Recent Updates
Andy Coulson
z/OS SysProg
All views are my own
Everyone’s copyright is acknowledged
Updates :
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System z Meantime To Recovery SG24-7816-00
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Symbolic Parmlib Parser
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z/OS 1.12 Preview
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zFavorites website
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Hybrid Technologies
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BMC Tools to run on zIIPs
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CA’s Mainframe event
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Storage Tiering
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Neon zPrime update
Redbook 'SG24-7816-00 - System z Mean Time to Recovery Best Practices‘
MMTR
Why ? Interesting because :
Planned or Unplanned, the ‘down then up’ time gets in the way of what you need to do –
either run a business, or do your sysprog stuff
Often neglected for general tuning
Systems management processes can be very important
Interesting insight for sysprogs as to how z/OS and subsystems are initialised
Redbook 'SG24-7816-00 - System z Mean Time to Recovery Best Practices‘
Sample IPLSTATS report :
**** NIP Statistics ****
IEAVNIP0 0.008 NIP Base
IEAVNPFF 0.029 Loadwait/Restart
IEAVNPA2 3.948 IOS - Non-DASD UCBs
IEAVNPB2 0.682 IOS - DASD UCBs
IEAVNP11 0.011 Locate and Open master calalog
IEAVNPC7 0.027 Open SYS1.SVCLIB
IEAVNP05 4.726 LPA, APF
IEAVNPF9 72.231 XCF
IEAVNP33 2.790 GRS
IEAVNP26 1.244 SMS
IEAVNPE5 2.008 LNKLST
IEAVNPD5 0.274 Load pageable device support modules
IEAVNP88 0.077 Allocation move EDT II
IEAVNPA1 3.602 CONSOLE
IEAVNPDC 0.265 WLM
IEAVNIPX 0.000 NIP final cleanup
94.137 TOTAL NIP TIME (seconds)
IEEVIPL 2.694 Uncaptured time: 0.000
IEEMB860 10.630 Uncaptured time: 0.100
109.482 TOTAL TIME (seconds)
‘Symbolic Parmlib Parser’ – Appendix B of Init & Tuning Ref ('SA22-7592-17 )
Allows you to verify symbolic substitutions without doing an IPL.
Entertainingly easy to install EX ’SYS1.SAMPLIB(SPPINST)’
’’’SYS1.SAMPLIB(SPPPACK)’’’
TSO ex ’myid.PARMLIB.EXEC(SYSPARM)’
The tool assumes that any SYSn.IPLPARM data set is on the same volume as the specified
parmlib data set. It does not support the concept of a separate IODF and SYSRES volume.
z/OS 1.12 Preview
Lots of interesting systems management features :
z/OS Predictive Failure Analysis® (PFA) is planned to monitor the rate at which SMF
records are generated. When the rate is abnormally high for a particular system, the
system will be designed to issue an alert to warn you of a potential problem, potentially
avoiding an outage. ‘Supervised and Unsupervised’ learning methods.
Run Time Diagnostics. The feature will help mainframers determine problems that are
affecting the performance while the machine is live.
The z/OS Management Facility Web-browser-based management console for z/OS.
In z/OSMF V1.11, collecting and packaging dump data can now take as little as 30
seconds. z/OSMF V1.12 is planned to be expanded with the addition of z/OS Workload
Manager Policy Editor functionality, Incident Log management, and Configuration
Assistant for the z/OS Communications Server functions.
RSM and (SVC & SAD) Dump processing – reduced dump capture and page-in time.
Even more Health Checker checks and migration alerts (and SDSF CK ‘history’).
zFavorites - a collection of links to helpful System z Web sites
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/zfavorites/
Product documentation
z/OS information center V1R11
z/OS information center - betas V1R10 | V1R9
z/OS LibraryCenters — V1R10 | V1R9 | V1R8 | V1R7 | V1R6 | V1R5 | V1R4
z/OS Internet Library
V1R10 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R9 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R8 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R7 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R6 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R5 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R4 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R3 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R2 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
V1R1 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
OS/390 Internet Library
V2R10 | Roadmap HTML PDF | Browse or search books
z/OS software products
z/OS software products documentation
Additional System z-related libraries
Hardware
TPF
z/VM
z/VSE
System z Redbooks
All Redbooks
Search library by bookshelf categories
Overview
Installation
Messages
Commands
Software products
Message help
LookAt message search facility
Education
General
e-learning
IBM Scholars
zOS training
Courses
Support
Mainframe support
z/OS support
IBMLink
IBM assist on-site
OS/390 Enhanced HOLDDATA
Resource Link
z/OS DOC APAR and PTF ++HOLD documentation
OS/390 DOC APAR and PTF ++HOLD documentation
Free downloads
IBM Downloads - Trials and beta's
Acrobat Reader
Softcopy Reader (JAVA)
Softcopy Librarian V3
New! Softcopy Librarian V4 (JAVA)
Softcopy Librarian OS/2 (Available "as is" no longer supported)
LookAt for z/OS and OS/390
Installation & migration
z/OS migration and installation
Linux on zSeries
z/VM home
zVM program directories
TPF home
TPF Installation and Support Reference
VSE/ESA home
VSE/ESA program directories
Hybrid technologies (All public domain)
Presentations from IBM made to GSE, and at various CA and other events, refer to the so
called 'z Next', or 'zFuture' machines deploying what is euphemistically being termed
as 'accelerators'. Other terms used are Gryphon, and zHybrid.
'Deploy optimised solutions across z/OS, speciality engines, and Blades'
(ref Johan Charles, IBM).
Doug Nielson (IBM) presented the System z 'Ensemble' –
Integrated Systems Management firmware, allowing us to 'integrate, monitor, and
manage multi-OS resources as a single logical virtualised system'.
'Single WLM, Security Management, and System Management across all resources'.
'Logical device integration between System z resources, and application serving
commodity devices'.
Accelerators
• Hardware
• Blade speciality engines
• Integrated Systems Management Firmware
9
BMC Tools to run on zIIPs
Why ?
zIIPs are ‘specialty engines’ (z9+) – like general CPs but only for particular work
They are ‘cheap’ to buy (? 25% that of a general CP ?)
They are cheap in terms of the impact on your vendor maintenance charges –
On zIIP there are no/low systems software licence fees
They can offload some work from an expensive, busy CP onto somewhere cheap
Should be exploited heavily to maximise the attractiveness of running work on z
BMC’s CMF Monitor, MainView, and utilities for tuning DB2 and IMS databases
Other vendors already exploit this tightly-controlled offload facility –
IBM (components of DB2 v8, XML, Java), CA (Netmaster), etc
Neon’s zPrime software
Neon claim they have a legal way to move workload from general CPs to zIIps. IBM claim
the method is illegal, and violates agreements.
The mainframe market may hold as many as 6,000 to 7,000 customers. Neon say 50
customers have tested zPrime, 200 are planning to, and 1500 have asked for more
info.
Neon are reporting that some customers can save 90% of their software licence fees, and
one unnamed potential customer is claiming it could save $100m over 2 years.
Why should we care ?
IBM (arguably) has a controlling monopoly position on the technology. Monopolies can
be good and/or bad, just as competition can also be good/bad.
Which is a greater concern –
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Sharing the pain of IBM’s and other vendor’s revenue stream diminishing rapidly ?
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Mainframes becoming a more attractive cost proposition ?
CA’s ‘Mainframe Madness’
http://vshow.on24.com/vshow/camainframe
Includes a DB2 IDUG review, DB2 performance, Linux on System/z, exploiting zIIPs & zAAPs, Network security, security management, encryption
key management, workload automation, etc etc
Storage Tiering
IBM is joining 3PAR and EMC in adding what it calls 'Easy Tier' to its DS8700 range of
storage devices, with a microcode update (possibly at no charge).
Automated data tiering is a method whereby 'hot', frequently accessed disk data, is
identified and promoted to more appropriate storage such as solid state drives.
Manual identification and promotion (/demotion) will be possible, and via an API,
periodic migration will also be possible.
That’s it !! – Thanks for coming !