A very informative zEnterprise newsletter

If you are interested in getting some more "under the covers" knowledge of z/OS and zEnterprise, the zEnterprise Newsletter is worth checking out.  The zEnterprise Newsletter is published on a quarterly basis and contains various technical articles about zEnterprise and System z.  It's a nice newsletter and well worth checking out if you are interested in getting a little more into System z.

Here's a link for the newsletter:
http://www.millennialmainframer.com/2013/01/ibm-east-zenterprise-newsletter-1st.html

Upcoming System z Technical Summits

This srping there will be a series of System z Technical Summit events coming to a city near you.  The Technical Summit has sessions in a series of parallel technical tracks.  The tracks are the following:

Track 1: The New zEnterprise – A Cost-Busting Platform

Track 2: DB2 10 for z/OS: Performance and Optimization Best Practicest
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

Track 6 will include a session on OMEGAMON V5. 

There's a lot of content and quite a bit of good information at these events.  These are all day events.  If you are interested in attending, here's a list of dates and locations:

Costa Mesa, CA   February 14, 2013

Atlanta, GA           February 26, 2013
New York, NY     March 13, 2013
Dallas, TX             March 27, 2013
Toronto, ON         April 16, 2013
Washington, DC    April 18, 2013

To attend here's a URL to sign up:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/summit/venues_register.html

Enhanced 3270 - customizing KOBSTART

I was doing an OMEGAMON V5.1 proof of technology event for a customer recently and an interesting question came up.  What dictates the sequence of what OMEGAMON agents show up on the KOBSTART panel?  KOBSTART is the panel you will often see by default, so how can you control what shows up, and in what sequence?

Here's what a typical KOBSTART panel looks like.  From this one panel you can navigate to any one of several different monitors.  So what controls the sequence of what shows up on this panel?  You may want to change that sequence based upon things such as what you use the most.

The answer is fairly straight forward.  Look at library  hilev.RKANWENU and look for member KOBSTART (same name as the panel name).  Here you see an IMBED entry for each of the OMEGAMONs, and the sequence of thes IMBED statements controls the sequence of what shows up on KOBSTART.  If yu want to make a change, change KOBSTART.  But, remember to put user modified panels in the corresponding hilev.UKANWENU library.  I don't suggest modifying and saving into RKANWENU.

Something to be aware of with OMEGAMON IMS and ATF

OMEGAMON IMS has offered a very nice newly re-designed Application Trace Facility (ATF) for some time now.  There is some maintenance that has come out in the past couple months that you may want to be aware of if you use OMEGAMON IMS.

I've stumbled onto this a couple times recently.  If you've applied  UA65930 you may or may not have noticed that if you were automatically starting up ATF at OMEGAMON startup, it may not be starting anymore.  If you see an error message like this,  OIJ251: CSO SIZE: xxxxxxxx GREATER THAN 64 BIT STORAGE: xxxxxxxx  you may have stumbled onto this issue. 

What this means is there are knobs in OMEGAMON IMS you need to be aware of that control things like how many transactions ATF may keep in memory, and how much storage the facility may use. 


Here's a link that explains it in a little more detail: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21610308   Here's a link to the related APAR: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1OA39741

Some upcoming webcasts of interest

Well, it's a new year, and thank you all very much for frequenting this blog.

There are some interesting webcasts events coming up.  One of them is "DB2 10 and Beyond - Celebrating 30 years of Superior Technology".  The amazing thing to me is it's been 30 years now for DB2.  I started working on DB2 in the mid-80's (the V2.1 days).  So I guess I've dated myself with that admission.  Time certainly does fly when you are having so much fun.

The speaker is Jeff Josten, IBM DB2 Chief Architect, and he will cover the latest on DB2 10 customer experiences around new features functions, including IDAA (IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator) and the latest news on DB2 synergy with zEC12.

The event is January 29, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. ET.  Here's a link if you are interested in attending:
http://ibm.co/RuJmq6

Another topic of interest is "Save money from enhanced analytics with Tivoli support for zEnterprise zAware".  The whole topic of analytics is an interesting one.  I suspect you will be seeing a lot of activity in this area in the industry in 2013. 

With the announcement of zEnterprise EC12, IBM also announced a new analytics capability called zAware, which allows data center specialists to gain visibility into system behavior to improve availability through faster problem determination.  This webcasts will discuss how to take advantage of zAware with the current Tivoli NetView product and how Tivoli monitoring of zAware will improve zEnterprise availability with decreased costs and risks.

Sounds like an interesting topic.  The presenter will be Paul Smith (aka Smitty), Tivoli System z Architect.
If you are interested in attending, here's a link:
http://ibm.co/UDXkDV

A technote on how CF structure utilization is calculated by OMEGAMON z/OS V5.1

OMEGAMON z/OS users will often use OMEGAMON to track and analyze resource usage and status inside the z/OS coupling facility (i.e. the CF).  There has been a recent chnage to how this information is calculated and displayed in OMEGAMON z/OS.  With UA67458 applied, the Utilized Storage Size now shows the 'in use' percent of the total allocated objects (entries and data elements) for the structure.

Here's a link to a technote that discusses this a little more detail.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21618059&myns=swgtiv&mynp=OCSS2JNN&mync=R

Using the Tivoli Portal for topology views

Thanks to my esteemed colleague, Ernie Gilman, for this example. 

I've shown quite a few examples over various blog posts of how to use plots, charts, and various other graphic capabiliities within the Tivoli Enterprise Portal.  But, did you know you could use the Tivoli Portal to build topology views that show the inter-relationship of various monitored resources? 

Here's a very nice example created by Ernie that shows how you can use the topology view to leverage the data that comes from OMEGAMON for zLinuz and zVM.  Here we see the inter-relationship of the various Linux OS's running within zVM.  It's a nice way to be able to see the big picture view, with drill downs for more detail.  Nice job, Ernie!

Documentation on techniques for analyzing OMEGAMON CPU usage

If you want to get a better understanding of the CPU usage of the OMEGAMON address spaces running on z/OS, there are a variety of techniques.  I've blogged extensively on the topic of OMEGAMON cost of monitoring considerations in prior posts. 

Let's say you are looking at a particular OMEGAMON task, and would like to know more about what that particular task is doing.  There are some useful commands available to help better understand OMEGAMON CPU usage (such as the PEEK command).

Here's a link to a document that shows examples of some of these commands and how to use them:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21607775&myns=swgtiv&mynp=OCSSXS8U&mynp=OCSS2JNN&mynp=OCSS2JFP&mynp=OCSSLSDR&mync=R

Technote on OMEGAMON Mainframe Networks V5.1 issues and workarounds

OMEGAMON For Mainframe Networks V5.1 became available in October.  At the time it came out there was also a technote published that listed various known issues and workarounds for V5.1.  If you are installing V5.1 of Mainframe Networks it's worth taking a look at this technote.

Here's a link to the technote:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21614258&myns=swgtiv&mynp=OCSS2JL7&mync=R

New 3270 displays in OMEGAMON XE For Mainframe Networks V5.1

Like the other OMEGAMON V5.1's, OMEGAMON XE For Mainframe Networks V5.1 offers support for the new enhanced 3270 user interface.  So you get a whole new set of screens and displays for networks analysis.

If you recall the "Top Consumer" display in OMEGAMON z/OS, that screen shows the top consumers of CPU, memory, and I/O across the z/OS environment.  It's a good starting point for a top down idnetification and analysis of potential issues. 

The new KN3TAP0 screen serves a similar fiunction.  From this screen you can see a network application summary view, and also see network exceptions, such as connections with segments out of order, segment retransmission, and connections in backlog status.  These can all be indicators of potential issues that may require additional analysis. 

Here's an example of the KN3TAP0 display:

Tivoli Enterprise Portal Support for DB2 V10

If you are installing the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server (TEPS) on a platform such as Windows, the support matrix shown in documentation lists DB2 V9.7 as the hightest level release that works with the TEPS. 

The question that has been put to me recently is, when will the TEPS infrastructure work with DB2 10?  The answer is IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM)  6.23  Fixpack 2.  So if you want to run DB2 10, for example, on your Windows TEPS server, you need to be at the ITM 6.23 FP2 level.

Tivoli APAR notification page

I was looking up some APAR informationr recently and came upon a useful looking web page, the Tivoli APAR notification page.  The Tivoli APAR notification page contains a list of some open or recently closed APARs that may impact you.  There are links for many of the products of interest, including the various OMEGAMONs and Systme Automation. 

Here's a link to the page:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21177831&myns=swgtiv&mynp=OCSS9NU9&mynp=OCSS6V4G&mynp=OCSSLKT6&mynp=OCSSSHZA&mynp=OCSSSHTQ&mynp=OCSSSHRK&mynp=OCSSPLFC&mynp=OCSSXS8U&mynp=OCSS2JNN&mynp=OCSS2JFP&mynp=OCSS2JL7&mynp=OCSSGSPN&mynp=OCSSGSG7&mync=

How to know what maintenance level you are running

I had an interesting question from an OMEGAMON user recently.  If you apply maintenance to OMEGAMON and recycle the tasks, is there an easy way to tell if the new maintenance is being executed?

Well, fortunately there are some easy to find eye-catchers in the OMEGAMON RKLVLOG/SYSOUT output.  Logon on TSO and go to SDSF.  Depending upon the type of OMEGAMON task you may need to look in a different place.  For a TEMS or a TEMA task you would look at the RKLVLOG for the respective agents.  For a classic collector task you would look at SYSPRINT or JES messages.  Just go to the respective task and do a find on 'BUILD".  That's it.



Here's a z/OS example from the RKLVLOG of the TEMS (here you can see the TEMS is running at ITM 6.23 and has support for fixpack 1 included):

KDS Server Version: 623 Build: 12044 Driver: 'tms623fp1:d2050'


Here's an IMS example from the JES messages of the OMEGAMON IMS classic collector task:

OID100: OMEGAMON FOR IMS v510 (Build Level=20120723.1505) STARTED



Here's a DB2 example from the SYSPRINT of the OMEGAMON DB2 classic collector

FPEV0114I PTF BUILD IS 12.223 13:02:07

An example of the Network Extended workspace

I've posted earlier about the Network Extended workspaces.  These are workspaces that you can download and deploy in your Tivoli Portal if you have OMEGAMON Mainframe Networks. 

Here's an example of the Network Extended workspaces.  In this example you see an integrated view of TCIP performance metrics (both real time and a plot chart) across mutliple z/OS LPARS and TCPIP stacks.  On the left you see several drill down options to look at connecttions, backlogged connections, FTP, OSA, and much more.  There is also an option for the FIND capability that I will discuss on a later post.

An upcoming webcast on z/OS storage tools

Out of control storage growth is putting a heavy load on many storage administrators.  If you are interested z/OS storage management you will want to check out this webcast,  "Improve System z storage management with integrated storage suite". 

This webcast will discuss the consolidation of various IBM IBM z/OS storage management tools, and will discuss ICF catalog management, space management, auditing, and automatic correction of errors in a DFSMS environment. 

The speaker is Kevin Hosozawa, Tivoli System z Storage Management Product Manager, IBM Software Group.  The event will be December 5, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

To register for the event, click on the following link:
http://ibm.co/PQrxC4

Check out the Network Extended workspaces

If you have OMEGAMON Mainframe Networks, you have an opportunity to add a very nice set of field developed workspaces to your Tivoli Portal.  My colleague, Ernie Gilman, created these screens, and they have quite a few nice views and features.  The Network Extended workspaces provide a very powerful set of views of your z/OS network, plus adds a new FIND capability in the Portal.

It's easy to enable the screens.  You download the code, in the form of an XML file, and then issue a TACMD command to import the navigator item. 

Here's a link to download the  Network Extended screens (the link provides both the XML code and documentation:
http://www-304.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/ismlibrary/details?catalog.label=1TW10OM1K

If you are interested in a demo of the Network Extended workspaces, here's a link to a Youtuve video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVjonG6Zfrw

An intereresting Tivoli Portal chart technique

The Tivoli Enterprise Portal offers quite a few plot chart and other charting options.  The graphics can be nice, and you have quite a few different ways to present the information. 

As with any screen of data, room on the screen may be precious.  When you are plotting multiple sets of data, the legend of the plot chart is important to show what metrics are being plotted.  However, the legend may take up quite a bit of room on the screen.  How can you condense this?  One way is to use a collapsible legend to show and then hide the chart legend.

Here's an example (this example is taken from Ernie Gilman's excellent Networks_Extended workspaces).  Here we see a plot chart for the network byte rate for multiple TCPIP stacks on z/OS. 

If you look at the bottom left corner of the chart you see the legend which shows which plot line is for which TCPIP stack.  To make the legend go away, click on the triangle pointed at by the arrow.

How do you enable the option?  If you look at the properties for the chart and click the style tab, you see an option "Place legend in collapsible panel".  Check this option to enable the collapsible legend.

It's an interesting technique to save a few pixels of space on the screen.

Added a new link for a blog

Dave Ellis works for IBM in the area of OMEGAMON R&D.  Dave also maintains a very informational blog on OMEGAMON and related topics.  I added a link to his blog under "Useful Links".

Sending SNMP traps from OMEGAMON agents

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) traps are a commonly used technique to forward alerts to alert management monitors.  There are a variety of methods to send SNMP traps from OMEGAMON running on z/OS to an SNMP alert reciever.  One common way is to use the SNMP alert emitter option that comes as part of ITM policy automation.  Another technique is to have OMEGAMON send messages to z/OS console automation, and then in turn use console automation (usually via REXX code)  to send the alert in the form of an SNMP trap.

But, there's another way you may not be aware of.  With ITM 6.22, IBM Tivoli Monitoring introduced the capability of agent autonomy.  With this support, you can create a trap configuration XML file that enables an agent to emit SNMP alerts directly to the event receiver with no routing through the monitoring server (meaning the TEMS).  To do this you need to place an SNMP trap configuration member, in the form of XML, in the RKANDATV library.

Above is an example.  In this example, we are sending alerts from the OMEGAMON DB2 agent.  So we added a member, KDPTRAPS (note - each agent type such as z/OS, CICS, etc will have it's own XML member).  Within the member we specified the address and port number for the SNMP receiver.  We then add the situation that will generate a trap, in this example DB2_Demo_Alert.  So in this example, if DB2_Demo_Alert is true, then agent will send an SNMP trap directly to the SNMP reciever.  If you want to add this for additional situations, you add additonal lines for situation name and target.

If you want more information on this, here is a link to the documentation:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21422088

Also, here's a link to another good blog post that describes the function:
http://davideellis.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/snmp-traps-from-ibm-tivoli-monitoring-itm/

ITM 6.23 Fixpack 2 is available

ITM 6.23 Fix pack 2 is now available.  This is a cumulative fix pack for ITM 6.2.3, and supersedes ITM 6.23 Fix pack 1.    The fix pack contains over 90 APAR fixes as well as a set of new features.

One thing to keep in mind is the new OMEGAMON releases (OMEGAMON z/OS, CICS, IMS, Storage. Mainframe Networks V5.1, OMEGAMON DB2 V5.11, and OMEGAMON Messaging V7.1) all will require ITM 6.23 support for the enhanced 3270 user interface.  I still see quite a few customers running ITM 6.22, so if you want to move to the new OMEGAMONs, now is the time to start upgrading your ITM infrastructure.

Here's a link for more information on ITM 6.23:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg2403242