1. SHARE Hot Flashes Update
2. Cheryl Watson’s z/OS CPU Chart
3. Correction to Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter 2005 No. 3
4. Hot Flashes Survey Results
5. Great Reference Location
1. SHARE Hot Flashes Update
In our Hot Flashes session at the last SHARE, we included several slides pertaining to the new LSPR ratings produced by IBM. Since then, we have enhanced some of the LSPR charts and made some other minor changes to clarify points or correct minor errors. Please visit http://www.watsonwalker.com/presentations.html if you would like to download a copy of the most current presentation. We have also provided the updated version to SHARE (http://www.share.org) and that version is available on their Web site as well.
2. Cheryl Watson’s z/OS CPU Chart
In the last Cheryl’s List, we indicated that our CPU Chart would be published by the end of August. We’re running a little late, but now plan to have it out within the next week.
3. Correction to Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter 2005 No. 3
On page 27 of TUNING Letter 2005 No. 3, we included the following bullet item at the bottom of the page:
The current UNIX BPX1PCT (pfsctl) interface will be enhanced to return statistics related to the performance of mounted zFS file systems. Currently, these types of statistics are available only as the output of operator modify commands (F ZFS,QUERY,ALL), which makes it difficult to implement any type of automated zFS monitoring. RMF Monitor II will also be enhanced to use these new interfaces to provide performance information related to the zFS environment. The types of statistics supported will include cache sizes, I/O counts and aggregate sizes. This should make it easier to automate zFS performance management.
This section was describing some of the z/OS UNIX enhancements that will be included in z/OS 1.7. The next-to-last sentence in the bullet should say “Monitor III” and not “Monitor II.” That is the RMF component that will be enhanced to provide the expanded zFS statistics. Thanks to Viola Thierfelder of IBM for pointing out this typographical error.
The error in the original article will be corrected before this issue is placed on the CD-ROM.
4. Hot Flashes Survey Results
We always start the SHARE Hot Flashes session by taking an informal survey of the attendees. This helps us get a better idea of where our readers are going in terms of hardware and software installation. We expanded this survey at the Boston SHARE to include both current hardware/software, and the projected hardware/software one year in the future. It took about ten minutes to take the survey because we wanted to count the hands carefully and accurately tabulate the results.
Unfortunately, the survey results were lost at some time before we returned home. If you attended the session in Boston and wrote down the results, please email them to us so that we can publish them in the next TUNING Letter.
5. Great Reference Location
While following a link the other day, we happened on to the Reference Paper section for zSeries machines. The reference papers are all related to hardware, but some have good pointers for performance as well. Here are just a few of the papers you’ll find at http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/library/literature/reference.html:
Console Performance Hints and Tips for a Parallel Sysplex Environment – Part II – This paper provides information about changes introduced by the Console Availability Feature to improve availability and performance. It is additional information to that provided by the “Console Performance Hints and Tips for a Parallel Sysplex Environment” (Aug2002) technical paper. (Jun2005, 9pp)
FICON Express2 Channel Performance Version 1.0 – This white paper was developed to help IBM field sales specialists and technical representatives understand the performance characteristics of FICON® Express2 channels. (Apr2005, 41pp)
How to Determine the Causes of Performance Problems with WebSphere Applications running on Linux for zSeries – This document describes a process to follow to help diagnose performance problems, and suggestions for resolving them. This document is intended to be used by IBM field personnel working with the customer to diagnose such a problem, or by the customers themselves. (Jul 2004, 22pp)
You can also get to these papers by going to the zSeries home page at http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries and then selecting ‘Literature’ at the left.
Stay tuned!