1. Cheryl Introduces Upcoming SDS Webinar
2. Marna Walle’s z/OS 2.1 Migration Webcasts
3. Software Pricing Class in New York City
4. Erase-On-Scratch Enhancements in z/OS 2.1
5. Our Website Additions
1. Cheryl Introduces Upcoming SDS Webinar
As you no doubt know, one of our favorite activities is helping you get the maximum value from your z/OS investment. These days, a lot of companies are focused on driving down costs. And given that software is typically one of the largest costs of any IT department, helping you optimize your software costs is a natural focus for us.
We say ‘optimize’ rather than ‘reduce’ because the other challenge that IT departments are struggling with is the large and unpredictable loads that the new mobile technologies are placing on your systems. So on one side you have demands to control costs, and on the other side, demands to service this new workload and to provide levels of service that will not embarrass the business.
IBM, for their part, are trying to help by introducing new pricing options that are intended to make z/OS cost competitive with other platforms. That is great. However when you add these new options to the 20+ options that already existed, you can see how customers struggle to find the perfect combination for them. (See item #3 below for our effort to help!)
The other aspect of the new workloads and pricing options is the disruptive effect they have on your software budgets. You have a budget target that is based on dollars (or Euro or Pounds or whatever). But the ‘levers’ that you have to control capacity consumption are based on MSUs. In an environment where predictability is little more than a fond memory, static capacity controls are really no longer sufficient.
We recently did an article about capping products in Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2014 No. 3. Our work on that article, combined with discussions with our readers and knowledge about how z/OS workloads are changing, convinced us that over the coming years, capping products will become as much a part of the z/OS environment as automation and batch schedulers are today. As a result of that conviction, Cheryl was asked to introduce a webinar, sponsored by IBM Systems Magazine and Software Diversified Services (SDS), about one of the Capping products – zDynaCap from zIT Consulting.
If you have not thought about the advantages of having dynamic control over your LPAR caps, you really should put one hour aside to listen to this webinar to gain a better understanding of why these products are needed, and how one of the offerings, zDynaCap, works. Even if you are already thinking about the need for such a product in your data center, put an hour aside to listen to this webinar. It will answer some of your questions and no doubt raise some new ones. But that is goodness – the more questions you can think of before you make a purchase decision, the better chance you have of selecting the ideal product for your environment.
The webinar is being broadcast this coming Wednesday, March 25 at 13:00 EST. Cheryl is doing the introduction and Hans Peeters from zIT Consulting will be describing zDynaCap. You can register at http://www.sdsusa.com/zdynacap/webinar/. So grab a pizza, your favorite drink, and a few of your colleagues, and prepare to be educated. (Naturally, it will be available later as well; but you won’t be able to submit questions.)
2. Marna Walle z/OS 2.1 Migration Webcasts
We hope you are familiar with the New Era zExchange Channel. New Era hosts regular webcasts from industry experts on many topics of interest to mainframers. One that should be of interest to all our readers is a recent one about migration to z/OS 2.1 by Marna Walle from the IBM Poughkeepsie lab. Anyone that has had an opportunity to attend Marna’s sessions at SHARE or other conferences will know that her sessions are always packed with useful information. Marna is a real expert on z/OS, with a great dedication to making sure her customers have all the information they need for successful migrations. If you have not made the move to z/OS 2.1 yet, you would be hard pressed to get better value from a few hours of your time than by listening to Marna’s webcasts.
For more information about these and other New Era webcasts, refer to http://www.newera-info.com/Webcast.html. We’re sure you will find many sessions out there to catch your interest.
3. Software Pricing Class in New York City
In the words of the immortal Frank Sinatra, “New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!” And what could be more wonderful in these cost-conscious times than a chance to spend a few days in New York, learning how to save your company money?
Chery and I are teaching a good, old fashioned, face-to-face, 2-day class about reducing your software costs on Monday and Tuesday, April 20 and 21 in Manhattan. There is a bewildering array of things that you can do to reduce the total cost of ownership of your z/OS systems and we plan on covering most of them in our z/OS Software Pricing Strategies class. So the next time your favorite accountant complains about ‘the cost of the mainframe’, point him or her at the description of our class (at http://www.watsonwalker.com/Pricing.html) and tell them that if they are really serious about reducing the cost of running z/OS systems, then they should send you to the class and come along themselves.
To make it even more irresistible for them, we are offering a discount of 50% for the second and subsequent student that enrolls from each company. We are firm believers in the value of education, so we are doing all we can to encourage companies to send as many students as possible. So come along, bring a colleague, and enjoy two days with us and other customers, and go home armed with a list of cost-saving opportunities.
For our customers in Europe, we are considering offering this class in Europe later this year, so please send us an email (education@watsonwalker.com) to let us know if you would be interested. Maybe we’ll hold it in your city. We are not asking for any commitments – we are just trying to determine if there is sufficient interest.
We hope we’ll see you at one of our classes this year – the highlight of our year is any opportunity to meet our readers. If you have any questions, please send us an email at education@watsonwalker.com.
4. Erase-On-Scratch Enhancements in z/OS 2.1
Erase-On-Scratch (EOS) is a facility to erase security-sensitive data at the time the data is deleted. It is implemented in z/OS by RACF and DFSMS. Without the protection of EOS, a program as simple as DITTO can be used to read data on a volume after the data set has been deleted.
During our Cheryl and Frank zRoadshow session at the recent SHARE in Seattle (and this SHARE was FANTASTIC – one of the best I ever attended), I asked an audience of about 70 people how many use Erase-On-Scratch. Given all the incidents of hacking over the last year, I was expecting a reasonable number. Frankly, I was shocked when no one raised their hand.
I know that the performance of Erase-On-Scratch used to be dreadful, and as a result many shops felt that they couldn’t use it. But time marches on, and the performance now is way ahead of what it used to be. In the next Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter we will have an article about Erase-On-Scratch, including some comparative measurements showing the benefit of the changes in z/OS 2.1.
But in the interim, and for those of you that are not Tuning Letter subscribers, I would strongly encourage you to revisit Erase-On-Scratch if you are not using it today. Given the pervasive threat of hacking, I believe that you should at least enable it for data sets that are known to contain confidential information, even if you are still running a level of z/OS older than 2.1. The performance will not be as good as 2.1, but it is still a lot better than it was when it first came out. And when you consider the damage that a leak of confidential information could do to your company, I believe that some pain from longer data-set-delete times may be acceptable. At a minimum, it is certainly something that you should be making your security people aware of.
When you go to z/OS 2.1, you might find that the performance has improved to the point that you could nearly enable Erase-On-Scratch for every data set. Additionally, if you are on z/OS 2.1 already and use PPRC to mirror your disks, make sure that APAR OA46511 is applied and that your DASD subsystems are at the correct microcode level (documented in that APAR) and then update your DEVSUPxx member accordingly.
5. Our Website Additions
We’ve recently added some additional documents to our website. Please feel free to pass along these links:
http://www.watsonwalker.com/sampleissues.html – Because the Tuning Letter is quarterly and each issue is worth over $300, we seldom make an entire issue available to the public. But we know that it’s also difficult to help convince a manager about the value of subscribing to such a newsletter without an example to show them. So we’ve recently included the full issue, No. 2013 No. 2, on our sample issues page. Maybe this 69-page thriller will show them what they’re missing.
http://www.watsonwalker.com/presentations.html – Cheryl and I had a great time at SHARE in Seattle, and we received some very nice feedback about our three presentations. We’ve just posted these presentations:
The Cheryl and Frank zRoadshow
SMFPRMxx Parameters – Which Can Help; Which Can Hurt
The Skinny on Coupling Thin Interrupts
That’s all for this Cheryl’s List. Don’t forget that we love to hear from our readers, so if you have any interesting (or harrowing!) experiences, or any good Irish jokes, please let us know. You can contact us on technical@watsonwalker.com.
Stay Tuned!