The 2023 Summer SHARE conference will be held in the New Orleans Hyatt Regency hotel starting tomorrow. This is a traditional 5-day conference. If you are attending, check out the agenda and download the SHARE app for your mobile device.
I (Frank) will be co-presenting two sessions:
- Wednesday, 16:00, Empire C, I will be moderating the ‘Observability Shootout’ session, with presenters from BMC, Broadcom, EPS, IBM, IntelliMagic, and Rocket Software.
- Friday, 09:15, Empire D, I will be co-presenting our ‘Watson & Walker’s 2023 zRoadshow’ session with my colleague Mario Bezzi.
We had hoped that Cheryl would join us again, but after her recent vacation to Europe and North Africa she is not in a hurry to see the inside of a plane again for a while. Hopefully she will attend the Winter 2024 SHARE conference in Orlando.
There are many interesting sessions this week, some related to z/OS V3.1, but there are also many other topics – I don’t think there is a single slot when there aren’t at least three sessions I would love to attend.
Tip: If you find yourself having to decide between multiple sessions, check to see if they of them are marked as Live Streamed. I believe the recordings of those sessions will be available on the conference website, although I’m not sure how long it will take for them to be uploaded. Still, if there are multiple competing sessions that you really want to see, you might decide to go to the one that is not Live Streamed, and then catch the other one when it is available online. I’ve marked Live Streamed sessions as LS in the following list.
Some of the sessions I hope to attend are:
- Monday, 09:45, Strand 12A, You Can’t Wait Any Longer. What You Need to Know About Resiliency Now!, by Rebecca Levesque. Cyber Resiliency is one of the hot topics at the moment. We have lots of questions but not so many answers – hopefully Rebecca’s session will redress that balance somewhat.
- LS Monday, 09:45, Empire C, ‘z/OS Performance Track Opening and IBM WSC Performance Hot Topics!’, by Meral Temel and Brad Snyder. This is a ‘must-see’ session for us at every SHARE.
- Monday, 11:00, Strand 13A, ‘Daily z/OS DR Exercise’, by Mike Shorkend. Wouldn’t it be nice if DR tests were boring, rather than nail-biting, edge-of your-seat annual torture tests? Attend Mike’s session and maybe you’ll get closer to that boring Nirvana.
- Monday, 11:00, Empire D, ‘What’s New in z/OS 3.1: The Big Easy Edition’, by Gary Puchkoff. Gary’s ‘What’s New in z/OS’ sessions are always popular, but with a new version of z/OS, we expect it will be standing room only – get there early to ensure a good seat.
- LS Monday, 13:45, Strand 13B, ‘Workload Management (WLM) Update for IBM z16 and IBM z/OS 3.1’, by Andreas Henicke. A new WLM Policy Advisor, WLM exploitation of Artificial Intelligence for WLM Batch Initiator Management, and changes to WLM long-term CPU protection – there are many changes on the way in WLM, and who better to hear about them from than a member of the WLM Development team?
- Monday, 15:15, Strange 13A, ‘Introduction to z/OS Containers’, by Kershaw Mehta. This session provides an overview of the various container technologies available on z/OS (including zCX) and provides the audience with a good basic understanding of what z/OS Containers is all about and how applications built for z/OS can take advantage of this new technology.
- LS Tuesday, 08:00, Strand 13B, ‘RMF: The Latest and Greatest’, by Anastasia Didkovska, Gediminas Klegeris, and Paul Stewart. In z/OS 3.1, RMF provides a new Grafana-based user interface for Monitor III metrics and reports. It will be interesting to see IBM’s plans for the existing interfaces, especially the RMF Data Portal.
- LS Tuesday, 09:15, Strand 13B, ‘What’s New in RMF Data Gatherer’ by Alexander Giemsa. In addition to covering RMF enhancements for z16 metrics, this session will cover the newish RMF-provided REST services for accessing SMF records. It will be interesting to see if there are developments in this function, especially in relation to support for additional SMF record types.
- Tuesday, 10:30, Strand 12B, ‘Cyber Resilience, The Undiscovered Country’, by Nicole Camara, Butch Rambish, and Chris Taylor. There are a raft of sessions about Resiliency at this SHARE – this looks like it covers some of the more technically challenging aspects of large scale recovery, so I’ll be attending this one.
- Tuesday, 13:15, Bolden 4, ‘PSP: Observability and Visibility in Real Life (IntelliMagic)’, by Brent Philips and Todd Havekost. The best performance analysts are our industry’s unknown heroes. Join Brent and Todd to see how you can be the one to ‘keep the trains running on time’ in your organization.
- Tuesday, 14:45, Strand 13A, ‘JES2 z/OS 3.1 Product Update and Latest Status’, by Tom Wasik. Tom’s sessions are always entertaining and informative (Cheryl says “I learn something new every time Tom moves to the next slide.”). And with a new z/OS version, this becomes even more of a ‘must-see’ sessions.
- Tuesday, 16:00, Strand 13A, ‘z/OS Parallel Sysplex Update’, by Mark Brooks. Mark Brooks and Parallel Sysplex – what more do I need to say, other than make sure to get there early to get a good seat.
- Wednesday, 08:00, Strand 13A, ‘New IBM Dashboard for Resiliency’, by Juliet Candee and Anastasiia Didkovska. Everyone you speak to has a slightly different view on precisely what ‘Resiliency’ means on the mainframe. The IBM Dashboard for Resiliency is still in the Statement of Direction phase, so this is your opportunity to let IBM know what Resiliency means to you AND what you need in terms of reporting tools.
- Wednesday, 09:15, Bolden 4, ‘What’s Possible with Machine Learning for Performance and Capacity Management’, but Jim Porell. Jim must be a mind reader because that very question has been on my mind for the last year. I can’t wait to hear the answer!
- Wednesday, 10:30, Strand 10B, ‘Python’s Evolution on z/OS’, by Chad McIntyre. Amongst other things, Chad will be discussing the recent addition of zIIP support for Python programs. If you have, or could have, a lot of Python running on your z/OS systems, this is an excellent opportunity to speak to a real expert on this topic.
- Wednesday, 13:15, Bolden 4, ‘z/OS 3.1 Framework Overview’, by Steven Partlow and Dieter Wellerdiek. Artificial Intelligence is coming to a z/OS near you soon, and the new z/OS AI Framework is going to be a core part that, so we consider this to be a ‘can’t miss’ session.
- Wednesday, 13:15, Strand 2, ‘(Primer to) The IBM Z Processor Optimization Primer’, by Dave Hutton. If you don’t see yourself jumping on AI on z/OS just yet, and you are a performance person, this is an excellent opportunity to see the man that has been referred to as ‘Gary King 2.0’ – Dave’s sessions are always insightful and entertaining.
- LS Wednesday, 16:00, Empire C, ‘Observability Shootout’. DOUBLE SESSION. Nicole Fagen and Meral Temel (now in IBM!) organized this hugely popular session in Atlanta (people were literally sitting on the floor), and the NOLA version will be even bigger (there will be demos from BMC, Broadcom, EPS, IBM, IntelliMagic, and Rocket Software) and there will be a panel, where the presenters will take audience questions. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot (sorry) and miss out on this opportunity to see side-by-side live demos of the latest in observability by the industry’s leading performance vendors.
And that’s just for the first three days! I can see people leaving this conference exhausted, but certainly no one should suffer from boredom. We’ll be back in a day or two with some suggestions for Thursday and Friday.
If you are going to be at SHARE, please drop by one of our sessions to say Hello. We hope you have safe travels and an enjoyable conference.
Frank