In this issue, I’ll cover the following:
1. Hurricane Georges
2. Processor Updates
3. Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter, 1998, No. 4 Summary
4. Request for Web Server Experiences
1. Hurricane Georges
If you tried to call our office on September 24 or 25th, you would have found that we were forced to evacuate our office (and our homes) because of the threat of Hurricane Georges. We were very lucky in Sarasota, and it totally missed us. But we spent three days preparing for it, including taking all of our computers down, then a couple of days recovering. Everyone is fine here – we were much more fortunate than other areas. I wish I could have those 5 days back!
2. Latest Processor News
HDS announced the largest CMOS machine to date on September 21st: an 11-way turbo Pilot P8 model. Based on ratings for the G5 series, I estimate the 11-way turbo have a capacity of 1126 MIPS (12/98 shipment). In the announcement, HDS indicated the availability of five new Pilot models (as indicated below). In another release on the same day, HDS previewed the Skyline II (announcement in 1Q99) with indicated single processor performance that is nearly twice that of the current Skyline series. That would make a uni-processor close to 300 MIPS! The Skyline II can be configured up to a 12-way system. With a normal MP degradation, that could be as high as 2500-2600 MIPS in a single machine. That’s all pretty impressive.
MIPS (except for the unannounced Skylines) are available to TUNING Letter subscribers by sending an email with your fax number to admin@watsonwalker.com along with your company name and subscription address. We expect to mail our updated CPU Chart to all current subscribers by the end of October.
Listed below are the new Processor groups, MSUs, and version codes.
3. Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter, 1998, No. 4 Summary
The 1998, No. 4 TUNING Letter issue will be mailed to subscribers on Ocotber 12, 1998. The Management Issues section is included here to give you a sense of the scope and contents of the issue. The TUNING Letter is a print-only product published six times a year, with an average of forty pages per issue. See our Web page for details!
Language Environment
Language Environment (LE) is an MVS facility that provides a generalized set of run-time libraries to re-place the older COBOL, Fortran, PL/I and C/C++ language-specific run-time libraries. The modules in run-time libraries are quite heavily used common routines that provide date/time support, file-handling facilities, computation algorithms, and a variety of other general services.
This entire issue of the TUNING Letter is devoted to LE because it has become such a major issue for many installations. The location of LE modules, whether in linklist, link pack area, or STEPLIB, is a decision that must be made in every installation. The decision about location can affect thousands of programs, and require anything from adding a STEPLIB to recompiling and relinking them. The performance of LE has also been of concern since without proper placement and tuning some installations have seen a 5% to 30% increase in CPU usage after migration to LE. (This paragraph was modified 10/15/98.)
I didn’t try to provide a manual on dealing with LE in this issue since that is covered in the several hundred pages of documentation provided by the LE and language developers. Instead, I’ve tried to identify the major issues and provide recommendations on migration paths. The issues include the coordination with your Y2K migration effort, installations of new OS/390 releases that require LE, performance considerations, and migration paths. There are several pages devoted to the performance considerations, and I also provide a very thorough bibliography of manuals and other LE resources.
LE will usually be introduced into the applications area in order to resolve the Y2K migration problems. Since LE migration and Y2K migration have similar migration paths, you should consider combining these efforts. You must do the same planning process, must create the same inventory list, must compile, link, and test the same programs. It will be much easier to do it all at once.
I think this will be one of the most valuable TUNING Letters you’ll receive, and hope that it convinces you to treat this project with the time and respect it needs.
NOTE: Even if you aren’t a subscriber, you can purchase this issue of the TUNING Letter and also receive the latest CPU Chart, both for only $75.
Elsewhere in This Issue
In our S/390 News, we mention how one user saved 5 hours of CPU time per day in CICS V4 and a summary of recent Washington Systems Center flashes. Two of these flashes provide some excellent recommendations for parallel sysplex configurations. In What’s New, you’ll find the latest status on new processors and Amdahl’s new Multiple Server Feature (MSF).
4. Request for Web Server Experiences
I was so pleased with the feedback I got from my request on LE experiences, I’d like to solicit similar information about your experiences with installing and implementing ICS, ICSS, or DGW (all acronyms for versions of IBM’s OS/390 Web server). I expect to include an article on Web server in an upcoming newsletter issue.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned!