Gary Thornhill, PopUp founder and CEO, had the privilege of presenting a fully featured PopUp demo to a group of mainframe and tech enthusiasts at Tech Field Day at SHARE Kansas City, 2024.
The delegates came from a wide range of backgrounds including appdev, mainframe education, security, DevOps, mainframe services, and Open Mainframe Project.
“What is PopUp? Well, we can popup a full mainframe platform in under 10 minutes, in the cloud or on prem.
We are proud that PopUp runs on IBM zD&T under the covers – tried and true industry-leading z/OS virtualisation software.”
Welcome to the Wonderful World of PopUp Mainframe!
PopUp was born out of a direct need to provide customers with mainframe environments so they can action the mainframe transformations they desire.
PopUp is pipeline-ready, and can be fully administered in a distributed way, using APIs to spawn, clone, and tear down a PopUp just like other virtual machines.
Using PopUp to deploy and test code quickly, test the latest security features, meet regulatory requirements, and test upgrades of Z can liberate your teams to achieve their goals more quickly than before.
Modern mainframes are incredibly efficient, cost effective, and provide better per-core performance than the alternatives.* Migrating workloads away from the mainframe requires careful consideration.
Using PopUp to augment your physical mainframe by enabling faster, cheaper testing on ephemeral environments is a fast track to modernising your mainframe processes and continuing to reap the benefits of the physical mainframe.
Gary discussed the key features of PopUp. Some of the call out points are:
PopUp provides system and helper utilities. For example, to help automate archiving, and CPU utilisation monitoring to assist in capacity management.
We have extended the Delphix Continuous Compliance engine to enable masking of ANY mainframe data sourcein a consistent, robust fashion across the entire organisational data estate, maintaining referential integrity across all systems, whether they be mainframe or distributed.
Using PopUp & Delphix for Data masking
PopUp Integrates fully with Delphix to utilise the industry-leading data masking capabilities against mainframe data.
Data can be masked on the physical mainframe, or on the PopUp, depending on your needs. Then we use Delphix Continuous Data self-service portal to provision compliant copies.
“Being able to rewind a full production-like mainframe environment at the touch of a button is absolutely massive for productivity and cutting time-to-market.
Marty McFly would be right at home with the 4D mainframe. Think of it as the ‘undo’ button for a mainframe.”
PopUp is a great way to train people new to the mainframe, as PopUp is a disposable, completely isolated environment with zero risk to the physical mainframe – perfect for training.
“With PopUp everyone is welcome and able to be productive with tools of their choice.”
Use cases on the PopUp are only limited to your imagination
Just some use cases for a dedicated mainframe environment:
Development
Use with a desktop IDE
All aspects of Testing including Regression testing against mainframe
Software evaluation
R&D
Proof of concept development
Offshore or 3rd party environment
Training environment
Use of a mainframe data “gold copy” on demand across the enterprise
Checkpoint, forward and rewind data
What we’ve all been waiting for… the demo!
Gary’s demo covered:
Spinning up a PopUp Mainframe in the cloud through the Azure MarketPlace. The PopUp can be ready to go in 6-8 minutes
Deploying and configuring an application using a GitHub Actions pipeline (covering tasks which would usually be done by a sysprog, automated testing of the UI through Selenium)
Masking the sensitive data through Delphix Continuous Compliance
Creating the baseline ‘Gold copy’ PopUp containing the masked data and full application
Enabling easy creation of on-demand virtualized PopUp instances with fast, efficient checkpointing
Provisioning compliant dev environment through the Delphix self-service portal
Developer commits code change into Git, pipeline is kicked off to generate, test and deploy the change onto a PopUp, then do UI testing
Failure of automated UI testing
Rewinding the entire PopUp environment back to the previous version (not just the data, the entire app) through the self-service Delphix portal
How a developer can understand what went wrong and fix it without any environment overheads
Some great questions from the audience…
Cameron asked if we need to install DB2. Answer: No, DB2, CICS, MQ, IMS and other apps come out of the box with PopUp and are available in 10 minutes.
Mark asked if there is an option for customers who can’t move unmasked data off the mainframe. Answer: Yes, masking can be done on the physical mainframe, and only the masked data ported onto the PopUp.
“Using PopUp allows organisations to easily start doing DevOps and automation on the mainframe in exactly the same way they do for their distributed applications today.”
Thanks to all the fabulous delegates who attended and joined in the conversation with energy and insight.
What a great experience! Thanks to the Tech Field Day team, in particular Stephen Foskett, for running such a great session.
We are very proud to announce that PopUp Mainframe has been awarded Highly Commended in the category ‘DevOps Tool/Product of the Year’ at the DevOps Excellence Awards 2024.
Gary Thornhill, PopUp founder, at the awards ceremony
We are thrilled to be recognised alongside some well-established players in the DevOps space.
For many organisations, mainframe is often the last piece to achieve automation. Most businesses have established automation and DevOps ways of working for the distributed teams, but haven’t managed to apply these to the mainframe areas yet.
Adopting DevOps for the mainframe poses some unique challenges. These include a lack of dev and test environments in which to trial automation, new ways of working and new tools, as well as lack of innovation opportunity. Compounding this, there is a skills shortage in mainframe and sometimes resistance to change.
At PopUp, mainframe modernisation and mainframe DevOps is at the heart of everything we do.
Our mission is to empower mainframe businesses to deliver changes faster, cheaper and better with on-demand environments for dev and test. We see this as a necessary pre-requisite for organisations to move into this final ‘Automation & DevOps frontier’ (where ALL teams, including mainframe, can embrace automation and DevOps practices), and truly achieve their agility aspirations at all levels.
PopUp enables customers to take mainframe on their DevOps journey by creating fully functioning z/OS instances on-demand, on-prem or in the cloud, and controlling them through pipelines. This overcomes dev and test mainframe unavailability – the number one blocker to mainframe DevOps.
PopUp liberates mainframe teams, enabling automation, DevOps innovation and continuous improvement with no risk to the physical mainframe.
PopUp helps fast track DevOps initiatives in the following ways:
Aiding the implementation of automation and pipelines (e.g. with BMC tooling pre-installed on a PopUp)
Continuously improving ways of working and increasing collaboration
Helping to create real, lasting cultural change
Increasing productivity by reducing wait times
Modern tools boost the productivity of all team members
A catalyst for mainframe innovation and fast feedback
PopUp also provides additional features to boost your DevOps journey which are not available on the physical mainframe. For example, PopUp can be replicated to create multiple z/OS clones including applications and data, and mainframe instances can be deployed and torn down using APIs or pipelines. In conjunction with Delphix, mainframe instances can be bookmarked at any stage, then they can be rewound or fast forwarded to the snapshot using a self-service portal.
Curious to know more about DevOps for the mainframe, how ephemeral mainframe instances can accelerate your projects, or automating your mainframe processes? Contact us.
Data protection and compliance is such an important topic, and there’s no exception on mainframe. But it can be complex to implement for mainframe, particularly in relation to what we sometimes term as “legacy” mainframe data sources. This blog post discusses why it is difficult, and how data masking on legacy mainframe data sources can be done.
In “modern” mainframe databases such as DB2, metadata is readily available to describe each and every field within a table. This data is typically held within a set of system tables that can easily be referenced by applications. In the case of DB2, this information is collectively known as the DB2 Catalog.
Jump back 40 years (yes, frightening isn’t it!) or more, and the situation is not so straightforward.
Legacy data structures required ‘Data dictionaries’
Users of what many of us consider to be primitive data structures, such as fixed and variable length flat files, VSAM files and early databases such as the hierarchical IMS and Networked IDMS, did not have such an easy life. Data dictionaries were developed to keep track of data usage within such table structures. But there was still a dependence on external language dependant data structures such as COBOL COPYBOOKS and PL/I INCLUDE members, together with the necessity for often manual scanning of the (tens of thousands of) application programs that might access these data sources, to get a full understanding of exactly which record contained which data and at which point in time.
Despite some organisations having whole “Data dictionary” teams of former developers and designers assigned to keep these devices up-to date, often such activity fell outside of the organisations change management process, and led to issues down the line.
Modern data privacy requirements are myriad and strict
With the introduction of compliance initiatives such as GDPR and CCPA, the processing of data sources within organisations become a major focus. In production, access to the data is restricted to only those who need it. But in test environments, the story is more complex. Production data (‘real’ data which covers valid scenarios) is required in test environments to enable high quality testing, but the data must remain secured to ensure data compliance.
Data obfuscation, or masking to those of us who cannot pronounce it (you know who you are), needs to be applied to ALL data sources that hold personally identifiable information (PII). In the mainframe teams, this covers DB2, IMS, IDMS, VSAM, flat files and even MQ messages, etc.
Modern day metadata needs to be acquired, unravelled, documented and verified so that masking can be performed adequately to protect the identity of every individual. Notably, masking also has to be performed in a simple and consistent way across an entire organisation’s estate – including mainframe and distributed platforms.
How to mask legacy data structures in a simple and consistent way?
With the PopUp masking plugin, VSAM files, IMS databases and data from any mainframe database (that can be unloaded to/reloaded from flat files) can now be processed for masking. COBOL copybooks and PL/I Includes can be processed effortlessly, allowing the Delphix Profiler to work its magic and identify and allocate algorithms based on the data formats.
Data residing in these ‘legacy’ mainframe data sources can be processed by Delphix Continuous Compliance (via the PopUp masking plugin). This means that data from sources across an organisation can be represented and treated (masked) in the same way, reducing the need for specific mainframe expertise.
For more information on the z/OS Masking Plugin for Delphix, watch our video.
If you have data compliance requirements for legacy mainframe data sources, we can help! Get in touch to hear more.
In IT, mainframe is often the last piece to achieve automation. Many organisations have established automation and DevOps ways of working for the distributed teams, but haven’t managed to apply this to the mainframe areas yet.
As we see it, the main challenges in adopting DevOps for mainframe are:
Lack of dev and test environments in which to trial automation, new ways of working and new tools.
Culture, mindset, and ways of working changes (and ensuring those are sustained in the long term).
Inability to innovate due to locked down systems and timeboxed access to the physical mainframe.
Governance processes which are entrenched and inflexible.
Mainframe skills shortage and difficulty attracting new joiners.
Create a right-sized virtual z/OS instance with the right data and applications to suit the use case (not just a full copy of the LPAR).
We developed PopUp to help solve some of these pressing business problems.
At PopUp, our mission is to empower mainframe businesses to deliver changes faster, cheaper and better with on-demand environments for dev and test. We see this as a necessary pre-requisite for organisations to move into this final ‘DevOps frontier’ (where ALL teams, including mainframe, can embrace DevOps). This is necessary for businesses to truly achieve their agility aspirations at all levels of the business.
How does PopUp fast track mainframe DevOps initiatives?
PopUp enables an organisation’s mainframe DevOps initiatives to take off, in a number of ways. PopUp enables companies to eat the elephant of mainframe DevOps by starting small and making progress quickly.
A. Pipelines & Automation
Automation and pipelines are a must for any DevOps journey. PopUp aids the implementation of automation and pipelines by:
Enabling users to spin up and manage fully functioning z/OS instances through a pipeline via RESTful APIs.
Making it easy to align mainframe pipelines with pipelines for distributed systems.
Providing mainframe teams with automation tools pre-installed and pre-configured on the PopUp.
Using the built-in test automation tools, developers can write unit tests and run them through automation in a PopUp.
Providing test automation tools which can be used to build a full regression test pack.
Making it easy to include code validation in pipelines.
Integrating out of the box with Git.
B. Increase Productivity by Giving Developers Mainframe On-Demand
The main bottleneck in mainframe delivery is lack of mainframe environments. This causes a huge knock-on effect when teams have limited slots on the physical mainframe, and have to schedule those far in advance. PopUp delivers z/OS environment capacity to teams at the speed its needed. This newfound availability of mainframe instances in turn enables fundamental changes to the teams’ ways of working.
Team members no longer need to wait days or weeks for their slot on the mainframe, instead they can do their work as needed. Once the biggest blocker is removed, wait times and idle time are reduced through every stage in the delivery process. This has a massive impact on productivity, as well as team satisfaction.
C. Modern tools boost the productivity of all team members
There are more and more tools available which allow developers to interact with mainframe systems without ever logging into a mainframe green screen. Modern mainframe tools provide a host of benefits including intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces, automatic code completion and syntax checks, debug tools, automation, and instant feedback.
However, it’s not always easy to adopt modern tools on the physical mainframe. On PopUp you are free to install or use any modern mainframe tools you wish and experiment in an isolated, completely risk-free environment. Mainframe teams can then realise the benefits of modern mainframe tools with no risk to the physical mainframe. Modern tools not only improve productivity of new joiners (who can be very productive using intuitive tooling even without prior mainframe experience), but vastly increase the productivity of existing team members too, who experience the same benefits.
D. DevOps with Compliant Data
One challenging element of ephemeral environments is getting the right data. Using PopUp in combination with Delphix, production data can be masked and moved onto the PopUp. This gives developers and testers the ability to test against fully compliant production-like data. The benefit of using prod-like data for testing is hard to overstate – it facilitates better test scenario creation and increased test coverage.
Another powerful feature of Delphix & PopUp is creating a Gold Copy image which includes masked data. This Gold Copy can be cloned as needed to provide a full z/OS instance with compliant data, ready to go. The test data can also be refreshed easily, ensuring that dev teams always have recent, prod-like, compliant data.
E. PopUp is a catalyst for mainframe innovation and fast feedback!
PopUp brings increased opportunity for innovation to mainframe teams since they can work and experiment in 100% safe, disposable environments. In a risk-free mainframe sandbox, you can be confident in experimenting with new capabilities which cannot be risked on the physical mainframe. This gives the opportunity for fast feedback on new tools and capabilities without needing to install anything on the physical mainframe.
Using Delphix alongside PopUp allows users to provision copies/clones of a PopUp, snapshot the instance during testing, then just rewind / forward-wind to any of the snapshots as needed. There is no need to worry about breaking the PopUp. This gives app teams tremendous flexibility and independence to develop, test and deploy changes faster.
F. Ready-made cloud z/OS environments
PopUp is available to buy directly through Azure MarketPlace and can be up and running in less than an hour. This provides near-instant z/OS compute capability in the cloud to service DevOps initiatives.
PopUp is also compatible with other cloud environments.
G. Accelerate your DevOps journey with new talent
Skills shortage is a big challenge in the mainframe space and can derail DevOps initiatives. Mainframe businesses need to attract a new generation of mainframe engineers, who usually want to use cutting-edge mainframe tooling, like desktop IDEs and automation tools.
Modern mainframe tools come out of the box with PopUp. So PopUp simultaneously appeals to traditional mainframe engineers who may prefer green screen (and enjoy the ability to spin up their own mainframe environments on-demand), as well as new mainframe engineers who prefer modern tools. Using PopUp, you can hire people with no green screen experience and be confident that they will still be able to integrate with and develop mainframe systems.
H. PopUp – Git integration is a cinch
Most DevOps initiatives rely heavily on modern version control tools. Git is regarded by many as the best, easiest to use, and the most effective one available and it’s everywhere in the world of distributed applications – but not yet for mainframe. PopUp enables Git integration with mainframe source out of the box, giving yet another boost on your DevOps journey.
How does PopUp help to create real, lasting DevOps cultural change?
This is often one of the trickiest parts of a DevOps transformation journey. It can be particularly difficult in mainframe teams which may have been operating in similar ways for decades and have no appetite to change.
It’s easier to make incremental cultural changes than forcing a completely new way of working in one go. PopUp provides the vehicle for this as users can adopt PopUp at their own pace alongside their existing ways of working on the physical mainframe.
PopUp empowers users as they benefit from the self-service capability, and that results in appreciation and uptake from the mainframe teams.
PopUp gives extra features to boost you on your DevOps journey
One amazingly powerful thing about PopUp is that it provides capabilities which physical mainframes cannot. This opens the door for deeper innovation and new working practices:
Replicate PopUps to create multiple z/OS clones including applications and data
Deploy and tear down mainframe instances using APIs or pipelines
Baseline and version PopUp instances
Take snapshots of PopUp throughout projects using Delphix
Return to a baseline (rewind), and fast-forward to snapshots
Switch a PopUp off when it is no longer needed. When it is brought up again it is exactly as it was – there are no ongoing maintenance costs as you have for a physical mainframe.
We are very proud to announce that PopUp Mainframe has been listed as a finalist in 2 categories at the DevOps Dozen Awards 2023!
This recognition is particularly special to us as we are a very small, very young company, competing against some established players in the mainframe space.
Watch this webinar with PopUp’s Gary Thornhill and Muthiah Maruthappan.
The Billing System transformation programme at National Grid was severely hampered by mainframe test environment unavailability across multiple systems.
Dev & Test mainframe environments were already close to capacity, so mainframe modernisation initiatives required acquiring expensive new hardware. One mainframe modernisation proof of concept (using z/OS Connect to improve mainframe access) could not proceed without additional environments.
National Grid’s cloud-first policy fuelled the desire to:
create dev and test environments in the cloud
offer self-service
remove third-party dependency
improve agility with on-demand access
and reduce cost
The new self-service capability has transformed National Grid’s ability to deliver transformative change across billing systems. Using Delphix and PopUp Mainframe running on Azure, National Grid accelerated their projects. The company is now planning the next stage of their mainframe modernisation: spinning up new mainframe environments with the latest secured data using automation pipelines in minutes.
Delphix and PopUp on Azure empowered National Grid with autonomy over their mainframe systems and the ability to increase productivity. National Grid can now immediately innovate to solve business problems using ephemeral mainframe environments spun up on demand. They also plan to redevelop some of their legacy .NET processes using modern tooling.
PopUp Mainframe & Delphix – A powerful combination
Provision secure mainframe environments on demand on premise and in the cloud.
Delphix Continuous Data enables virtualisation and automation of all types of mainframe data (including DB2, VSAM and other flat files) as well as distributed data. These data sources can be fully masked deterministically within Delphix Continuous Compliance, safely securing personal information, then virtualised*. Plug this data into PopUp Mainframe, and you can use the images to create fully data compliant copies of your mainframe environments across your dev and test ecosystems.
*Note: Delphix Continuous Compliance masks fixed length files and DB2 data sources out-of-the-box. PopUp’s Mainframe Masking Plugin for Delphix enables the capability to mask all mainframe data sources, including VSAM, QSAM variable length files, as well as IMS databases.
Fully masked gold copies
Masked data can be stored as a simple gold copy, or tailored and transformed as required to create additional gold copy flavours.
Provision everywhere
Using gold copies, additional environments can be provisioned in minutes via PopUp Mainframe’s self-service and/or fully controlled by pipelines. These environments are disposable and if designed and used correctly, require no maintenance.
PopUp Mainframe can run on-prem and in the cloud, enabling you to have environments on demand across your entire application landscape.
Example use cases
Offload Production and Test LPAR Processing Costs
Reduce the Mainframe MIPS requirement and enable huge cost savings
Provide rapid access to Mainframe data and integrate with your distributed systems data
Drive DevOps adoption for your Mainframe applications
Unlock the value in your Mainframe data to drive AI and ML projects
Easily clone and baseline (bookmark) mainframe environment copies
Providing Mainframe Developers and Testers with their own environments to accelerate application development and release cycles
Enable rapid Incident resolution by providing break-fix environments at user-defined points in time
Watch our webinar: Delivering Secured Mainframe Environments On-Demand, to see PopUp Mainframe and Delphix in action!
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At PopUp, mainframe modernisation and mainframe DevOps is at the heart of everything we do.
A. Pipelines & Automation
C. Modern tools boost the productivity of all team members
D. DevOps with Compliant Data
E. PopUp is a catalyst for mainframe innovation and fast feedback!
F. Ready-made cloud z/OS environments
G. Accelerate your DevOps journey with new talent
H. PopUp – Git integration is a cinch
