Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 140-page issue, 2022 No. 1, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles:
- A 52-page ‘introduction’ to IBMs latest mainframe, the z16. The z16 was announced on April 5th, and will be generally available on May 31st. We expect that many subscribers are reviewing z16 proposals now, so we wanted to get this information to you as soon as possible. This issue focuses on the performance aspects of the new CPC, together with information about the new functions. We hope our IBM’s Latest Mainframe – Meet the z16 article will be valuable to anyone contemplating a z16 upgrade.
- While on the topic of CPCs, capacity, and performance, we also have a quick guide to using Alain Maneville’s and Thierry Deleris’ LPARDesign tool. We believe that this tool is invaluable to anyone responsible for setting LPAR weights. Hopefully you revisit your LPAR weights any time you are planning for a CPC upgrade, so we felt this was an ideal time to re-introduce readers to this excellent tool – check it out in LPARDesign Tool Update.
- The third part of our trio of articles about preparing for a CPC upgrade is a description of Jim Horne’s alternative methodology for setting LPAR weights. Jim presented this concept at the SHARE in Dallas conference to a very receptive audience. Jim’s methodology is based on making it easier to balance managing your LPAR weights while also optimizing your HiperDispatch topology. When you combine Jim’s methodology with the ease of use of the LPARDesign tool, a CPC upgrade is the ideal opportunity to start benefiting from these tools. Get the low-down in A Different Way to Define LPAR Weights.
- Db2 Buffer Pools are very probably the largest consumers of memory on your CPC. And efficient use of those buffer pools impacts not only Db2 performance, but also the performance of all other workloads sharing that CPC. IntelliMagic’s Sally Mir’s Learning from SMF: Db2 Buffer Pools article contains valuable information for relative newbies and experienced hands alike. We are sure you will find it valuable.
- We know that many of our readers have growing concerns about the shrinking pool of Assembler programmers. One of the most common uses of Assembler is in user exits, and few products have as many user exits as JES2. To start tackling this challenge, IBM announced a new ‘JES2 Policies’ capability in z/OS 2.4. It is still relatively early days for this new function, but Mike Shorkend kindly offered to relay his experiences with using one of these new policies to replace two traditional JES2 user exits. Even if you are not ready to start replacing your exits, we are sure that you will find Mike’s Introduction to JES2 Policies article very useful and interesting.
- Our popular User Experiences and Tips article once again delivers timely and valuable information. In this issue we discuss the potential impact of Language Environment-related changes in z/OS 2.4 on CICS, provide some customer experiences from their use of the z15 Sort Accelerator with DFSORT and Db2 internal sorts, and also discuss how feasible it is to run a production z/OS system with no (or nearly no) page data sets. Take a few minutes to check out this article – we’re sure you won’t be disappointed.
- And, last but not least, this issue’s News article contains information about recent Performance, New Function, and some selected HIPER APARs, pointers to new or updated Techdocs, and information about upcoming user conferences.
This issue was a real team effort on our side and contains something for all our readers. You can find the full Table of Contents here. We hope that you will find this issue to be both informative and entertaining. Please let us know your thoughts.
Stay Tuned!
Frank Kyne