Creating PopUp Mainframe Instances
Gold Image Concept
We recommend building a "Gold Image" or "Gold Copy" PopUp Mainframe instance as the first step in using PopUp Mainframe effectively.
In media production, a gold image is the final cut of an album or film after all edits and mixing have been completed. It’s in its final, perfect form–it’s gold. 1
This meaning carried over into systems administration. In this context, a golden image is an intentionally configured snapshot of a system, (server, virtual desktop environment, or even a disk drive) which can be used to deploy new instances. Because this golden image (or sometimes gold image) is used in network virtualization to create new systems, it is also called a master image or clone image. Another popular term is a baseline image, which can be an illustrative term to frame why golden images are so useful: they create a consistent, reliable baseline for system configuration, which can make it easier to maintain those systems across their life cycle. 1
Gold Image Creation
From the perspective of the PopUp Mainframe, we create a "Gold Image" by tailoring the base, turnkey PopUp Mainframe distribution image to meet a customer's specific environment and project needs with a key focus on consistency, security and compliance.
Part of the "Gold Image" creation process, especially where data is being captured from highly secure, production like environments, might also involve masking and sanitizing any sensitive data. This step is crucial to ensure any PopUp Mainframe instances subsequently generated from the "Gold Image" and used in lower security dev and test environments, still meet strict data regulation compliance laws (including GDPR).
We highly recommend careful consideration in order to bake in foundational value and re-usable configuration to the "Gold Image". Doing so minimizes the subsequent effort required by individual project teams which "spawn" or "spin up" concrete instances of the "Gold Image" during development or testing activities.
PopUp Mainframe have dedicated hundreds of man hours to creating a robust, repeatable process to slipstream the "Gold Image" creation process with a high degree of automation.
Data Corral
"Corraling data" is the process of sourcing trusted data from an existing, robust and functionally complete mainframe instance into transport volumes for the purpose of migrating applications and application data efficiently to the "Gold Image" whist retaining full referential integrity and z/OS volume catalogue data.
Data Corral Using IBM Migration Server Utility
Data De-Corral
De-Corralling data is the process of moving data from the migration transport volumes onto the "Gold Image" PopUp Mainframe. Depending on the employed data masking methodology, this data may already have been masked on the source mainframe or, the data may need to be masked on the PopUp Mainframe.
Data Masking
A reliable data masking solution is essential if the "Gold Copy" is seeded with data from production like environments which contain highly sensitive, real world data.
Depending on the constraints of the operating environment, data can be masked on the source mainframe instance (prior to the corral and migration process) or masked on the PopUp Mainframe (after the migration and de-corral process).
We have built tight integration to the Delphix Continuous Compliance solution into our PopUp Mainframe offering which provides an efficient and seamless route to masking any mainframe file types (including VSAM and IMS types).
For further information:
Mainframe Masking Plugin for Delphix from PopUp Mainframe on Vimeo.
Gold Image Baseline
Once the Gold Image has been fully prepared and validated, it can be securely stored, documented and made available via image duplication to end users through a reliable mechanism of the customer's choosing.
Although not essential to PopUp Mainframe's operation, simply because of the obvious synergies and efficiency gains available, we have pre-built integration to the Delphix Continuous Data solution. This integration provides an out of the box, pre-configured route to decrease image footprint size and accelerate PopUp Mainframe provisioning via simple to use self-service user interface operations.
For an overview of PopUp Mainframe's integration with Delphix's Continuous Compliance Engine (for data masking) and Delphix's Continuous Data Engine (for data virtualization), please visit the following url:
Delphix Integrated PopUp Architecture
For Delphix configuration details specific to PopUp Mainframe integration, please visit the following url: Delphix Configuration
Page last revised on: 2023-05-18