1. Last Day to Order z/OS 1.4
2. SHARE Presentations Online
3. Sample TUNING Letter Issues Online
4. 2005 TUNING Letter Rates Online
1. Last Day to Order z/OS 1.4
Please note that 9Sept2004 is the last day to order z/OS 1.4 or z/OS 1.5. Why does this matter? If you are running OS/390 R10, that release goes out of service at the end of this month (30Sep2004), and you need to order another release to stay in service. Your choices are one of the following:
- z/OS 1.4 – End of service 31Mar2007, the only bimodal release available
- z/OS 1.5 – End of service 31Mar2007, the last release to run on non-zSeries machines
- z/OS 1.6 – GA date is 24Sep2004, but it only runs on zSeries machines
So if you’re on a G5/G6 (or similar) machine using OS/390 R10 (or even early z/OS releases), you must order either z/OS 1.4 or 1.5 as soon as possible. z/OS 1.6 won’t work on your machines. Although the last day to order is 9Sep2004, IBM recommends ordering by the end of August (yesterday!). The difference between z/OS 1.4 or 1.5 is that 1.4 provides bimodal support, which provides a short-term fall-back to 31-bit mode when you finally move to a zSeries machine. You only have about a week left to make a decision, so please consider this carefully.
Even if you’re running z/OS, you may still need to order z/OS 1.4 or 1.5. z/OS 1.1 went out of service 31Mar2004, z/OS 1.2 goes out of service 31Oct2004, and z/OS 1.3 goes out of service 31Mar2005.
If you’re running OS/390 R10, even on a zSeries machine, then you will probably want to upgrade before that release goes out of service at the end of September.
End of service dates can be found at http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/support/zos_eos_dates.html.
2. SHARE Presentations Online
Our SHARE presentations are available on our Web site at http://www.watsonwalker.com/presentations.html:
- 2539 – Cheryl Watson’s GoalTender – How to Manage WLM(vendor session that provides a great look at our new product; this is a repeat from the last SHARE)
- 2928 – Finding Gold with the z/OS UNIX APIs (this is a repeat from the last SHARE)
- 2537 – Are the z990s Underperforming? (this is based on the material in our TUNING Letter 2004 No. 2)
- 2509 – Cheryl’s Hot Flashes #12
We received a lot of good information at the latest SHARE, and we’re currently writing up our trip report that will appear in the next issue of the TUNING Letter. Many of the SHARE presentations have already been posted to the SHARE Web site at http://www.share.org.
3. Sample TUNING Letter Issues Online
We used to keep a single sample issue online, TUNING Letter 1998 No. 6, but have added some others due to the number of requests for the articles. If you don’t have them, you might be interested in taking a look. They’re older articles, but still applicable, and we still refer people to them for answers. You can find links to download the PDF files at http://www.watsonwalker.com, by clicking on ‘Sample Issues’ at the left.
January 1991 (20 pages)
This is the first TUNING Letter we ever published. The focus of this issue was “TUNING TSO” and in it you’ll find seven different techniques for tuning TSO subsystems. All are still relevant today.
Sep/Oct 1992 (40 pages)
This was an issue that we sent out to several potential customers because it showed the variety of topics we cover in a single issue. This one covers Batch Application Tuning (Part II), Enqueue Analysis, VLF, LLA and PR/SM Overhead (by Al Sherkow). The only things that might not be applicable today are batch LSR and Hiperbatch. (Please note: this file is 3.8 MB and make take a few minutes to download.)
1998 No. 6 (40 pages)
The focus of this issue is called “Processor Upgrades.” It deals with the problems encountered when you move to fewer, but faster CPs.
2001 No. 1 (47 pages)
This issue focuses on tuning catalogs and on Cheryl’s SHARE trip report. In addition you’ll find CICS performance tips.
4. 2005 TUNING Letter Rates Online
Publishing houses and subscribers have started asking for our 2005 TUNING Letter rates. Both the 2004 and 2005 TUNING Letter rates can be found at http://www.watsonwalker.com/rates.html or by clicking ‘Rate Sheets’ on the left of our home page.
Stay tuned!