2017: A year for DB2 11.1

If your databases are on DB2 9.7 or DB2 10.1, then September 30, 2017 is a date that should be at the forefront of your mind. Both DB2 9.7 and DB2 10.1 go out of support on this date. As you start thinking about your upgrade plans to either DB2 10.5 or better still DB2 11.1, here are some reasons why I think moving to DB2 11.1 would be my preferred option:

1. Ease of upgrade
   1. Unlike previous releases where you could only upgrade directly to at most two releases up, you can now directly upgrade from DB2 9.7 to DB2 11.1 without the need to upgrade to DB2 10.5 first. That makes the upgrade much faster and reduces outage that would otherwise be needed in doing a two-stepped upgrade.
   2. If you are upgrading from DB2 10.5 Fix Pack 7 or later, you are no longer required to perform an offline backup of existing databases before or after the upgrade. Ability to roll-forward through database version upgrades eliminates outage of the DB2 databases that resulted from having to take an offline backup before the upgrade.
2. Enhanced Security
   1. Native Encryption is included in all DB2 11.1 Editions (WSE, ESE, AWSE, and AESE) to ensure the security for all your databases
      1. DB2 11.1 added support for KMIP 1.1 compliant centralized key managers like IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager (ISKLM) and SafeNet KeySecure.
      2. DB2 11.1.1.1 now adds direct support for Hardware Security Modules (HSMs).
   2. For Public or Private cloud environments, support for configuring and leveraging SSL encryption between the HADR primary and HADR standby servers is now supported in DB2 11.1.1.1, to add enhanced security and protection of your enterprise data. Initial support is only for Linux on x86 (non-pureScale) deployments.
3. pureScale
   1. A much simplified installation and deployment process. Many of the pureScale installation processes have been simplified which makes the adaption of pureScale much easier.
   2. The distinct 2 member (active/admin) pureScale cluster capability is available in all DB2 11.1 Editions. This will allow you to address your high availability needs without having to move from your current DB2 edition.
4. Remote Storage options are now available for INGEST, LOAD, BACKUP, and RESTORE utilities. Supported Storage includes:
   1. IBM SoftLayer Object Storage
   2. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
5. BLU enhancements
   1. Now supported for MPP/DPF environments – providing BLU Scalability to multiple data partitions.
   2. Synopsis table enhancements – maintaining synopsis tables has significantly been improved. This addresses the use case of transactions inserting a smaller set of rows into a column-organized table. The beginning of Hybrid Transaction and Analytic Processing (HTAP) technology that we will be seeing in future releases of DB2.
   3. Additional SIMD exploitation
   4. Aggregation enhancements, sort elimination
   5. INSERT from sub-select – performance improvements

For further details on DB2 11.1, take a look at our series of webcasts.