a z/OS sysplex.

GDPS
GDPS

GDPS comes in two flavors: GDPS/PPRC and GDPS/XRC.

GDPS/PPRC is designed to provide continuous availability and no data loss between z/OS members in a sysplex across two sites that are maximum at campus distance (15-20 km).

GDPS/XRC is designed to provide automatic failover of sites that are at extended distance from each other. Since GDPS/XRC is based on asynchronous data mirroring, minimum data loss can occur for data not committed to the remote site.

GDPS/PPRC and GDPS/XRC can be combined, providing a best-in-class solution having a high performance, zero data loss setup for local/metro operation, and an automatic site switch capability for extreme situations such as natural disasters.

In summary

The summary slide presents an overview of the capabilities of the server hardware, the Parallel Sysplex, and the GDPS setup.

Redundancy of Z server, Parallal Sysplex and GDPS
Redundancy of Z server, Parallal Sysplex and GDPS

But we are not there yet: ransomware recovery

When I created this presentation, ransomware was not today’s big issue. Nowadays, the IBM solution for continuous availability has been enriched with a capability for ransomware recovery. This solution, called IBM Z Cyber Vault, is a combination of various capabilities from IBM Z. The IBM Z Cyber Vault solution can create immutable copies, or Safeguarded Copies, in IBM Z Cybervault terms, taken at multiple points in time on production data with rapid recovery capability. In addition, this solution can enable data validation to support testing on the validity of each captured copy.

The IBM Z Cyber Vault environment is isolated from the production environment.

Whatever types of mainframe configuration, this IBM Z Cyber Vault capability can provide a high degree of cyber resiliency.

Source: https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248511.pdf

IBM Z Cybervault
IBM Z Cybervault

System management

The z/OS operating system is designed to host many applications on a single platform. From the beginning, efficient management of the applications and their underlying infrastructure has been an essential part of the z/OS ecosystem.

This chapter will discuss the regular system operations, monitoring processes, and tools you find on z/OS. I will also look at monitoring tools that ensure all our automated business, application, and technical processes are running as expected.

System operations

The z/OS operating system has an extensive operator interface that gives the system operator the tools to control the z/OS platform and its applications and intervene when issues occur. You can compare these operations facilities very well with the operations of physical processes like in factories or power plants. The operator is equipped with many knobs, buttons, switches, and meters to keep the z/OS factory running.

Operator interfaces and some history

By design, the mainframe performs operations on so-called consoles. Consoles originally were physical terminal devices directly connected to the mainframe server with special equipment. Everything happening on the z/OS system was displayed on the console screens. A continuous newsfeed of messages generated by the numerous components running on the mainframe streamed over the console display. Warnings and failure messages were highlighted so an operator could quickly identify issues and take necessary actions.

Nowadays, physical consoles have been replaced by software equivalents. In the chapter on z/OS, I have already mentioned the tool SDSF from IBM or similar tools from other vendors available on z/OS for this purpose.  SDSF is the primary tool system operators and administrators use to view and manage the processes running on z/OS.

Additionally, z/OS has a central facility where information, warnings, and error messages from the hardware, operating system, middleware, and applications are gathered. This facility is called the system log. The system log can be viewed from the SDSF tool.

SDSF options
Executing an operator command through SDSF
The system log viewed through SDSF

An operator can intervene with the running z/OS system and applications with operator commands. z/OS itself provides many of these operator commands for a wide variety of functions. The middleware tools installed on top of z/OS often also bring their own set of operator messages and commands.

Operator commands are similar to Unix commands for Unix operating systems and functions provided by the Windows Task Manager and other Windows system administration functions. Operator commands can also be issued through application programming interfaces, which opens possibilities for building software for automated operations for the z/OS platform.

Automated operations

In the past, a crew of operators managed the daily operations of the business processes running on a central computer like the mainframe. The operators were gathered in the control room, also called a bridge, from where they monitored and operated the processes running on the mainframe.

Nowadays, daily operations have been automated. All everyday issues are handled through automated processes; special software oversees these operations. When the automation tools find issues they cannot resolve, an incident process is kicked off. A system or application administrator is then called from his bed to check out the problem.

Manual versus automated operations

Several software suppliers provide automation tools for z/OS operations. All these tools monitor the messages flowing through the system log, which reports the health of everything running on z/OS. The occurrence of messages can be turned into events for which automated actions can be programmed.

For example, if z/OS signals that a pool of disk storage is filling up, the storage management software will write a message to the system log. An automation process that increases the storage pool and sends a notification email to the storage administrator can be defined. The automation process is kicked off automatically when the message appears in the system log.

All automated operations tools for z/OS are based on this mechanism. Some tools provide more help with automation tasks and advanced functions than others. Solutions in the market include System Automation from IBM, CA-OPS/MVS from Broadcom, and AUTOMON for z/OS from Macro4.

Monitoring

System management aims to ensure that all automated business processes run smoothly. For this, detailed information must be made available to assess the health of the running processes. All the z/OS and middleware components provide a wide variety of data that can be used to analyze the health of these individual components. The amount of data is so large that it is necessary to use tools that help make sense of all this data. This is where monitoring tools can help.

Monitoring tools can be viewed on different levels of the operational system. In this section, I differentiate between infrastructure, application, and business monitoring for this chapter.

Figure 42 shows the different layers of monitoring that can be distinguished. It illustrates how application monitoring needs to be integrated to roll the information up into meaningful monitoring of the business process.

The following sections will go into the different layers of monitoring in a bit more detail.

Monitoring of different layers

Infrastructure monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring is needed to keep an eye on mainframe hardware, the z/OS operating system, and the middleware components running on top of z/OS. All these parts produce extensive data that can be used to monitor the health of the tools. z/OS provides standard facilities for infrastructure components to write monitoring data. The first one we have seen is the messages written to the system console. These are all saved in the system log. Additionally, z/OS has a System Management Facility (SMF) component, providing a low-level interface through which infrastructure components can write information in the SMF dataset in a special event log. 

There are many options for producing data, but what often does not come with these tools is the ability to make meaningful use of all that data.

To get a better grip on the health of these infrastructure components, various software vendors provide solutions to use that data to monitor and manage specific infrastructure components. Most of these tools offer particular functions for monitoring a piece of infrastructure, and integrating these tools is not always straightforward.

BMC’s Mainview suite provides tools to monitor z/OS, CICS, IMS, Db2, and other infrastructure components common in a z/OS setup.

IBM has a similar suite under the umbrella of Omegamon. The IBM suite also has tools for monitoring z/OS itself, storage, networks, and middleware such as CICS, IMS, Db2, and more.

Also, under the name ASG-TMON, ASG has an extensive suite of tools for the components mentioned above and more. This software is now acquired my Rocket Software.

Broadcom provides under their Intelligent Operations and Automation suite tools for z/OS and network monitoring.

Application monitoring

The next level of monitoring provides a view of the functioning of the applications and their components.

Off-the-shelf tools or frameworks do not extensively support this monitoring level for application in COBOL or PL/I. Application monitoring and logging frameworks like Java Management Extensions and Log4J are available for Java, but such tools are not available for languages like COBOL and PL/I. Many z/OS users have developed their frameworks for application monitoring, relying on various technologies.

Some tools can provide a certain level of application monitoring. For example, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and IBM Application Performance Management provide capabilities to examine applications’ functioning. However, the functionality is often not easily extensible for application developers, like it is with the log4j and JMX mentioned above. There remains a need for a framework (preferably open-source) that allows application developers to create specific monitoring and logging information and events at particular points in an application on z/OS.

Business Monitoring

Ideally, the application and infrastructure monitoring tooling should feed some tools that can aggregate and enrich this information with information from other tools to create a comprehensive view of the IT components supporting business processes.

Recently, tools have become available on z/OS to gather logging and monitoring information and forward this to a central application. Syncsort’s IronStream and IBM’s Common Data Provider can collect data from different sources, such as system logs, application logs, and SMF data, and stream this to one or more destinations like Splunk or Elastic. With these tools, it is now possible to integrate available data into a cross-platform aggregated view, as shown in Figure 42. Today, Aggregated views are typically implemented in tools like Splunk or the open-source ELK stack with Elastic or other tools focused on data aggregation, analysis, and visualization. 

Noise reduction

  • Post category:Principles
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The principle of noise reduction in software systems improves software systems by removing inessential parts and options and/or making them invisible or only visible to selected users.

Reducing the options in a software solution increases usability. This goes for user interfaces as well as technical interfaces. We decide what an interface looks like and stick to it. All-too-famous examples of noise reduction are the Apple iPod and the Google search page.

Adding features for selected users means adding features and under-the-hood complexities for all clients.

Reducing options also makes the software more robust. If we build fewer interfaces, we can improve them. We can focus on really doing well with the limited set of interfaces.

In practice, we see hardware and software tools have many options and features. That is not because software suppliers desperately want to give their customers all the options but because we, their customers, are requesting these options. Software suppliers may view all these requests more critically. Some do.

Let’s aim to settle for less. We shouldn’t build more every time we can do with less just because we can. Also, we shouldn’t ask our suppliers to create features that are nice to have.

There are always more options, but let’s limit the options to 4 or better: 1.

Hypes

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Some companies have made a business model out of technology hypes. These are the same companies that tell the market what it needs by asking the market. Of course, this comes with an invoice mentioning generous compensation. These companies write classy reports with colorful graphics in which they advise organizations to do what the organizations tell them to do.

But hypes are for techies. Techies may feast on technology, but for organizations, jumping on hypes can be a risky and costly pastime.

There are two types of hypes. Hypes can be about something new. Other hypes are just reformulations of existing things, recycled ideas.

But hypes are hypes: they will go away. The vast majority of hypes disappear into thin air. The techie may have learned from them. Some remain. It might be valuable if a technology is still around after a few years. But usually, the stuff will not be as groundbreaking and revolutionary as predicted when announced by the hype cycle company, that is, by the market itself.

Blockchain, anyone?

Some hypes are recycled ideas. We have no memory, and we don’t read textbooks. SOA, AI, microservices, and technical advancements are wrapped in shiny new names and gift papers, so they appear to be a gift from your software supplier or consultancy company.

Think Globally, Act Locally applied to IT

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Solution architects should consider the enterprise impact of architectural decisions.

Solution architects must ignore enterprise directions if these lead to local inefficiencies or have other predominantly negative local effects.

There is a significant difference between the clean 30000-foot view (sometimes referred to as the air castle) and the muddy reality on sea level.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Photographers tend to suffer from Gear Acquisition Syndrome. They believe they will make better pictures with new gear and buy new lenses, cameras, and flashlights.

Then they find their work does not improve.

In IT, we do the same.

We have our old relational database management system.

But now we have this great Spark, MongoDB, CouchDB, or what have you. (I’m just taking a not-so-random example.) So now everything must be converted to Spark or Mongo.

We even forget that this old technology, the relational DBMS in this example, was so good at reliably processing transactions. It worked!

The new database is massively scalable, which is great. Unfortunately, it does not improve the reliability of processing our transactions.

But it’s hot, so we want it—because Google has it. Errr, but will you also use it to process web page indexes? Ah, no. You want to store your customer records in it. So, is it reliable? No. But it is satisfying our GAS.

Aesthetics and quality

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Beautiful things are easier to use.

We can also apply this to technical designs. This often surprises a non-technical audience, but techies will recognize the beauty that can be present in technical solutions.

For example, symmetrical diagrams not only give a quick insight into an orderly, robust solution but are often also very appealing to the eye.

Symmetrical and well-colored diagrams are easier to read and understand.

Old PowerPoint presentations using the standard suggested colors were horrendously ugly, and I am sure the people using these colors did not want to be understood. (Nowadays, PowerPoint comes with more pleasing color schemes)

The success of the Python programming language is not in the least its forced readability. No crazy abbreviations as in C that make code unreadable (but programmers look very smart).

Beautiful code (yes, such a thing exists) is easier to read and understand.


If a
Then b
Else If c
Then d
Else If e
Then f

versus


Case a
b
Case c
d
Case e
f


It is pretty evident.

But do we care about the quality and beauty of code nowadays? Throw-away software is abundant. Software systems are built with the idea to throw them out and replace them within a few years.

Ursus Wehrli
Image by Ursus Wehrli

That is the idea. But the Lindy effect tells us differently.

Good programming is a profession that should be appreciated as such. Bad coding may be cheap, but only in the short run.

We don’t hire a moonlighter to build our house. We employ an architect and a construction professional who can make a comfortable house that can be used for generations.

Chris Verhoef debunking myths about legacy and COBOL

  • Post category:COBOL
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Last week, the De Technoloog, a BNR program, had a very nice interview with Professor Chris Verhoef of VU University. The interviewers, Herbert Blankesteijn and Ben van der Burg, were surprised to find that COBOL is not bad and is very good for programming administrative automation processes. Legacy is not an issue. Not allowing time for maintenance is a management issue. He mentioned the Lindy effect which tells us that the life expectancy of old code increases with time. The established code is anti-fragile.

The Andon Cord

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Anyone in the product chain can pull the Andon Cord to stop production when he notices that the product’s quality is poor.

The andon cord

Stopping a system when a defect is suspected originates back to Toyota. The idea is that by blocking the system, you get an immediate opportunity for improvement or find a root cause instead of letting the defect move further down the line and be unresolved.

A crucial aspect of Toyota’s “Andon Cord” process was that when the team leader arrived at the workstation, they thanked the team member who pulled the Cord.

The incident would not be a paper report or a long-tail bureaucratic process. The problem would be immediately addressed, and the team member who pulled the cord would fix it.

For software systems, this practice is beneficial as well. However, the opposite process is likely the practice we see in our drive for quick results.

We don’t stop the process in case of issues. We apply a quick fix, and ‘we will resolve it later’.

The person noticing an issue is regarded as a whistle-blower. Issues may get covered in this culture, leading to even more severe problems.

When serious issues occur, we start a bureaucratic process that quickly becomes political, resulting in watered-down solutions and covering up the fundamental problems.

The backward compatibility conundrum

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In software systems, backward compatibility is a blessing and a curse. While backward compatibility discharges users from mandatory software updates, it is also an excuse to ignore maintenance. For software vendors, omitting backward compatibility is a means to get users to buy new stuff; “enjoy our latest innovations!”.

1980s software on 64-bit hardware

DS Backward compatilibility
DS Backward compatibility

You can not run Windows 95 software on Windows 11.

You can not Run MacOS X software on a PowerBook G4 from 2006.

You can not use Java version 5 software on a Java 11 runtime.

You can, however, run mainframe software compiled in 1980 for 16-bit hardware on the latest z/OS 64-bit operating system and the latest IBM Z hardware. This compatibility is one of the reasons for the success of the IBM mainframe.

Backward compatibility in software has significant benefits. The most significant benefit is that you do not need to change applications with technology upgrades. This saves large amounts of effort and, thus, money for changes that bring no business benefit.

The dangers of backward compatibility

Backward compatibility also has very significant drawbacks:

  • Because you do not need to fix software for technology upgrades, backward compatibility leads to laziness in maintenance. Just because it keeps running, the whole existence of the software is lost out of sight. Development teams lose the knowledge of the functionality and sometimes even the supporting business processes. Minor changes may be made haphazardly, leading to slowly increasing code complexity. Horrific additions are made to applications, using tools like screen scraping, leading to further complexity of the IT landscape. Then, significant changes are suddenly necessary, and you are in big trouble.
  • Backward compatibility hinders innovation. Not only can you not take advantage of modern hardware capabilities, but you also get stuck with programming and interfacing paradigms of the past. You can not exploit functionality trapped inside old programs, and it is tough to integrate through modern technologies like REST APIs.

The problem may be even more significant. Because you do not touch your code, other issues may appear.

Over the years, you will change from source code management tools. During these transitions, code can get lost, or insight into the correct versions of programs gets lost.

Also, compilers are upgraded all the time. And the specifications of the programming languages may change. Consequently, the code you have, which belongs to the programs running in your production environment, can not be compiled any longer. When changes are necessary, your code suddenly needs to catch up with all these changes. And that will make the change a lot riskier.

How to avoid backward compatibility complacency?

Establish a policy to recompile, test, and deploy programs every 2 or 3 years, even if the code needs no functional change. Prevent a pile of technical debt.

Is that a lot of work? It does not need to be. You could automate most, if not all, of the compilation and testing process. If nothing functionally changes, modern test tools can help support this process. With these tools, you can automate running tests, compare results with the expected output, and pinpoint issues.

This process also has a benefit: your recompiled code will run faster because it can use the latest hardware features. You can save money if your software bill is based on CPU consumption.

Don’t let backward compatibility make you backward.