1. Happy New Year in March!
2. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2012 No. 5
3. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2012 No. 6
4. IBM Alert
5. New z/OS 101 Articles
6. Typos
1. Happy New Year in March!
November and December were very busy months for us. We had just finished selling our office building and moving everything out to a storage unit, when we found a new home. We’ve since moved from a condo on Longboat Key to a smaller condo in downtown Sarasota (with a Whole Foods next door and a Starbucks on the first floor). We’re loving living downtown (and walking everywhere), but the move took its toll. The last few months have been nothing but my being sick with the flu, packing and unpacking boxes, writing twoTuning Letters, and getting the flu again. I had my flu shot (which they say this year is only 9% effective for people over 65), but still caught it twice.
But I’m glad to be back and busy working on our first quarterly, Tuning Letter 1Q2013. z/OS 2.1 is on everyone’s minds, and we have lots to cover. Since we missed sending out holiday and new year’s wishes, please accept our best wishes for a wonderful new year! The DVD is in process and will be sent out to all subscribers very soon.
2. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2012 No. 5
The 41-page 2012 No. 5 Tuning Letter was emailed to paid subscribers on December 21, 2012. You may visit our website at www.watsonwalker.com to obtain subscription information and the table of contents. The following is the Management Summary from that issue, talking about some of the contents of this latest Tuning Letter:
Exploiting z/OS
We’re starting a new series in this issue about exploiting z/OS. These are z/OS enhancements that have to be turned on or purchased. We normally use the Tuning Letter to describe how to use an enhancement, but in this series we’ll concentrate on why you should consider each facility. We’ll describe the benefit that you might expect to achieve, what environments are most applicable to each facility, what other users have experienced, how you measure the impact, and which references are the best.
We expect this series to be one of our most popular.
Update on I/O Measurements
Some of you old-timers remember when 20 ms was a great response time for an I/O, but that was a long time ago. Cache controllers, faster devices, faster connections, smarter controllers, and much more have reduced I/O response time to microseconds. Most of those benefits came from advances in hardware, but many others are a combination of both hardware and software advances. But there can still be some problems, so it’s important to understand how to reduce spikes of poor response times. We address these enhancements and a new enhancement from the zEC12 that Cheryl thinks is very exciting.
Because many of the new facilities deal with reducing the queue time of an I/O request, we’ve added a z/OS 101 article on I/O Priority. All of our z/OS 101 articles are available to the public on our website: www.watsonwalker.com/articles.html.
Elsewhere in This Issue
Cheryl has been interviewed about what she thinks of IBM’s latest System z, the zEC12. Although she’s written extensively about the details, speeds, capacities, and features of the new processor, in this issue she provides a management summary of this largest z/OS-capable IBM mainframe.
As usual, we provide the most important New Function, SMF, and Information APARs.
3. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2012 No. 6
The 39-page 2012 No. 6 Tuning Letter was emailed to paid subscribers on March 6, 2013. You may visit our website at www.watsonwalker.com to obtain subscription information and the table of contents.
The following is the Management Summary from that issue, talking about some of the contents of this latest Tuning Letter:
Exploiting z/OS
This issue continues our series about exploiting z/OS. These are z/OS enhancements that have to be turned on or purchased. In this issue, we discuss zIIPs, zAAPs, zFS, and zHPF. We’ll describe the benefit that you might expect, what environments are most applicable to each facility, what other users have experienced, how you measure the impact, and which references are the best.
We’ve brought important new issues to light for these enhancements, such as new reasons to delay migration from HFS to zFS. And even if you’ve investigated zIIPs and zAAPs in the past, you’ll find reasons to consider them again.
Another important item mentioned in this issue is the information available to tune zFS file systems. The defaults for zFS storage usage are way too small, and could be causing response problems. If you have any zFS data sets, it will pay you to tune them.
What’s New?
We’ve been strong supporters of the z/OS Management Facility, z/OSMF. The latest enhancements to z/OSMF provide great tools for understanding and managing the software products in your installation. If you haven’t installed z/OSMF, this might give you enough justification.
Elsewhere in This Issue
Cheryl reviews the Java compiler enhancements (e.g. 43% improvement in run-time) and COBOL compiler enhancements in more detail. You’ll also find many other useful items throughout this newsletter: A description of how zIIP time is measured • IBM’s 5 in 5 contest • Security and Integrity APARs • and New Function, SMF, Information, and HIPER APARs to help you identify useful maintenance.
4. Red Alert
Last month, IBM issued a Red Alert – 2013.02.27 – Reminder to access the System z Security Portal for Security and Integrity Fixes. This alert was brought on by the fact that two important security fixes had been issued, but had not been implemented in the majority of installations. IBM had previously recommended that all customers register for the System z Security Portal, but some installations had ignored the recommendation. Please see ATS Flash10747 for further information.
If you don’t get these Red Alerts automatically, you can sign up to receive them at www.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/redAlerts/home.html. 5. New z/OS 101 Articles
Our Cheryl Watson’s z/OS 101 Primer is a compilation of z/OS articles for those new to the mainframe or new to performance. Originally published in Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, these articles are part of free series on our website addressing performance, capacity planning, data center reporting, and charge back areas. Check back regularly to download the most recent compilation as installments will be added every few months.
We’ve recently added two new articles to the primer: What is I/O Priority? and zIIP Experiences. These articles are meant for public distribution, so please feel free to pass along the articles or the links.
6. Typos
Tuning Letter 2012 No. 6
Right after we sent out Tuning Letter 2012 No. 6, we noticed a typo on page 4. Here is the corrected sentence:
In 2010, IBM introduced an option called ‘zAAP on zIIP’, which allows zAAP work (such as Java) to run on a zIIP if no zAAP is installed.
We had incorrectly written “if no zIIP is installed.”SHARE Presentation
Our thanks go to Uwe Oswald from zBusiness Services GmbH for pointing out a typo in my SHARE presentation in August (Session 11309 – The Many CPU Fields of SMF). A line on slide 5 indicated that .000000625 = one service unit (a sixteenth of a microsecond). The correct line should read:
.0000000625 – one raw service unit (a sixteenth of a microsecond) – not multiplied by service definition coefficient
The original error was in our Tuning Letter 2004 No. 3 on page 22, where I used .000000625 instead of the correct .0000000625.
Stay Tuned!