1. IBM MLC Annual Price Increases
2. MIT Technology Review
3. IDCAMS Suspend/Resume for ICF Catalogs
4. DFSMSdss Data Loss APAR
5. Our SHARE Presentations
6. z/OS Software Pricing Strategies Class in Orlando
7. Three Classes Announced for Germany in November
8. Our Calendars
1. IBM MLC Annual Price Increases
You may remember that back in August 2014 IBM announced that they would be migrating to a strategy of annual price increases for their z Systems Monthly License Charge (MLC) software, and that the increase for each year (effective January 1st) would be announced at least 90 days in advance. The objective of this strategy was to give customers sufficient notice so they could adjust their budgets for the following year accordingly. Also, rather than having large price increases for new versions of products, the intent was to have a smaller increase across all products, in an attempt to remove the financial impact of moving to newer versions.
Following on from that strategy, IBM US announced price increases for 2016 on July 28th, 2015 for the US, in announcement letter 316–028 (the EMEA announcement was made on August 11th in announcement letter 516–001). The average price increase is about 4%, with a few exceptions:
- The prices of the IP Transform AFP2PCL V2.1 (5655P18), IP Transform AFP2PDF V2.1 (5655P20), and IP Transform AFP2PS V2.1 (5655P21) products are being increased to bring them into line with the price of their respective replacement products; Print Transform AFPXPCL (5655TF2), Print Transform AFPXPDF (5655TF1), and Print Transform AFPXPS (5655TF3). As a result, the prices of those old Transform products will increase by 13% to 24%, depending on the server type.
Apparently, many customers are paying for both the old and new versions of these products, but according to IBM, there should be no technical reason for not replacing the old product with their new equivalent. If you fall into that category, we recommend that you migrate to the new version and inform IBM that you are no longer using the old version.
Users of the newer versions of the Transforms will only see the across-theboard 4% increase.
- Effective January 1st, 2016, the price of the SDSF feature of z/OS V2 will increase by 20%. IBM justifies this increase by the large number of enhancements that have been made to SDSF in z/OS V2.2, and that will continue to be made in the future. For more information about those enhancements, refer to SHARE in Orlando Session 17432: SDSF Product Update for z/OS 2.2 by IBM’s Gary Puchkoff.
This increase to the cost of SDSF is interesting because it is not on a version boundary. Also, it kicks in on a specific date, rather than when you migrate to the release that contains the new functions that IBM are using, to justify the price increase. On the other hand, you could look at this as a way to justify accelerating your move to z/OS V2.2.
All customers impacted by these price increases should receive a letter from IBM. If you have not received it, contact your IBM account team.
2. MIT Technology Review
One of our readers emailed us to point out an article in the MIT Technology Review.
The article was titled ‘Mainframe Computers That Handle Our Most Sensitive Data Are Open to Internet Attacks’. His comment was “Somebody should respond to this!” and I could not agree more.
The article includes statements such as “He (referring to Phil Young) says what he found is concerning because although mainframes have evolved in many ways over the past 50 years, they lack modern security features needed for systems freely accessible over the Internet.” The article blames the fact that they could access logon screens on a lack of security features in z/OS. I’m not sure how they make that connection. Would they prefer that z/OS not provide the ability to be accessed from the internet? As far as modern security features, z/OS leads with the state of the art cryptographic options, which are in use by most financial institutions.
It also states, “The accepted best practice for keeping software secure is for companies to publicly disclose newly discovered flaws in their products along with software patches to address them, as Microsoft does for Windows.” Accepted by whom? I know that I’m not as sharp as I used to be, but I fail to see how I make my home more secure by running an advertisement in the local newspaper to announce that my door locks are all broken and my alarm system doesn’t work.
Phil has made very valid points that z/OS is NOT automatically the most secure IT platform. But it is the most securable platform. If people do not exploit the available features to secure the system, that is a weakness in their process, not a weakness in the operating system. And that comment applies across all platforms. To help you optimize your processes, we recommend all our readers to review Phil’s SHARE in Seattle Session 16669: General Session: The Security Gap and Brian Marshall’s SHARE in Orlando Session 17714: Security Opening Session: The Top Ten Security Vulnerabilities in z/OS Security. In fact, we are hoping to include an article on this very topic by Brian in a future Tuning Letter. I expect that he has seen things that would keep many of us awake at night, and he has kindly agreed to share his insights with our Tuning Letter readers.
Most mainframe people will read this article and shake their head in disbelief. But there are other people in your organization that do not have your experience and your knowledge of the mainframe, and they will believe what they read. It would be prudent for you to read the article and have your counterpoints ready when the nonbelievers show up at your desk some Monday morning.
3. IDCAMS Suspend/Resume for ICF Catalogs
One our readers, Howard Merrill from Verizon Wireless, kindly drew our attention to a problem they recently encountered with the CATALOG RESUME function. The CATALOG SUSPEND/RESUME function was introduced in z/OS V2.1, and is intended to provide more protection and more flexibility than the old LOCK/UNLOCK commands (which are still supported).
In Howard’s case, they used the IDCAMS ALTER catname SUSPEND command to stop access to a catalog in order to perform some maintenance on it. However when they issued the ALTER catname RESUME command to let jobs use the catalog again, they found that jobs were still hung up on the SYSIGGV4 ENQ.
Subsequent investigation with IBM resulted in APAR OA48521 (still open at the time of writing). The APAR text suggests trying the F CATALOG,RECOVER,RESUME(catname) command. If that doesn’t release the ENQ on SYSIGGV4, it suggests issuing the F CATALOG,RESTART command.
Thanks for that heads-up Howard.
4. DFSMSdss Data Loss APAR
Another of our readers, Hans Gerdes from HUK-COBURG in Germany, emailed us to warn us about a recent data loss situation in DFSMSdss. This problem impacts customers that use FlashCopy to copy data sets using DFSMSdss.
It appears that the DS1TRBAL field is not set correctly by DFSMSdss COPY processing when a multi-volume single striped PSE V2 data set is copied with Fastreplication / FlashCopy. For extended format data sets, the last used track and the last used block on the track are indicated by F1-DSCB fields DS1LSTAR and DS1TRBAL. DS1TRBAL contains the high order two bytes (TT) and DS1LSTAR contains the low order two bytes (TT) of the four-byte last used track number. This problem occurs whenever the last used track number for the extents on a target volume is larger than x’FFFF’ (d’65535′) tracks. The COPY process itself completes with RC0 CC0, but the target data set is corrupted.
This problem is described by APAR OA48620, which, at the time of writing, is still open. Until you can apply the fix to your systems, you can avoid the problem by specifying FR(NONE) in the dss control statements. But remember that this will increase the elapsed time of the COPY step. And PSE V2 data sets are not yet that common – one example is zEDC-compressed data sets. Your storage management people should be able to tell you if you have any such data sets in your installation.
Thanks to Hans for looking out for his fellow z/OS customers and passing this information along to us.
5. Our SHARE Presentations
Both Cheryl and I attended the recent SHARE conference in Orlando. This was an especially interesting SHARE because it followed the formal announcement of z/OS 2.2. As you would expect, this meant that there were loads of sessions about the enhancements in z/OS 2.2. In fact, there were so many interesting sessions, we also signed up for SHARE Live, which gave us the opportunity to attend one session and listen to other sessions later on. It was also great to see some IBMers that have missed the last few SHAREs – these people have such a wealth of experience and such a passion for the platform and for looking after their customers, it is always a pleasure to have a chance to speak to them.
Cheryl and I had three joint sessions at this SHARE: A Consultant’s View on New z/OS
Pricing Options, SMFPRMxx Parameters – Which Can Help; Which Can Hurt, and The Cheryl and Frank zRoadshow. Thank you to all our loyal readers that attended. And for those of you that couldn’t make it, you can download a copy of our presentations from http://www.watsonwalker.com/presentations.html.
6. z/OS Software Pricing Strategies Class in Orlando
We’re happy to announce that we’ve scheduled a new z/OS Software Pricing Strategies class. This class will be held in Orlando, Florida, on October 12th-14th. We’ve scheduled the class in the week immediately after the IBM z Systems Technical University in Orlando, so you can double your learning experience with zero additional air fare!
But those savings are just the start. This 3-day class discusses a multitude of ways to reduce your IBM software bill. Because software frequently accounts for up to 1/3 of the cost of running a mainframe, it’s the easiest place to achieve savings. So no matter if you work in a large or a small site, we’re sure you’ll walk away with many ideas for reducing your software costs and increasing the value of your z/OS systems. And of course, we’ll provide all the latest information about IBM’s newest pricing options of MWP (Mobile Workload Pricing), zCAP (z Collocated Application Pricing), and CMP (Country Multiplex Pricing). These have the potential to allow you to add additional workloads to your system at a minimal cost. You can save even more if you use the information from the class to exploit these in the most cost effective manner. We hope and expect that by taking part in this class, you will reduce your monthly software bill by thousands of dollars.
We’ve been getting rave reviews from the students who have taken this class, and it’s really unique. For more information about the class, and how to register, please see www.watsonwalker.com/education.html.
To encourage companies to send both a techie and a software contracts person, we are extending our 50% discount to additional students from the same company. The price for the 3-day class is $2100 for the first student and $1050 for additional students from the same company. As you’ll see in the next item, this class is also being offered in Hamburg, Germany in November, but unfortunately the 50% discount won’t apply there because we have limited space.
Note: This course is also available as part of an on-site workshop, where we combine classroom education with interactive sessions and analysis of your configuration and your bills to provide specific recommendations for your particular configuration. The cost of the on-site 3-day class will vary from customer to customer, depending on the size and complexity of your configuration. If you are interested, send us an email and we can discuss what we can do for you.
7. Three Classes Announced for Germany in November
We’re excited to announce our newest European classes. Thanks to the many requests we’ve received, we’ve scheduled all three of our classes in Hamburg, Germany in November 2015. Click on the course name to get a full description of each course, or see our Education page at www.watsonwalker.com/education.html.
November 11-13 – z/OS Software Pricing Strategies
November 16 – SYS1.PARMLIB: Enhancements and New Features in z/OS 1.13,2.1, and 2.2
November 18-20 – Exploiting New Features of z/OS To Minimize Costs
Because we have limited space for these classes, we suggest that you send us an email and tell us whether you might be interested in attending one or more of the classes. We know that it can take a long time to get approval for a class, but if we know you’re interested, we can contact you before we close registration for the classes.
Please note that if you want to bring multiple people to just the z/OS Software Pricing class, that you might find the total cost of the class to be less if you take it in Orlando and use the 50% discount.
8. Our Calendars
Cheryl and I are blessed to have jobs that we both really love. And it is great when we hear from a reader about how an article has helped them. But we would hate to think that we are resting on our laurels, so we love having opportunities to meet our readers in person to discuss what they like the most, and what we could do to deliver even more value. To that end, future Cheryl’s List will have a new section that will provide information about events that either Cheryl or I, or both of us, will be attending. If your plans coincide with ours, please come and say hello.
Our current plans for the coming months are:
- GSE Germany conference in Boeblingen, Germany, on September 15th to 18th. Both Cheryl and I will be presenting at the conference. But apart from our sessions (on Wednesday and Thursday), I believe that most of the other sessions will be in German, so this is a great opportunity for anyone that wishes to visit the Stuttgart area (home to Porsche and Mercedes!) and brush up on your Deutsche. You can get more information about the conference at this website.
- I will be presenting at the fall meeting of the Connecticut Computer Measurement Group in Cromwell, Connecticut on October 2. For more information, see the group’s web site at http://regions.cmg.org/regions/ctcmg/.
- I will be presenting the Performance and Availability day of the ITSO workshops in Mexico City, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and Buenos Aires. Our friends, Mario Bezzi, Martin Packer, and Alvaro Salla, will be presenting the corresponding workshops in Europe, Australia, and Asia. For more information on these workshops, and to enroll, see http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks.nsf/pages/zsystemstour?Open.
- Cheryl will be presenting THREE sessions at the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando from October 5th to 9th. For a list of all the sessions, click here.
If you will be at any of these events, please take a minute to stop by and say hello.
This new item in Cheryl’s List is just the first of many changes that we will be announcing over the coming months, all of which are intended to serve our readers even better. Stay tuned for the next Tuning Letter where we will be previewing the next of our changes.
That’s all for this Cheryl’s List. Don’t forget that we love to hear from our readers, so if you have any interesting (or harrowing!) experiences, or any good Irish jokes, please let us know. You can contact us on technical@watsonwalker.com.
Stay Tuned!