OMEGAMON for z/OS Management Suite V4.2.0 Announced

IBM has announced the OMEGAMON z/OS Management Suite V4.2.0. What exactly is the z/OS Management Suite? Think of it as an integrated offering that includes monitoring for the z/OS operating system, network monitoring, and expanded DASD storage monitoring, all within a single solution.

OMEGAMON XE for z/OS by itself does not really provide much in the way of network information. OMEGAMON XE for z/OS provides DASD, cache, and control unit information, but the available information is largely focused from the perspective of 3390 type devices, etc.

What OMEGAMON z/OS Management Suite V4.2 provides is a way to expand the reach of your core z/OS monitoring to include robust detailed network analysis and more detailed storage information within a single software offering. Technically you could purchase and install OMEGAMON XE for Mainframe Networks and OMEGAMON Storage, in addition to OMEGAMON z/OS. What OMEGAMON z/OS Management Suite V4.2 provides is a way to have all this integrated capability in a single solution.

For more information here is a link:

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&htmlfid=897/ENUS211-325&appname=isource&language=enus#h2-abstrx

Interested in cloud?

The IT business has always been full of buzz words and phrases. "Cloud" is certainly one of the latest examples. If you want to learn more about cloud, IBM is putting a series of events that will go into quite a bit of detail of how to get started with highly scalable clouds. The event will look at such things as platform choice for consolidating new cloud workloads and applications, and containing the cost of administering and managing cloud.

If you want to learn more about cloud, the event will be happening at several locations

Fort Worth, Texas September 14, 2011
Markham, Ontario September 20, 2011
Waltham, Massachusetts October 4, 2011
New York, New York October 12, 2011
Chicago, Illinois October 18, 2011
San Francisco, California October 27, 2011
Washington D.C. November 1, 2011

If you are interested, here's a URL to sign up:

ibm.com/software/systemz/seminar/cloud

Data collection considerations for OMEGAMON Storage

There is an interesting technote that discusses collection overhead considerations when doing dataset level monitoring using OMEGAMON Storage. The symptoms may be high CPU in the KCNDLxxx address space, and you may see the following message:

KDFS023A CANDLE DATASET I/O KDFSMIBF ROUTINE IEXP FAILED 0000000C 00000000

What this indicates is that the dataset collection process is overwhelmed with data and is unable to catch up.

This goes back to posts I had made about a year ago relevant to optimal monitoring strategies. In general, the more data you request, the more it will cost to collect and display/manage that data. So consider carefully what you ask for, you may get more than you bargained for.

In this technote the author references the "OMEGAMON XE For Storage Tuning Guide".

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v15r1/topic/com.ibm.omegamon.stor.doc/SC23-9704-01.pdf

The technote also suggests such things as collecting data every so often (example every 20 I/Os, SAMPCT=20), versus every I/O. Or, collect data based upon an exception criteria, such as a high MSR time for a device.

With so many active UCBs in many shops and potentially so many datasets, it makes sense to have a strategy for collection, versus just turning it on for everything.

Here's a link to the technote:

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?mynp=OCSS2JFP&mync=R&uid=swg21508611&myns=swgtiv

Presentations at Share

At the Share conference in Orlando I did four presentations as part of the proceedings. Here are my topics with links to the material. Each of these presentations contains at least some updates.

Here are the topics and the links to them. Feel free to download:


"Understanding The Interaction Of z/OS Workload Manager And DB2"

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9395.html


"Monitoring: Become More Proactive Via Effective Historical Analysis"

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9633.html


"Optimal Alert Management Strategies for System z and Beyond"

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9776.html


"IMS Performance - Getting The Most Out Of Your Monitoring Technology: Isolating And Solving Common Issues"

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9808.html

Share presentation on NetView Canzlog

Canzlog is a consolidated log management function that was added as part of NetView V6.1. Canzlog has been popular with quite a few customers as a method of managing multiple log streams in a consolidated manner. It's a nice facility, and worth taking a look at.

Dale Carter of Bank of America) and Tom Howe of IBM did a presentation on "Canzlog in NetView for z/OS 6.1: User Experience".

Here's a link to the presentation:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9914.html

Share presentation on the DB2 Catalog

Willie Favero of IBM did an interesting presentation at Share in Orlando on what's new and changed in the DB2 Catalog, "The DB2 for z/OS Catalog Gets a Makeover ". DB2 V10 certainly introduced quite a few changes, and this topic goes through what has happened with the Catalog, what was changed, what was added, and what it means for the DB2 sysprog.

Here's a link for the presentation:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9539.html

Upcoming seminars on System z storage

If you are in the Columbus or Charlotte area, you may be interested in a free seminar on how to "Handle common storage management problems with IBM z/OS".

This seminar will look at the Tivoli zStorage Management Initiative. There will be discussion on how Tivoli solutions can reduce time, effort and cost of storage management of your current IBM z/OS storage environment, and reduce costs while fostering greater synergy to address both resource and personnel effectivenesss.

The event will happen September 13 in Columbus, 4499 Fisher Road
Columbus, Ohio, and September 15 in Charlotte, David Taylor Drive
Charlotte, NC.

Registration and Continental Breakfast: 8:30am
Event 9am - 1pm
Lunch will also be served.

The price is right, the event is free (and so is the lunch).

To register - send email to lawatson@us.ibm.com

Overview of z/OS V1.13 at Share

There are quite a few interesting items planned to be coming along in z/OS V1.13. There are quite a few enhancement to z/OSMF (how about web-enabled ISPF), Java/COBOL enhancements, scalability improvements (including performance improvements to of all things IEBCOPY), security enhancements, network improvements, improved availability, more feature/function for WLM and RMF. It's quite a list of items.

If you're interested in learning more about what's coming in z/OS V1.13, here's a link to a nice presentation at Share that goes into it in more detail:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9728.html

Information on the z114 at Share

A new z/OS machine is always going to be a hot topic of conversation at Share. The z114 was announced in July, and there multiple sessions that discussed the z114.

The following session is a detailed technical introduction to the z114. The material presented included considerable technical detail on z114 structure, processor design, configuration and features. Here's a link to the presentation:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9796.html

A good presentation at Share on managing network performance

Ernie Gilman of IBM did a very nice presentation on "Top 10 Tips for z/OS Network Performance Monitoring with OMEGAMON". This is a very detailed review of common network challenges and how to analyze them using OMEGAMON For Mainframe Networks.

The session looked at how correlation between key metrics can more quickly isolate performance problems, how to identify how poorly designed end to end applications could be the cause to high z/OS overhead, and how to create a simple view to help identify why TCP/IP connections are randomly being rejected.

Ernie made some very nice custom workspaces to show how to more effectively use the tool.

Here's a link to the presentation:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9917.html

Notes from the Share Conference in Orlando

I recently returned from the Share Conference last week in Orlando. In addition to presenting on several topics at the conference, I also attended quite a few of the technical sessions (as well as partaking in some hands on labs).

Given that Share has a z/OS focus, many of the sessions were centered around what's new and interesting in the area of System z. That meant there were quite a few sessions on such topics as the new z114 system, what's new with z/OS V1.13, Workload Manager, Unified Resource Manager and zManager, what is zBX and what it means to z/OS, cloud computing, security, storage, you name it.

In the area of zBX, a session I found interesting was done by Glenn Anderson of IBM on "A Mainframe Guy Discovers Blades - as in zEnterprise "Blade" Extension". This was a good introduction to blades and how this technology now folds into the new z/OS mainframes.

Here's a link to the presentation:

http://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Session9674.html

New filter option for Tivoli Data Warehouse history

Thanks to Ernie Gilman for making me aware of this very interesting tidbit.

When you define history collection in Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW) you go through a set of steps to specify which tables of data to collect, which managed objects to collect the data from, and finally how often to collect the data and send it on to the TDW.

Apparently there a new option has appeared in the TDW history collection options (we think this may have showed up with either FP2 or FP3). When you specify history there is now a new 'Filter' tab. From there you can specify what attribute to filter on at the time of collection. What that means is that you can specify what is essentially exception based history. For example, only collect the history if it meets a specified criteria.

Look at the example I include and you will see how I'm filtering history based on a CPU threshold.

Share Conference

This week I've been at the Share Conference in sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy always hot Orlando. For those of you who may not have heard of Share, Share is a user group with a z/OS focus. Share provides a wide array of sessions on many things related to System z, DB2, IMS, CICS, networking, storage, security, you name it.

I will be doing a series of posts on interesting tidbits of information I picked up a Share.

If you are interested in finding out more about the group go to www.share.org

Seminar on IT optimization

If you happen to be in the Seattle area on August 23rd you may be interested in this seminar on "Optimizing Your IT Infrastructure". The event is intended for Operations managers, infrastructure architects and system programmers.

Here's the agenda

Continental breakfast will be available at 8:30 a.m.
08:40 a.m. - z/OS Version 1 Release 12 and more
09:50 a.m. - Technology update - zEnterprise servers and storage
11:00 a.m. - Consolidation and virtualization update with Linux and z/VM on System z
12:00 p.m. - Lunch
01:00 p.m. - Integrated service management can improve overall visibility into your zEnterprise using OMEGAMON XE for z/OS
02:10 p.m. - Increase availability and productivity in your System z environment with integrated service management automation
03:20 p.m. - Moving to cloud? Integrated service management on System z will be a critical success factor
04:20 p.m. - Close and next steps

It's a full day with some good stuff. It's a free event (so the price is right). If you are interested, here's a link to sign up:

https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/9051592f-7640-466e-8524-6ae7dcc20c79/entry/seattle_briefing_aug_23_optimizing_your_it_infrastructure?lang=en_us