Thursday, September 27, 2012

OMEGAMON Messaging command interface

As in the prior example of OMEGAMON IMS V5.1, the new release of OMEGAMON Messaging provides an easy to use command facility integrated into the enhanced 3270 user interface.  Here's an example:

In the above example we see how you can issue commands, such as MQ channel commands seen here. 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

OMEGAMON IMS V5.1 expands command support

In prior releases of OMEGAMON IMS the Type 2 IMS commands were not supported.  Now with OMEGAMON IMS V5.1 the tool finally provides support for Type 2 IMS commands.  Here's an example:

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Powerful new 3270 displays with OMEGAMON Storage V5.1

OMEGAMON Storage V5.1 includes support for the new enhanced 3270 user interface.  The implementation of enhanced UI for OMEGAMON Storage is robust, and includes quite a few powerful new displays. 

One example of a very useful display that has been translated from the Tivoli Portal to enhanced 3270 UI is the Dataset Atttributes screen.  The Dataset Attributes Database is a feature of OMEGAMON Storage that helps you manage data sets. The database maintains attributes related to data set space, DCB, and catalog issues.  The database feature collects data regarding all data sets on all volumes in the z/OS environment (except for volumes that you have excluded) so that you can do analysis from a single point of control.  You can accomplish such tasks as identifying exception conditions regarding data sets throughout the environment, seeing an installation-wide view of data set space utilization, exceptional conditions, and summary statistics, and identifying resources that require attention, such as data sets that have excessive unused space, extents, or CA/CI splits.
  Here is an example of the Dataset Attributes screen in the enhanced 3270 interface.  Note how the display aggregates quite a bit of information together.  

Friday, September 14, 2012

OMEGAMON Messaging V7.1 provides many powerful new displays

It's exciting now that OMEGAMON Messaging V7.1 provides a robust 3270 interface.  With V7.1 there are many powerful new displays inclduing the Health overview panel. 

The Health Overview panel gives the overall health values for queue manager, queues and channels, and the worst health status on the display will be sorted to the top of list.  Among the various values used in determining health include Queue Manager status (Is it active?  Are the channel initiator and command servers active? Are there any connections?),  Queue performance indicators (Are there queues with high depth? Do XMIT queues have messages? Are there messages on the DLQ? Are there get inhibited or put inhibited queues?), and Channel status (Is the percent (of max) current channels or active channels too high?  Are there current channels not in running state? Are there in-doubt channels?)

There's a lot of information on the display, and it's a good place to start for problem analysis.  Here's an example of the screen:
 

Thursday, September 13, 2012

OMEGAMON IMS V5.1 adds support for the enhanced 3270 user interface

With the release of OMEGAMON IMS V5.1, we now have another OMEGAMON in the suite that has support for the enhanced 3270 user interface.  The big benefits of the enhanced 3270 user are consistency and integration.  With the enhanced user interface you can logon to one UI and access any of the OMEGAMONs from a central point.

Here's an example of what the OMEGAMON IMS emhanced user interface looks like. 


Just like the DB2 monitor, you get a default panel that can show both IMSplex level information, and the individual IMS subsystems.  You can use the "/" navigation to drill in for detail, in the similar manner to how the other OMEGAMONs operate.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

New versions of OMEGAMON IMS, Storage and Messaging announced

Yesterday IBM announced new versions of OMEGAMON IMS, OMEGAMON Storage, and OMEGAMON for Messaging.  These new versions continue the process that was begun earlier this year of expanding the integration and consolidation of the OMEGAMON 3270 interface capablities.  And, as always, and new version of OMEGAMON is always an exciting event.

IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for IMS on z/OS V5.1, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for Storage on z/OS V5.1, and IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for Messaging on z/OS V7.1 use a new architecture that simplifies installation (PARMGEN) and includes integrated enhanced 3270 monitors (the new enhanced 3270 ui). These products integrate related data to help subject matter experts  solve problems encountered on a day-to-day basis.
 
New capabilities of IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for IMS on z/OS V5.1, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for Storage on z/OS V5.1, and IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for  Messaging on z/OS V7.1 are designed to:
  • Improve problem resolution efficiency by requiring fewer steps to isolate root  cause performance impact in real time, and, therefore, providing greater availability. 
  • Improve visibility, control, and automation with a new more comprehensive 3270-based user interface capable of viewing the entire enterprise-wide environment from a single 3270 screen. 
  • Reduce the time required for installation, configuration, and maintenance by leveraging enhanced IBM Tivoli Monitoring functions and a new PARMGEN configuration tool.
  • Provide an enterprise end-to-end view of performance monitoring and availability on a common technology for both IBM System z® and open systems.
I will be blogging extensively on the capabilities of the new versions in the next few days.

For more information here is a link:

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&appname=gpateam&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS212-308

Friday, September 7, 2012

Using Tivoli Data Warehouse for trending analysis

Because it is snapshot type data, Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW) data works well for trending and analysis.  TDW data is not necessarily equivalent to SMF data, which tends to be more interval or event driven in nature.  TDW is not equivalent to CICS SMF 110's or DB2 Accountig trace data.  But, if you want to be able to do things like trend resource usage (such as CPU, DASD, or memory) over time,  TDW can work well in that context.   Also, when doing trending analysis, the TDW summarization process can add some interesting information to the data.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.  In this example, I'm trending z/OS CPU over time using CPU TDW snapshot data summarized by hour.  Note that in addition to average CPU usage you also get a Min and Max CPU usage for the same time interval, and here I show how easy it is to chart that information on a single graph.