Friday, June 28, 2013

Attend a live Q & A session with the OMEGAMON Enhanced 3270UI architect

Coming up in July will be a pair of live Q & A sessions with Michael Crump of IBM on the Enhanced 3270UI.  This is a good chance to talk to OMEGAMON R&D about Enhanced 3270UI and the future of OMEGAMON in general.

The events will be on July 24th at 2 PM Eastern Time, and July 25th at 10 AM Eastern Time.

If you are interested in attending, please email me (Ed Woods of IBM) at    woodse@us.ibm.com   to get signed up.  Please tell me who you are, what is your company or organization, and if you are a current OMEGAMON customer. 

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Check out a webcast on integrating OMEGAMON and System Automation

On July 18th there will be a webcast, "Improve availability and productivity with proactive automation". 

The webcast will discuss how using OMEGAMON to improve zEnterprise monitoring – interfaced with System Automation for z/OS – can increase availability as well as decrease unnecessary operations workload. Proactive automation enables correlation of problems across applications and drives automated problem resolution without manual overhead.

I've blogged quite a bit in the past about how you can integrate OMEGAMON and SA.  This is another chance to learn about the benefits of merging these technologies.

The event is July 18th at 11 AM Eastern Time.  The price is right, it's free.

Here's a link to attend:
https://ibmsystemsmag.webex.com/mw0307l/mywebex/default.do?nomenu=true&siteurl=ibmsystemsmag&service=6&rnd=0.4258345698996625&main_url=https%3A%2F%2Fibmsystemsmag.webex.com%2Fec0606l%2Feventcenter%2Fevent%2FeventAction.do%3FtheAction%3Ddetail%26confViewID%3D1251529409%26%26%26%26siteurl%3Dibmsystemsmag

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Using STATICCOLS to control scrolling in enhanced 3270ui

One feature of the enhanced 3270 ui is the ability to scroll a display or subpanel from side to side.  How often you may need to scroll will depend on such things as the amount of data to view and how many lines and columns you defined when you set up your 3270 emulator session.

When you scroll you can have certain information on the left portion of the display stay in view.  This makes it easier to keep information in context as you scroll.  You can control how many columns will remain as static and stay in the display.  The STATICCOLS parameter controls how many columns will stay in view on the screen. 

Below is an example of the STATICCOLS parameter as used in and OMEGAMON IMS display.  You can see in the example below the position of the static column (after IMS Region Name).  This is set by setting STATICCOLS to 1.  If you wanted to keep more information on the left of the screen static (such as IMS ID and Region Type) the set STATICCOLS to 2 or 3.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Analyzing a Tivoli Data Warehouse collection issue

This scenario is an example of a discussion I had recently with an OMEGAMON user.  The user wanted to be able to analyze issues in the Tivoli Portal (TEP) using history data from the Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW). 

Fair enough.  At first glance it looked like the history data was configured.  However, when the user tried to access the history data, no information was being returned. 

Here's an example of what we were looking at in the the history collection popup.  In this example the user wants to see IMS bottleneck history.  When you look at the bottleneck line it looks like there is information specified in there for TDW summarization and retention.  If you look to the left it looks like there is an entry for IMS bottlenecks.  So why no data?



If you look more closely at the above example you will see that next to the DBCTL history entry you see a "running man" icon.  However, there is no running man icon next to IMS bottlenecks.  What this means is that history collection is not really running for bottlenecks.  If you look closely at IMS Bottlenecks on the left portion of the popup you see that the icon is grey (as opposed to green).  If the icon is grey that means it has not been distributed to a managed system (meaning an agent or IMS system) for collection.  Therefore collection is not occurring.

When you have a problem with TDW it pays to take a closer look at these type of options.

OMEGAMON DB2 support for IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator

The IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) is a workload optimized applicance that enables support for mixed workload performance for complex analytic needs. IDAA runs complex queries up to 2000x faster while retaining single record lookup speed and eliminates costly query tuning while offloading query processing.

As an appliance IDAA runs in physical componentry outside of native z/OS, but is tightly integrated within the zEnterprise hardware footprint.  OMEGAMON DB2 has offered support for some time in the form of batch report breakouts that show time in the IDAA.  Now you also have the ability to see IDAA time breakouts real time in the OMEGAMON DB2 classic interface. 

Here's an example:





Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Check out the IBM zEnterprise virtual summit

Coming up later this month there will be a virtual summit on IBM zEnterprise technology.  This is a virtual event, and you can attend any one of several technical tracks:  The tracks are as follows:

Track 1: The New zEnterprise – A Cost-Busting Platform
Track 2: DB2 10 for z/OS: Performance and Optimization Best Practices
Track 3: IMS: The Revolution/Evolution Continues 
Track 4: Smarter Computing to Accelerate Agile, Mobile and Cloud Application Delivery
Track 5: Cost-Efficiencies of a Modern Application Infrastructure
Track 6: Data Center Operations and Systems Management Update

This virtual event happens on June 27th.

If are interested in attending, here is a link:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/virtual/summit/index.html?code=com

An interesting white paper on the role of System z in cloud

I recently read an interesting white paper by Forrester Research about the role of System z in cloud computing.  "The Role Of Mainframes In Cloud: To Meet The Full Range Of Reliability And Security Needs" covers quite a bit about what many enterprises are looking at as they start to invest more heavily in cloud technology.  The article is the output of a survey of 200 decision makers in larger IT organizations.



The core message?  As organizations move to more robust cloud deployments, this infrastructure will be geared to more mission critical applications.  These requirements cannot be met by basic commodity infrastructure.  Forrester sees a move in this area to "hybrid infrastructures" to provide the needed reliability, security, and scalability.   The underlying message is that System z fits very nicely within this paradigm.  After all, when you think reliability, security, and scalability, you have to think of System z.   To read the article, go to the following link: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/solutions/cloud/   When you get to the page, scroll down and you will see a link for the Forrester article.