Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Learn about what's new in zEnterprise

Today there will be a virtual event to introduce the next generation of zEnterprise, the world’s fastest, most scalable and secure enterprise system with the ability to integrate resources for operational analytics, trusted resilience, and efficiency at an enterprise scale. 

The virtual doors open at 10:45  Eastern Time.  Here's a link to attend:
http://bit.ly/NRtwF6

Friday, August 24, 2012

An example of analyzing issues with Tivoli Data Warehouse

I had an interesting project this week to get Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW) operational for a customer.  With the assistance of an IBM colleague (thank you Andrew), we got TDW fully configured and (seemingly) connected.  The Warehouse proxy and Summarization/Pruning agents were started.  The Warehouse proxy log showed that it was connecting to the TEMS.  The Warehouse Proxy configuration workspace showed that everything was green and connected.  Real time monitoring was working great.  We could get 24 hours worth of history, but nothing more.  So why were we still not seeing any data being written to the TDW?

We looked at the Warehouse proxy log on the TDW box.  There were no obvious error messages.  But there also were none of the eyecatchers we noted in earlier posts (such as that TDW database objects were being created).  So if the Warehouse Proxy had no errors, what was the issue?

In this shop, the agents were mainframe TEMAs.  The next step was to look at the RKLVLOGs of the agents running on z/OS.  When I looked through the logs I noticed messages, such as the following, that would occur every hour.  Since we had set the warehouse interval for one hour for this collection, this seemed like more than just a coincidence.

+4EBF9D4E.0002 ERROR MESSAGE: "RPC Error"

(4EBF9D4E.0003-13B4:khdxdacl.cpp,577,"routeExportRequest") Export for object  (table POOLS appl KIP) failed in createRouteRequest, Status = 8.
(4EBF9D63.0000-13B4:kdcc1sr.c,460,"rpc__sar") Connection failure: "ip.pipe:#xx.xxx.x.xxx:63358", 1C010001:1DE00045, 21, 100(3), FFFF/4119,

The conclusion was that this message seemed to indicate that the TEMA was attempting to connect to the warehouse infrastructure to send the data to the TDW, but was getting a connection error.  And this error was happening every hour. 

The problem?  In this case, there was an internal firewall that was blocking off the port we needed (in this example 63358 - see above).  Although real time monitoring was working, and the TDW configuration panel showed green, we still needed this port to be able to send data to the TDW.  Once the port was opened, the TDW worked perfectly.

The moral of the story?  When analyzing these types of issues it is important to look at things from multiple perspectives, look at all the logs, and don't forget about things like firewalls and other security challenges.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Upcoming OMEGAMON webcasts in September

There are a couple webcast events covering OMEGAMON in September.

"Increase System z storage visibility with OMEGAMON Monitoring"  will cover what's new and exciting in the area of OMEGAMON Storage and System z.  The redesigned OMEGAMON XE for Storage V5.1 allows subject matter experts to resolve storage issues using fewer screens and keystrokes. OMEGAMON along with IBM’s Storage Management Suite can provide end-to-end visibility, control and automation for good storage management.  The speaker is Kevin Hosozawa, Product Manager, OMEGAMON for Storage, IBM Software Group . 

The webcast is September 13, 2012, 11 a.m., EDT.  Here's  a link to sign up:
http://ibm.co/N30pbq

Later in September there will be webcast on OMEGAMON IMS. 

"Improve IMS monitoring with new OMEGAMON V5."  Get the details about what’s new in OMEGAMON for IMS V5.1, including easier region navigation, reduced MIPS usage and the capability to issue IMS commands from OMEGAMON. Learn how it reduces potential delays or outages by reporting coupling facility structure statistics and other critical IMS attributes

The speaker is Mike Goodman, OMEGAMON for IMS Product Manager, IBM Software Group. 

The webcast is September 27, 2012, 11 a.m., EDT.  Here's a link to sign up:
http://ibm.co/NveTXc

Friday, August 17, 2012

More OMEGAMON V5.1 test drive events coming your way

Want a chance to take the new OMEGAMON V5.1 for a test drive?  You can try it out for yourself on a live z/OS environment.  There are more test drive events coming your way.  Here's a list:

Chicago  -  Sept 11th
IBM Chicago TEC
71 South Wacker Drive, 6th Floor  

Springfield, IL   -  Sept 25th
IBM Springfield TEC
3201 West White Oaks Drive, Suite 204

Minneapolis,  MN   -   Oct  18th
IBM Minneapolis TEC
650 3rd Avenue South

Omaha, NE   -   Nov  7th
IBM Omaha Office
1111 N. 102nd Court, Suite 231

REGISTER Now! Please send an email to IBM Representative Cliff Koch at

cjkoch@us.ibm.com or call (314)-409-2859. 

My presentations at Share

At the Share confernce last week in Anaheim I did a couple presentations. 

One topic was somewhat in keeping with one of the themes of the conference, Big Data.  In "Predictive Analytics and IT Service Management"  I cover the concepts of predictive analysis, consider common systems management challenges, and look at how predictive analysis concepts may be applied to address IT Service Management needs.  Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11479.html


Another session that I did covered the topic of   "Understanding The Impact Of The Network On z/OS Performance".  This was an updated verison of a presentation I did at Share in Atlanta this past spring.  In the presentation I discuss how to create a more integrated, end to end monitoring strategy that includes relevant network information.  I cover understanding the impact of the network on z/OS performance, how to analyze typical z/OS workloads and network performance, analyzing performance using available tools (such as OMEGAMON), and recommended approaches and management strategies.  Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11900.html

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Some very interesting Tivoli monitoring sessions

There were quite a few good Tivoli related monitoring and management sessions at Share last week in Anaheim.  Some of the best ones were done by Mike Bonett of IBM. 

"Using NetView for z/OS for Enterprise-Wide Event Management and Automation" was a very interesting session that covered numerous ways that you exploit and use NetView in your enterprise.  Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11905.html

"The IBM Tivoli Monitoring Infrastructure on System z and zEnterprise" is one of the most comprehensive and concise reviews I've seen of the Tivoli infrastructure.  If you want a good explanation of all the Tivoil terminology, this is the best one I've seen.  Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11524.html

"Forecasting Performance Metrics using the IBM Tivoli Performance Analyzer"  is a good overview of the capabilities of this very interesting feature of the Tivoli Portal. Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11523.html

"Getting Started with the Unified Resource Manager (zManager) APIs for zEnterprise Monitoring and Discovery"  looks at the support for zManager now available in the Tivoli Portal.  If you are not familiar with this support, it is very much worth looking at this presentation.  Here's a link:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11630.html

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

New Share presentation on OMEGAMON optimization

It's Share conference week in Anaheim, California (home of Mickey and Minnie).  I'll be providing some links on interested presentations I attended over the course of the week.

One presentation I attended yesterday was done by the always interesting and informative Don Zeunert (aka Dr Z).  Don did a presentation on "Tuning Tips To Lower System z Costs with OMEGAMON Monitoring".   This was a very informative presentation that covered quite a few tuning tips for OMEGAMON.

Here's a link to download the presentation:
https://share.confex.com/share/119/webprogram/Session11791.html

Friday, August 3, 2012

Monitoring Summarization and Pruning activity

We've looked at specifying history collection, and as part of that process defining summarization and pruning.  Summarization and pruning should happen on a regular basis as defined in the setup and configuration for the summarization and pruning agent.  Here's an example of where you would specify the time of day that summarization and pruing takes place.
Once the summarization and pruning is set up, you can then monitor the summarization and pruning activity on an ongoing basis using a product provided workspace (see example below).  The statistics workspace under summarization and pruing shows interesting information, such as tables being sumamrized, and if there were any tables that saw errors during summarization/pruing.


It's recommended that if you are collecting TDW history, and are using the summarization and pruning facility, that you check this workspace periodically to make sure you do not have any issues.