To my fellow Netezza fanatics—and the soon-to-be converted—I come bearing gifts and great news.

During our Think 2020 digital conference, we announced our intent to bring Netezza to the public cloud by June 19, 2020. We’re fulfilling that promise.

Today, we announce a major milestone and write the next chapter to the Netezza storyline—the immediate general availability of Netezza Performance Server on IBM Cloud and Amazon Web Services.

Here’s what we’re delivering

• Simple, IBM-certified cloud deployment: This is a cloud native deployment of the Netezza Performance Server database engine. IBM takes the guesswork out of deploying Netezza to the public cloud. We’ve tested various IaaS configurations to determine the combination that gets the best price/performance on IBM Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
• Deploy to any public cloud data center on the planet: Choose the data center or availability zone closest to you, set the number of compute units and amount of storage required to run, and go.
• Seamlessly lift and shift from on-premises to cloud: It’s not a migration—it’s a lift and shift. nzbackup your appliance to IBM Cloud Object Storage or Amazon S3—nzrestore into your cloud data warehouse. Or, simply run nz_migrate. It’s about as drama-free move to cloud as anyone can make it.
• Separate storage and compute: Deploy these two sets of resources completely independently—configure a compute-dense, storage-dense, or balanced system.
• Secure: Encryption for data in motion and at rest, with a deployment to your own virtual private cloud (VPC) or VLAN.
• Highly available: A containerized database engine deployed to compute nodes, orchestrated by Red Hat OpenShift, providing failure detection and fast failure recovery.
• Reliable: Scheduled or ad-hoc backups with ability to do a partial (table/schema-level) or full restore. Backups stored in either IBM Cloud Object Storage or Amazon S3, giving you an inexpensive data store with infinite scale and cross-AZ/cross-region availability.
• Access your cloud data lake with external tables: Reach into your IBM Cloud Object Storage or Amazon S3 buckets directly via Netezza external tables for data exploration and data ingestion.

Stay tuned for more

This is just our very first release. Netezza is back, and innovation will continue at breakneck speeds. Make sure to watch this blog or visit the Netezza webpage to stay-up-to-date on what’s being delivered with the next generation of Netezza.

FAQs

Wanting to learn more about Netezza on IBM Cloud and AWS? Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions when it comes to Netezza being available on public cloud.

1. How do I get started using Netezza Performance Server?

For public cloud, you receive access to a nz_cloud installer in Passport Advantage (PPA) with the Cloud Pak for Data entitlements. You have the option to run the installer from the UI or CLI. The installer creates an OpenShift cluster and a Control Plane. On this layer, a Netezza Performance Server instance is provisioned depending on the VPC and storage you selected.

For more information, please visit this IBM Knowledge Center document.

2. How do I migrate my current Netezza system to the public cloud?

To migrate data from IBM® PureData® System for Analytics to Netezza on Cloud, you can use the backup and restore method or the nz_migrate command. Visit the IBM Knowledge Center for more information on both of these methods.

Note: To migrate or connect to Netezza on Cloud from Mako, make sure you are on version 7.2.1.9 P1 or lower.

3. Does IBM help with migration and modernization of my data analytics platform?

Yes. Most clients find it easy to migrate themselves due to the 100% compatibility—all it takes is the “nz_migrate” command. However, IBM Expert Labs can help if needed. Each purchase of Netezza Performance Server includes two support offerings: 1) Setup and configuration of Netezza Performance Server for your workloads, including an Operational Workshop, and 2) Three months’ Expertise Connect Advanced to provide guidance on moving workloads to IBM Cloud Pak for Data.

4. How do I purchase Netezza Performance Server for public cloud?

Netezza Performance Server can be configured to support the needs of your business. For more information on how to purchase and pricing, talk to your IBM representative today or schedule a free consultation.

5. Is Netezza on Cloud compatible with my existing Twinfin, Striper, and Mako workloads?

Yes, Netezza Performance Server is 100% compatible with existing Twinfin, Striper, and Mako workloads. It’s the same database engine that’s retooled and reconfigured for the cloud and includes all the same utilities which are now available as REST API calls in the cloud.

6. How do I backup and/or restore my data on Netezza Performance Server?

For Netezza on Cloud, backups and restores are saved in the object store, either IBM Cloud Object Storage or AWS S3. For more about backup and restore on cloud, see Backup and restore on Netezza on Cloud in the IBM Knowledge Center.

7. In which locations or data centers does IBM offer Netezza Performance Server for IBM Cloud Pak for Data?

New IBM Cloud data centers are consistently being added. Currently, there are IBM Cloud and AWS data centers supporting Netezza Performance Server in multiple locations within North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

To learn more, talk to your IBM representative or schedule a free consultation

8. How does Netezza Performance Server keep my data secure?

Built-in automation and auto-recovery (available on both IBM Cloud and Amazon Web Services) provide a highly available and fault-tolerant Netezza deployment with minimal human intervention, ensuring your data warehouse can run 24x7x365. Backups can also be scheduled at your convenience and kept in object stores as well as replicated to multiple availability zones.

9. Is Netezza Performance Server available as a managed service?

Netezza Performance Server on the public cloud is client managed. However, product updates are pushed through IBM’s platform on a monthly cycle and can be deployed to your environment when you are ready.

10. What happened to IBM Performance Server for PostgreSQL?

IBM Performance Server for PostgreSQL has been modernized and renamed to Netezza Performance Server for IBM Cloud Pak for Data.

11. How does Netezza Performance Server compare to other enterprise data warehouses currently in the market?

A recent TVO study from Cabot showed that Netezza Performance Server outpaced competitors in key areas. The full study is available here.

12. How can data scientists benefit from Netezza?

Netezza Performance Server drives the ability for your data scientist to quickly create, train, and deploy in-database machine learning models. Using cognitive machine learning, Netezza provides your data scientist with in-database analytics, enabling them to collaborate inside one unified platform. Embedded Spark and support for Python and R enable rapid and sophisticated adoption of data science and machine learning at scale.

I want to close by saying how insanely proud I am of all the hard work and ingenuity that’s been on display by our engineering team as they worked to bring Netezza to cloud. Taking what used to be an extremely tight coupling of hardware and software and deploying it on a modular, commodity-hardware infrastructure is no easy task.

But, our customers challenge us to build the best products on the planet. And, our team and IBM always deliver.