CMG in St Louis

If you happen to be in the St Louis area, I will be presenting along with some of my IBM colleagues at the St Louis CMG meeting on February 21st.  I will presenting on "Predictive Analytics In IT Service Management".  There will be other topics on cloud and zEnterprise at the meeting. 

If you are interested in more information for the meeting, here's a link:
http://regions.cmg.org/regions/stlcmg/index.html

A new series of Tivoli OMEGAMON webcast presentations

If you are interested in OMEGAMON, you will want to be aware of  a new series of webcast presentations starting February 2nd covering many aspects of what's new and what's coming in OMEGAMON. 

Here's the list of topics:

February 2: Get more from your mainframe with proactive end-to-end monitoring

February 9: Reduce costs based on faster problem solving with redesigned OMEGAMON

February 16: Tuning tips lower System z costs with OMEGAMON monitoring

February 23: Good news for maintenance windows: Install and configure OMEGAMON faster

March 8: See into the heart of CICS and resolve problems faster across LPAR boundaries 

March 15: The critical role of Service Management in moving to cloud on System z

March 22: Shave time off application and service delivery with enhanced event management  


It looks like a great list of topics.  For more information and a link to register:


http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/webcast/sysmgmt/series/index.html?&cmp=smm&ct=tips&cr=buzzsheet&csr=systemz&cm=h&ccy=us&cpb=swg&cd=20120124

 

TN3270 emulation in the TEP provides handy scripting function

I recently had a project where the customer wanted to be able to "zoom" from the Tivoli Portal into a 3270 interface application (something other than OMEGAMON in this example).  One nice feature of the Tivoli Portal you may not be aware of is that the TEP includes a TN3270 emulator, and that the emulator includes a nifty script function. 

With the script function, you can record scripts, playback scripts, edit and create custom scripts, and set up scripts to playback by default when the user goes to a specific workspace.  The scripting language includes support for things like IF/AND logic, string and substring functions, and you can even prompt the user for input to the script.  If you want help for all the script commands,  open a script and click "Help" in the script editor.  You will then be presented with help for all the script commands (I actually went and copied all the command help, and pasted it into a document to print it out).

Here's an example of how you can get into the script editor, and set up the options.  Note how you can set the startup script for the workspace. 

As a demonstration, I created a script that will logon to TSO and navigate to SDSF.  I took the product supplied $TSO script and modified it.  I added logic to prompt for UserID and Password, and then had the script navigate through the logon, and go to SDSF.  Here's the sample code:

// Customize the following variables to match
//  Set APPLID to logon to TSO

tsoName = "TSO";

if( tsoName == "ctsoa"  )

{
   msgbox( "Please customize this script for your environment before use." );
   return;
}
//  Enter the TSO APPLID
TYPE(tsoName);WAITFORSCREEN();

//   Prompt for Userid
TYPE(PROMPT("Enter USERID","USERID"));

//   Prompt for password
TYPE(PROMPT("Enter TSO password","PSWD"));

WAITFORSCREEN();

//   Enter keys to get to main ISPF screen
SendKey("ENTER");

WaitForScreen();

SendKey("ENTER");

WaitForScreen();

//   Position the cursor to enter command
Setcursor(22,14);

//    Command to navigate screen
gotoscr="=13.14";
TYPE(gotoscr);

SendKey("ENTER");

System z sessions at Pulse

The Pulse conference is coming up in March.  I had mentioned on an earlier post that AOTC is now part of the Pulse conference.  This is nice because it adds a lot of quality technical System z content to the Pulse event, and makes Pulse more than just a distributed focused show.
Thanks to my colleague, Ray Funderburk, for taking the time to compile this list of System z related sessions at Pulse. Check it out.

SPM-1909 Service Availability and Performance Management -- Track Kick-Off    
AOT-1138 Automated Operations Technical Council Opening  
MCA-1252 Simplifying Mainframe Compliance, Auditing, and Policy Enforcement for Enhanced Security Intelligence
SPM-1784 Importance of Service Management in integrating mainframe with distributed
Phil Murphy, Forrester Analyst and Mike Goodman on OMEGAMON 5.1
AOT-1828 Getting Started with IBM Tivoli System Automation for z/OS
AOT-1999 Better Business Practices through Automation Integration
AOT-1826 What's New in IBM Tivoli System Automation for z/OS
AOT-1204 Secrets revealed; how OMEGAMON for Mainframe Networks uncovers TCPIP subtleties and provides explanations.
CMD-1137 The Highly Scalable Cloud with System z BOF
AOT-2055 System Z BOF - Ask Development open forum
z Reception – Phil Weintraub and Ray Jones
AOT-1830 Getting Started Using System Automation Application Manager for Cross-Cluster, Cross-Platform Automation
AOT-1657 How Banco do Brasil is leveraging the high availability/automation of mainframe   
AOT-1831 Getting Started with IBM Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms     
AOT-1538 Experiences automating some challenging applications with SA 3.3        
CDO-1439 How WellPoint Achieved Higher Efficiencies by Bridging Development and Operations 
AOT-1905 End-to-end Automation and Operations with SA Application Manager      
AOT-1837 Integrating Monitors and Automation for Improved Application Availability   
CDO-1737 Strategies and Technology to Support DevOps on the Mainframe: An Aetna Case Study
AOT-1906 Tivoli System Automation Resiliency for SAP Landscapes        
AOT-1822 Best Practices - Sharing your successes                  
SPM-1849 Aetna's use of TBSM to understand the delivery of Business Service Management 
AOT-1913 Modern Mainframe management with Tivoli System Automation         
AOT-1364 (Re)starting DB2 and MQSeries Subsystems           
AOT-1136 AF/Operator Users BOF                    
CPM-1598 Early Adopter Experiences with the New OMEGAMON Enhanced Capabilities
AOT-1964 What's New in IBM Tivoli NetView 6.1                
 AOT-1904 How CCB using the system automation tools            
SPM-1922 Strategies for TADDM Deployment: Discovery, Dependency Mapping and Modeling 
AOT-1484 Overview of NetView Canzlog                
AOT-1908 zEnterprise Improving Application Availability through Virtualization Support       
SPM-1717 Customer Panel: Best Practices in Managing SAP environment      
AOT-1832 Getting Started with System Automation on Open Systems: Demo Scenarios for SA for Multiplatforms and SA Application Manager 
SPM-1089 Dynamic Infrastructure and Dynamic Management: Integrated Service Management with IBM Tivoli and third party systems

So that's sessions on OMEGAMON, NetView, SA System Automation, TADDM, TBSM, just to cover a few topics.  Plus if you have an interest in other things Tivoli, you have all the other sessions at Pulse to attend. 

The event happens March 4th to 7th in Las Vegas.  If you are interested in attending, here's a link:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/pulse/

System z Technology Summits

Coming up the end of January and through the month of February is a series of System z Technology Summits.  These technology summits look really nice, with a choice of session tracks, and lots of technical detail.  In terms of the technical tracks available, here's what you have to choose from;

Track 1: zEnterprise – The ideal basis for Smarter Computing
Developed for: IT managers, IT enterprise architects

Track 2: DB2® for z/OS® Technical Update
Developed for: Database administrators, database managers

Track 3: Smarter Development and Deployment
Developed for: IT application architects and developers

Track 4: Application Infrastructure Modernization for Business Agility
Developed for: System analysts, application architects, CICS application developers and IT architects

Track 5: Data Center Operations and Systems Management Update
Developed for: IT operations and system programmers

These are each full day agendas with lots of technical information.

The calendar is as follows:

Toronto, Ontario	Jan 26, 2012
Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX	Feb 02, 2012
Washington, DC	Feb 07, 2012
Atlanta, GA	Feb 21, 2012
Los Angeles, CA	Feb 23, 2012
New York, NY	Feb 28, 2012

The price to attend is right.  It's free. To register, here's a link:

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/summit/

Some notes on OSA monitoring information in OMEGAMON Mainframe Networks

The OSA (Open Systems Adapter) is a network controller that you can install in a mainframe I/O cage. The adapter integrates several hardware features and supports many networking transport protocols.

OMEGAMON XE For Mainframe Networks provides quite a bit of information on OSA adapters, adapter status, and throughput statistics.  OMEGAMON will show such things as the adapter type, status, processor utilization (including rates calculated across various time intervals), LPARs connected, many various packet sent/received counts, and many various errors (such as collisions, CRC errors, sequence errors, fragmentation errors, alignment errors). 

While there are tools other than OMEGAMON that can be used to display much of this information in real time, OMEGAMON provides the added value of being able to display and analyze this information in a historical context.  Rates, utilization, and error activity can be analyzed and trended over time to determine
the potential for issues down the road.  And keep in mind that this history can be leveraged within the Tivoli Data Warehouse for even longer term analysis.

The example screen shots show some of the product provided screens, including a real time view of OSA activity, and historical 24 hour plot charts of performance.

Some interesting upcoming events

In an earlier post I'd mentioned Kirk Bean's presentation on "Improving System Availability with Tivoli Network Management and System Automation".  This event will happen on January 12th at 11ET.  

Register now: http://ibm.co/soAOyK

There are some other webcasts happening in the next few weeks related to performance and availability. 

If you are interested in IMS you may want to check out "IMS 12 Performance Update".  In this webcast you’ll see how this release has added a significant amount of critical functionality without any additional overhead. IMS 12 demonstrates equal or better CPU efficiency by comparison with other releases. It also demonstrates double-digit gains in performance and throughput in multiple scenarios. 

The event is January 10th at 11 AM Eastern Time.  Here's a link to sign up:
http://ibm.co/sEGdv0


If you are interested in DB2, you may want to check out "Migrating to DB2 10?  Get maximum CPU benefit with minimum impact".  Some of the topics to be covered include:  identifying SQL statements that need attention before they impact performance in your DB2 10 environment, estimating the cost of your SQL between different versions of DB2, running “what if?” scenarios to determine optimum performance settings, including updat­ing catalog statistics and creating new indexes, migrating and comparing access path statistics in DB2 V8 or DB2 9 to DB2 10 environment. 

The event is January 31st at 11 AM Eastern Time.  Here's  a link to sign up:
http://ibm.co/uC1NmX