Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest, 158-page, issue on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/). No matter what your job role is, if you work with z/OS, we’re sure that you will find interesting and valuable information in this issue. Specifically, we have:
- Timely tips for anyone considering a CPC purchase or upgrade. The Watson & Walker team has over 200 years of mainframe experience, including time in IBM, in other vendors, and with Watson & Walker. We’ve picked up many hints and tips over the years about ways to get the best value for your money from your processor upgrades. Whether you’re a techie, involved in agreeing the perfect configuration for you, or the purchasing specialist, negotiating the deal with IBM, you will find something in our ‘Best Practices for Hardware Acquisition – Part 2‘ article by Cheryl Watson and Alan Murphy to help you get the most from your agreement.
- Cheryl is on a roll this quarter, and also created an article about one of her favorite topics – Parmlib. Every z/OS techie knows that all z/OS roads lead to Parmlib – if there is some new z/OS function, especially if you need to explicitly enable it, it is more than likely that it will be controlled via Parmlib. So Cheryl’s ‘What’s New in SYS1.PARMLIB?‘ article reviews all the additions and changes to Parmlib members that were introduced by z/OS 2.4, or delivered by APARs since z/OS was made generally available. Don’t forget that many new functions are also rolled back to previous releases, so even if you are still on z/OS 2.3 or even z/OS 2.2, we’re sure you will find enhancements that will benefit your company in this article.
- This issue also carries the latest installment in Todd Havekost’s series of SMF-related articles. In Todd’s last article, he illustrated how you can use the MQ Statistics SMF records to gain a better understanding of how MQ works in general, and specifically, how it works in your site. In his ‘Learning from SMF – MQ Accounting‘ article in this issue, Todd discusses the MQ Accounting SMF records, and the many perspectives they provide into understanding what MQ is doing and where its work is coming from. Todd’s article provides valuable food for thought for MQ experts and beginners alike.
- We also have an article about IBM’s latest performance analysis tools – the z/OS Workload Interaction Correlator and the z/OS Workload Interaction Navigator. These tools approach z/OS performance analysis in a manner that we have not seen before. The Correlator works with exploiting products to gather data at 5-second intervals and put that into low-volume SMF records. The Navigator runs on your workstation, under Zowe, and analyzes the data to find potential relationships between different components. And because it is based on 5-second intervals, events that disappear in a typical 15-minute SMF interval can be seen an investigated. Even if you are not in the market for a new performance tool, we think that you will find the concept as described in our ‘z/OS Workload Interaction Correlator and Navigator‘ article to be very interesting.
- If you ever took on the task of trying to determine the ideal XCF signaling infrastructure for your environment, you will very much appreciate our ‘XCF Transport Class Simplification‘ article. XCF signalling is a multi-dimensional puzzle, with you having to take account of different software stacks on different systems, application-dependent XCF message sizes, and signaling patterns that vary by time of day and day of the week. The XCF Transport Class Simplification enhancement in z/OS 2.4 is a huge step forward in achieving XCF signaling that is both more resilient and also better performing. If you are responsible for sysplex in your installation, or for any product that uses XCF services, this article is a must-read.
- We also have the usual User Experiences (who doesn’t love to learn from other people’s experiences?) and News articles. In addition to our lists of interesting APARs and technical documents, this issue also contains the latest, recently-updated, End-of-Support dates for key z/OS-related products.
We hope that every one of our readers will find something valuable in this issue. If you are not a subscriber, but are interested in becoming one, click here. And while you are on our public site, you might be interested in our list of software pricing-related offerings, or our just-announced Technical Support service. These are tumultuous times for all of us, and our offerings are intended to help you control costs and provide continuity across staff changes. If you would like more information, feel free to contact us and we can set up a call to see how we can help you.