Following on from our Cheryl’s List blog post about sessions at SHARE next Monday that caught our attentions, this post has some sessions to keep you entertained on Tuesday (February 25). We plan to do a separate post for each day, to make them a little more manageable for you.
My list of Tuesday sessions I think might be particularly interesting to our readers are as follows:
- Tuesday, 09:15, A Performance Analyst’s Guide to Mainframe zERT Analysis, by Jack Opgenorth and Johannes van der Kolk. We often find that customers have already addressed the traditional opportunities for making systems more efficient. However, system tuning is like a game of ‘whack-a-mole’. As soon as you address one item, another one arrives on the scene. In this case, the ‘new’ arrival is the use of encryption to protect your network traffic. Are you aware of the metrics related to this activity? Do you know what to do with the raw data to turn it in this something actionable? This session will discuss the zERT SMF records from a performance analysts’ perspective. If you are Ms. or Mr. Performance in your site, this is a session that you don’t want to miss.
- Tuesday, 09:15, Performance Analysis of CPU Problems in z/OS, by Scott Chapman. In this presentation Scott provides a methodology for investigating performance problems to determine whether a given workload’s performance really would be helped by giving it access to more CPU capacity. For those cases where it would, Scott describes various ways to achieve that. This session is certainly of interest to anyone responsible for fielding and addressing performance complaints about z/OS workloads.
- Tuesday, 09:15, Upgrade to z/OS 3.1 – Part 1: Planning, by Aaron Kippins. Even though we are expecting IBM to preview the next release of z/OS at this SHARE, there are many customers that have not yet made the move to z/OS 3.1. If you are one of that group, you should definitely attend this session.
- Tuesday, 09:15, z/OS 3.1 AI Framework Overview and AI-Infused WLM-Managed Batch Initiator Use Case, by Anastasiia Didkovska. Now that the AI Framework has been available in z/OS 3.1 for over a year, it will be interesting to hear the latest news on how to order, install, and customize it. And hopefully Anastasiia will have some interesting early customer experiences to share. If there are rumblings about exploiting AI on your z/OS systems, you should attend this session to stay one step ahead of the posse.
- Tuesday, 10:30, Navy Federal Credit Union’s Adoption of Ansible With CICS!, by Stewart Francis and William Prendergast. I know nearly nothing about Ansible, beyond the fact that all the major mainframe software vendors have been pushing it for years now. I’m still not convinced that I would want to replace an automation product that my company has been using for the last 20+ years, but I think this opportunity to get a customer’s view on Ansible and how it compares to traditional alternatives is not to be missed.
- Tuesday, 10:30, Upgrade to z/OS 3.1, Part 2:Technical Actions, by Marna Walle. This is the second part of the session on upgrading to z/OS 3.1. We highly recommend that anyone that is planning to move to z/OS 3.1 in the foreseeable future should attend both of these sessions.
- Tuesday, 14:15, Blending Art and Science: The Performance Top 10, by John Baker and Jack Opgenorth. John and Jack have (I have to be diplomatic here) a ‘considerable’ number of years of mainframe, and particularly mainframe performance, experience behind them. They have tips and experiences of a technical nature, as well as valuable insights into the more nuanced aspects of performance and disgruntled users. This is definitely one of those ‘can’t miss’ sessions.
- Tuesday 14:15, Continuous Workload and Application Profiling With WatchTower Application Profiler, by Michal Kramaric and Mario Bezzi. After 50+ years of infrastructure optimization and tuning, there are not many opportunities left to squeeze that little bit more value from your system. The next frontier for serious performance and capacity analysts is your application portfolio. Up to now, this was an area that most infrastructure staff steered clear of, while most application developers are funded to deliver new functions, not tune existing ones. Fortunately, the WatchTower Application Profiler is here to help bridge that gap. If you haven’t seen or heard of this capability before, you will be bowled over when you see what insights it can provide.
- Tuesday, 14:15, JES2 z/OS 3.1 Product Update and Latest Status, by Tom Wasik. This is another of our personal must-see sessions at SHARE. Tom’s sessions are always well-attended and always chock-full of useful information. Despite 40 years of hearing that ‘batch is dead’, batch is still very much alive, and the JES2 team are still delivering new capabilities for your batch workloads in every release. Come along to Tom’s session to make sure you are aware of them all.
- Tuesday, 14:15, What’s New in MQ SMF? Queue Statistics! Finally, by Toby Keegan. This one is for our MQ friends. After many years of requests, there are finally some meaningful Statistics (SMF 115) records for queue activity. In this session, Toby describes these new records and how they can be used to evaluate queue and application use. I wonder which SMF reporting tools have been enhanced to add this support? There’s a question for you to ask at the session.
- Tuesday 15:30, Getting Started With z/OS Performance: Key Concepts and Principles, by Stephanie DeLuca. This session is aimed at people that are new to Z, and is part of the zNextGen track. Being a performance analyst on z/OS is not easy and it can require a lot of patience – but it is a job where you will never be bored. And there are few better ways of understanding the innards of any hardware or software product than trying to debug a performance issue. I’m sure Stephanie will do a great job of luring a few new curious, inquisitive people into this fantastic career path.
- Tuesday, 15:30, Top 10 Tips for Managing Coupling Facilities and Sysplex Availability From IBM WSC Client Experiences, by Meral Temal. The WSC team probably have more in-depth technical interaction with customers than any other group in IBM, so their experiences and observations are invaluable to the rest of us. And we all know that Coupling Facilities are the heart of your sysplex, so this is one session that I will definitely be attending.
- Tuesday 16:30-18:30, STE and Reception. Note that the ‘Expo’ starts and ends a half hour earlier on Tuesday than on Monday. There’s lots to see, and many friends and colleagues for you to catch up with. Mark and I will be hanging out with Amanda and Penney on the Planet Mainframe stand, so please drop by to say hello and catch up on all the latest juicy gossip.
And that’s just for one day – and don’t forget that Thursday is a full day this time.
If you are at SHARE, please say Hi if you see us. We hope you are enjoying the conference. we’ll be back tomorrow with another update. If you attend any knock-out sessions that I missed, please let me know. Thank you.
Frank