1. New Watson & Walker Classes
2. First Watson & Walker Class of 2014 Delivered
3. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2014 No 2
4. IBM Software Pricing Announcement
5. DFSORT Red Alert
6. Tuning Letter 2014 No. 2 Feedback
7. SHARE Summary
8. Updated SMF Reference Summary
9. Hot Topics – a z/OS Newsletter
1. New Watson & Walker Classes
Not being ones to let the grass grow under our feet, Cheryl and I are now flat out on preparing material for two more new classes, to be delivered in Dallas, Texas in December.
Exploiting z/OS to Save Money:
The first, a 3-day class, ‘Exploiting z/OS to Save Money’, starts on December 8 and will go far beyond the content in our recent Parmlib class. The objective of that class was to make students aware of changes to SYS1.PARMLIB that were introduced by z/OS 1.13 and 2.1. We covered 131 changes in one day. So, a big focus was on making people aware of anything in recent releases that relate to their Parmlib members.
This new 3-day class, on the other hand, will go into much more detail on a smaller number of enhancements (some of which might have nothing to do with Parmlib). We will provide information about the rationale behind the change or the new feature, explain how things worked previously, how they work now, how to implement the new function, and, where appropriate, demonstrate how you would use the new function. For more information about this class, see www.watsonwalker.com/education.html.
z/OS Software Pricing Strategies
Our other new class is a 2-day one, starting immediately after the 3-day class, on December 11, also in Dallas. This one is called ‘z/OS Software Pricing Strategies’. Given the current fascination with cost-cutting, we felt that this would be an opportune time for a class about managing your z/OS software costs by fully exploiting IBM’s various pricing mechanisms and software capabilities. Depending upon your software contracts, a CPU savings might not translate into a cost savings, so you need to understand both the technical and financial aspects of your configuration.
We constantly hear from customers that there is a disconnect between the system programmers that manage the systems, and the finance people that negotiate the software contracts with IBM and their other vendors. Therefore, this class is specifically designed such that every participating organization can send two people – a system programmer/capacity manager, and the contract administrator. The technician will learn about the alphabet soup of pricing mechanisms that the contract administrator has to wade through on a daily basis. And the contract person will learn about what controls the technician has at his or her disposal to control the capacity consumption of the system. We will discuss the ‘LCs’ (PSLC, EWLC, AEWLC, and so on), the new Mobile Workload Pricing (MWP) (see our previous Cheryl’s List #175 about MWP), value units, understanding and verifying SCRT, capping mechanisms, Single Version Charging, Rolling 4-Hour Averages, zIIPs and zAAPs, IBM tools (zPCR, LSPR), configuring to minimize software costs, the variability of CPU time, and much more. They’ll actually be able to communicate and work together! If you would like more information about this class, refer towww.watsonwalker.com/education.html.
2. First Watson & Walker Class of 2014 Delivered
We held our first class of 2014 (‘SYS1.PARMLIB, the Heart of z/OS: Updates in z/OS 1.13 and 2.1’) on the day before SHARE started. We felt that this would give the attendees the opportunity to identify new features that they would like to implement and then attend any related sessions during the week at SHARE. All of the attendees were Tuning Lettersubscribers, so it was great to put faces to names, meet some new friends, and see some eager young faces in the class.
The class went very well. The hotel provided enough lunch to feed the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. And we managed to get through most of our 458 slides without anyone nodding off. We didn’t intend to have 458 slides, but we ran out of time on Sunday morning when we were still adding more slides!
In a survey after the class, every student rated the technical content, the delivery and the facilities at the highest category, and every student also agreed that the class would save them time. And all would ‘definitely’ take another Watson & Walker class or refer us to a colleague.
Based on the positive response to this one-day Parmlib class, we plan on holding this class again in London, England on November 3 (just before the GSE UK conference), and again just before the next SHARE conference in Seattle on March 1, 2015. Hopefully we will see some of you there. For more information, please seewww.watsonwalker.com/education.html.
3. About Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2014 No. 2
The 166-page 2014 No. 2 Tuning Letter was emailed to paid subscribers on August 1, 2014. You may visit our website at www.watsonwalker.com to obtain subscription information and the table of contents. The following is our Management Summary from that issue, talking about just some of the contents of that Tuning Letter:
How We Save You Money
They say that ‘money makes the world go round’, and it appears that that saying was never more true than today. In fact, the modern day equivalent of that saying might be ‘cost cutting makes the business world go around’. We might not all like that philosophy, but it controls much of the business world today. So, we wanted to take a minute to show how we help you achieve your cost-cutting objectives.
While creating each issue, Cheryl and I spend the best part of our time researching, verifying, and summarizing information for you. Let’s say conservatively that it takes us 50 days per issue to do this (and we have more years of experience behind us than we would care to talk about). This is about 200 days per year, or roughly one person-year. All that knowledge is distilled into the Tuning Letter, which costs about the same as just two days of your time.
Looking at it from another angle, we provide you with not only with the breadth of our experience, but also with the lessons learned from all our readers that interact with us. One day of a consultant of Cheryl’s standing would typically cost over $2000 plus expenses. A year’s subscription to the Tuning Letter costs less than 2/3 of that – which seems like pretty good value to me.
And what do you do with all this information we pass on to you? You create more efficient configurations, requiring fewer MIPS to do the same work (which means software and/or hardware savings). You avoid problems that could cost you MIPS or availability. And you exploit new capabilities that save you money, or improve the service to your customers, or both. And remember that IBM does not reimburse you for valuable functions that it provides as part of z/OS but that you do not exploit. So by providing objective information about the latest enhancements, we help you drive the maximum value from your z/OS investment.
In This Issue
In last quarter’s blowout issue, we said, “we expect to return to our normal length in the next issue, and give you back a little of your scant spare time”. Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men… where did I leave my cheese… We didn’t quite achieve my objective of getting down to around 60 pages. In fact this issue is even larger than the last one! There are just so many interesting things to talk about, we just couldn’t help ourselves. But next issue will aim to get back down to 60-ish pages. Really. Of course it depends on how you define ‘ish’.
So in this issue we deliver the promised second part of the articles on System z Capping Options and Coupling Thin Interrupts (both capabilities that are available at no additional charge (IBM-speak for ‘free’)). These capabilities can help you control or even reduce costs.
As the Big Data revolution trundles on, and the volume of data that it is generating continues to grow exponentially, installations are faced with wallet-wincing storage and data transmission costs. IBM’s zEDC (zEnterprise Data Compression) is intended as one tool to help you keep those costs under control, so we have an article that provides all the information you need to get started with zEDC.
We also have a very interesting and useful guide to managing PMRs from guest writer Mary Anne Matyaz. Anyone that is involved in SHARE will know Mary Anne well and realize what a wealth of experience she has to contribute. Even those of you that have many years’ experience dealing with PMRs should read Mary Anne’s article to get up to speed on the latest tools and directions.
The very popular What’s New? section has loads of interesting new products and functions. If you listen to some people, Cloud is seriously impacting the mainframe. Well if you look at all the things that are happening in z/OS you will see that this is a platform that isn’t going away. I would encourage you to have a read of the article titled Every Cloud Has a Black Lining on page 8 to get an objective assessment of what Cloud really means to z/OS.
One of the recent enhancements to z/OS that is only starting to get more focus recently is the use of large (1MB and 2GB) memory pages. Large pages are intended to help you use very large amounts of memory with minimal overhead. One of our subscribers, Laurent Sonigo, kindly told us about his company’s experiences in this area. And Laurent’s tale prompted us to write an article about this new technology – if you have zEC12s or zBC12s it is especially important to read this article.
And, of course, we have the usual list of interesting or important APARs, blog entries, magazine articles, Techdocs, and other information that you need to run your shop efficiently. Cheryl and I put hours into finding and reviewing these for you – we hope that the time that we saved you can be put into something interesting and productive – like implementing large pages!
Consulting
Some of you might remember that Cheryl used to provide consulting services. Apart from the fact that she loved the work, she was just too nice to say NO to customers that kept asking for her help. She also provided education classes. And there was great synergy between the classes, the Tuning Letter, and her consulting engagements. Every one of those activities benefited the others and also benefited from the others.
Well, now that I am here to give Cheryl a little more bandwidth, we are delighted to announce that we are getting back into the consulting business. (We’re back into education as well – see www.watsonwalker.com/education.html.) We feel that the information and experiences gained from working more closely with you will make the Tuning Letter even more valuable to all our subscribers. And our involvement with so many installations will allow us to bring a perspective and objectivity to our engagements that is difficult to find elsewhere. And apart from all that, we just love this stuff and love the opportunity to work with you to spread our passion for z/OS and help you run an installation that is the envy of your peers.
If you are interested in engaging us on a project, send an email to
consulting@watsonwalker.com. Our initial focus areas will be performance, capacity planning, chargeback, sysplex, outsourcing, and high availability.
4. IBM Software Pricing Announcement
On the Tuesday after SHARE, IBM made a software pricing announcement 314-090. IBM announced an increase of roughly 4% in monthly license charges (MLC) on ‘select’ (over 150!) middleware software programs and their features, as well as a 5% increase in z/OS V1. The price increases will come into effect on Jan 1, 2015, and are being announced now to allow customers to factor the new prices into their budget plans for 2015.
While an increase in software prices is never good news, IBM actually made some really positive changes in software pricing for those customers moving forward with the platform. But these were not mentioned in the announcement. We first learned of these from Jeff Magdall, IBM’s z/OS PDT Lead, at one of the opening sessions at SHARE, and we don’t really understand why IBM isn’t advertising these changes more.
One of the changes is that instead of new versions of a product being more expensive than previous versions, all supported versions of a product will have the same price. As one example, the 5% increase in z/OS V1 brings the price equal to the current price of z/OS V2. This change produces different effects for IBM and the customer:
- For IBM, this means that rather than getting their revenue growth from new ver-sions of a small number of products, they will have a moderate increase across a large range of products. In 2013, IBM started using this new strategy with DB2 11, IMS V13, and WebSphere MQ for z/OS 8.
- For customers, this means that instead of facing a significant increase to move to a new version (a financial disincentive), with few increases on the previous version, that there will be no additional cost to move to new versions of a number of significant products. Customers will be able to anticipate their software increases each year, which should result in gentler, more predictable, consistent increases from year to year.
Given that there is no escaping constantly-increasing software costs, we think that this is a positive move, both for IBM and for customers.
The other change at this time is that IBM plans to have a similar announcement around this time every year. The intent is to provide customers with the information they need so they can always accurately budget for software costs for the coming year. We also think that this is a good move for customers in terms of planning, even though it might mean a pricing increase each year.
Overall, while no one likes to see price increases, when you look at the totality of the changes that IBM plans, there are actually some very positive changes in there. It is just a shame that IBM didn’t include this information in the announcement letter. Of course, as with all things, IBM’s plans could change in the future, but this description is an accurate description of IBM’s current intentions.
Insights like this are why our new pricing class, ‘z/OS Software Pricing Strategies’, is so valuable. If you really want to know how to save money through z/OS software pricing options, take this new class! (See item #1 above.)
5. DFSORT Red Alert
We shipped Tuning Letter 2014 No. 2 on Friday morning, August 1. In there I commented on how there had not been any IBM Red Alerts thus far in 2014, and congratulated the IBM developers on their spotless track record.
At lunch time on Friday, August 1 we received a notification of a new Red Alert related to DFSORT about out of sequence records in z/OS 2.1! Oops. Sorry about that folks – serves me right for tempting fate.
Following on from that experience, I have decided to set up the Frank Kyne Early Retirement Fund. Any developers that would like to contribute to that fund can rest assured that I will never say anything about how error-free their programs are..
6. Tuning Letter 2014 No. 2 Feedback
We received an email from Scott Chapman of American Electric Power, regarding one of the User Experiences articles in Tuning Letter 2014 No. 2. Many of you probably know Scott from his presentations at SHARE, CMG, and Expo. Scott said “Regarding the discussion on CFDuplexing, I have to disagree with the statement: ‘However, if you have a configuration where there is a single point of failure between a lock (or SCA) structure and a connected DB2 (for example, if the CF and z/OS are both in the same CPC), then you really should duplex the lock (and SCA) structure, as Todd has done.'”
Scott made the point that the overhead of System Managed Duplexing (if you duplex many requests) is very high, but the risk of a CPC failure now-a-days is very low. Scott pointed me at a very interesting article that he had written a while back, about his experience with the overhead caused by System Managed Duplexing – you can see it at www.cmg.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/m_87_7.pdf. His findings were pretty much in line with our expectations. However, where he disagreed was on the need to duplex the DB2 lock and SCA structures, given the low risk of a CPC failure, and the short recovery time even if all DB2s in the data sharing group do go down.
This is one of the reasons that Rules Of Thumb have largely disappeared – it is nearly impossible to have a recommendation that applies to everyone. Whether you decide to duplex your lock and SCA structures depends on how important availability is to you, and how much you are willing to pay for that availability. If the small risk of a 5-minute DB2-wide outage is acceptable to you, then you might decide that you don’t need to duplex those DB2 structures. However, I have seen cases where customers have been down for over 6 hours because they had an outage that impacted the DB2 lock structure and a connected DB2 when some jobs had been running for over 24 hours without a single commit. In order to restart, DB2 had to go back and read its logs from the start of the oldest still-running unit of work, resulting in a very elongated restart time.
I don’t believe that anyone outside your company can tell you whether you should use System Managed Duplexing for your database lock structures. We can help you understand the risk and determine the cost of duplexing and propose some alternatives. However you are the only one that can make the cost/benefit decision about the best way to proceed.
So, thank you to Scott for bringing up that very good point. And we recommend that anyone that is using System Managed Duplexing for your database lock structures should have a look at Scott’s article. If we get a lot of interest in this topic, we might have an article about it in a future Tuning Letter.
7. SHARE Summary
Cheryl and I both attended SHARE for the full week. We co-presented 4 sessions, attended some fantastic sessions, and met many of our readers and even discussed future business plans with some potential partners. By the end of the week, I was exhausted, but it was a fantastic week; thoroughly enjoyable and very informative. Every slot had at least two sessions that I would love to have attended, and there were a number of times when I was agonizing over which of four sessions I would attend.
The sessions that Cheryl and I presented were:
15836 – Why is the CPU Time for a Job so Variable? – This is obviously a hot button issue with people because the session was standing-room only.
15602 – The Skinny on Coupling This Interrupts – I’m afraid that I don’t have Cheryl’s star power, so this session had a lot fewer attendees. However the people that didattend seemed to find the information valuable.
16251 – Hot Tips from Cheryl and Frank – This is a newly-added vendor session that presents some of our favorite tips. Like the corresponding session at the last SHARE, this one was also standing-room only. I think they came for Cheryl’s vast experience and knowledge. And my Irish jokes.
15567 – Exploiting z/OS – Tales from the MVS Survey – Cheryl and I presented the results from the recent SHARE survey. There are some very interesting insights in there about what your peers are doing. If you are responsible for your site’s tactical and/or strategic plans, you should definitely review the slides from this session.
The handouts from all four sessions are available on our website at www.watsonwalker.com/presentations.html.
If you have not attended SHARE, you don’t know what you are missing. If you have a challenge trying to get the budget approved, have a look at http://www.share.org/p/cm/ld/fid=429 – that page contains suggestions to help you justify your attendance. That particular page is for the recent SHARE – I couldn’t find a corresponding one for the next SHARE in Seattle, but most of the points apply equally to the Seattle event. For more information about the Seattle conference, see www.share.org.
8. Updated SMF Reference Summary
The MVS operating system by any name (MVS, OS/390, z/OS) provides the most comprehensive metrics about its actions of any platform we are aware of. Most of this information is written to a tool called the System Management Facility or SMF. The resulting SMF records can then be used for accounting and chargeback, capacity planning, tuning and performance management, data center reporting, trouble-shooting, and activity logs. In addition to IBM products, dozens of vendor products provide data via SMF.
Our newly-updated SMF Reference Summary (available under References on our website) is the only one we know of that combines all of the records available from both IBM and other vendors into a single publication. It contains information about 75 record types and 600 subtypes. But some vendors have not yet replied to our queries; if you know of records not included here, please send us an email. We expect to update this periodically, so please check back for future updates at www.watsonwalker.com/references.html. We’ve never met an SMF record we didn’t like!
Cheryl and Frank’s SMF Reference Summary is not copyrighted, but please leave the footer if you distribute or copy it. You are welcome to link to it, but please use
www.watsonwalker.com/references.html instead of linking directly to the PDF,
as the PDF address might change.
9. Hot Topics – a z/OS Newsletter
The latest Hot Topics – a z/OS Newsletter was published in time for SHARE and real, printed, hardcopies (does anyone remember them!) were included in the SHARE Welcome backpack. They are also available online at www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/library/hot-topics/hot-topics.html.
All I can say is “wow”! This issue really is chock full of interesting and useful articles. I was going to select a few articles as examples of why you should read it – however all the articles are so good that I really can’t list just a few without doing a massive disservice to the others. All I can say is to go and pull down a copy and have a read for yourself.
Stay Tuned!