Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 92-page issue, 2024 No.1, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles:
- Exciting news about the future of the Tuning Letter. Following discussions with a number of interested parties, Cheryl and Tom announced on May 10 that they have reached a tentative agreement with a company that will take over the Tuning Letter. The Tuning Letter has been a trusted source of information and news for mainframe customers for over 33 years. It is also Cheryl’s ‘baby’, so it was important to her that any new owner would share her dedication to customer service and continue to deliver fair and independent information and guidance to our subscribers. All the details have not been released yet, but we expect our readers will be very happy with the Tuning Letter’s new guardian and will be able to rely on the Tuning Letter for many years to come.
- Many of our readers took part in multiple ‘mini-events’ at SHARE in Orlando, where the SHARE board, SHARE members, vendors, and long-time friends paid tribute to Cheryl’s contribution to SHARE and to this platform in general over her long and varied career. There was at least one event during every day of the conference, starting with her being presented with the SHARE Distinguished Service Award at the conference opening session on Monday morning, and culminating with her saying a few words at our zRoadshow (the successor to Cheryl’s famous Hot Flashes sessions) on Thursday afternoon. You can even find a photo of Cheryl with her very own z16, kindly presented by IBM’s Steve Warren, in the Cheryl’s Last SHARE Conference article :).
- Next up we have the latest installment in our Recovery at Scale series. This one covers the worrisome topic of Ransomware on z/OS. Like many of our readers, my initial reaction to this was that Ransomware is something the owners of distributed platforms need to worry about, but it is not a mainframe issue. However, some chats with experts on this topic, followed by a little research left me feeling a lot less secure than I was initially. And the more I researched, the more convinced I became that this IS a real concern for z/OS installations. It is also a difficult topic to write about – how do you convince readers of the risks, without giving hackers a menu of ways to break into z/OS? I believe we achieved this and feedback from early reviewers has been positive. If you need to prioritize the sequence in which you read the Tuning Letter, I strongly recommend placing Recovery at Scale – Part 3 (Ransomware) near the top of your list.
- Despite the stock market hitting new highs and companies reporting record profits, our friends in Finance continue on their relentless mission to cut costs. One of the more ‘popular’ targets for cost reduction is SAS on z/OS. This is not good news for those of us that have built a rich set of applications around SMF data and SAS programs. One option is to replace all those programs that were likely built up over many years with new home-grown programs or a vendor product. Another option is to move the processing to another platform but continue using the SAS System. A third option is to replace the SAS System with a product called Altair SLC. Altair SLC is not guaranteed to handle 100% of all SAS language programs, however it is supported for use with Merrill Associates’ MXG, one of the most popular SAS-based applications on z/OS. If you would like to know more about Altair SLC, have a read of our Introduction to Altair SLC article.
- Have you ever looked closely at a particular SMF field and wondered by the value it contains is quite different to the value in a similarly-sounding field in a different SMF record? The happened to me recently – in this case I was looking for the ‘system I/O rate’ that is used in IBM’s Internal Throughput Rate Ratio (ITRR) calculation. I found about 10 fields that, at first glance, all sounded like they would contain similar values, but when I looked in real customer SMF records, the values were significantly different. This discovery led to Todd Havekost’s Making Sense of the Many I/O Count Fields in SMF article, described by a very experienced reviewer as “fascinating”. Todd’s article explains why the values are different, which was very enlightening for me. But in addition to that, I believe that Todd’s article provides an outstanding example of the insights that can be gained from SMF data. Comparing related SMF fields using real SMF data can verify that your understanding of the contents is correct or can show that you actually need to go back and reevaluate the meaning of those fields – in either case, it is a valuable educational exercise. Whether you are new to SMF data or have been working with it for many years, this article will provide real value.
- Of course, we also have our regular helping of User Experiences and Tips. In this issue we:
- Provide a tip to increase the value of your SMF type 23 records.
- Discuss Andrew Rowley’s experiences with using zEDC to compress SMF data.
- Describe a paper by Andrew about how to send SMS texts from z/OS, based on real time analysis of SMF data.
- Offer a tip about how to get zPCR to accurately handle Parked CPs and zIIPs when estimating CPC capacity.
- And to round things off, the News article provides a meaty list of recent New Function APARs for z/OS, CICS, and Db2, plus info about updated CPS tools from IBM, and information about upcoming user conferences.
You can find the full Table of Contents here. We hope you find this information helpful and timely. Please let us know if there are specific topics you would like to see in a future Tuning Letter article.
If you are not a current Tuning Letter subscriber, see our website for information about subscription rates and the ordering process.
We hope you find this issue educational and entertaining. And remember that we love hearing from our readers, so feel free to contact us any time. Take care, and bye for now.
Frank and all the team at Watson & Walker