Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

Things have been relatively quiet in the Red Alert area until this week when three problems surfaced. Most installations have at least one person who subscribes to Red Alerts, but we think it’s important for more people to be aware of these. You can subscribe yourself at https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/redAlerts/home.html. Red Alert 2016.11.02 – HIPER APARs for z/OS 2.2 Users IBM has issued Red Alert 2016.11.02 – Two Important Recommendations for z/OS V2R2 Users. This Red...

You may remember that back in August 2014 IBM announced that they were migrating to a strategy of annual price increases for their z Systems Monthly License Charge (MLC) software, and that the increase for each year (effective January 1) would be announced at least 90 days in advance. The objective of this strategy was to give customers sufficient notice so they could adjust their budgets for the following year accordingly. Well, it is that time of year again, when your friendly Finance person...

Subscribers to Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter will know that we had a large article about IBM's Continuous Delivery strategy in the most recent issue (2016 No. 2).  You might think that this is a bit of a ho-hum topic, but that article stretched to nearly 20 pages.  And at the time we wrote that article, IBM had only announced its strategy for CICS, MQ, and z/OS - the other major subsystems (DB2, IMS, and WAS) were still waiting in the wings.  Well, now it seems that IBM is about to announce...

For those of you that don't follow IBMMAIN (Cheryl follows everything - I think the NSA follow Cheryl to reduce their own workload!), there has been some recent discussion about an issue in JES2 whereby it consumes 2-3 times as much CPU in z/OS 2.2 as in z/OS 2.1.  In an ideal world, you would have spotted that during your normal review of system activity and CPU usage, especially following an upgrade (the additional CPU time shows up in the JES2 address space, in the IAXIS module). But who...

We emailed Tuning Letter 2016 No. 2 to our subscribers on August 6. This issue covered IBM's recent Continuous Delivery strategy, provided an introduction to Blockchain, introduced IBM's Doc Buddy app for iPhone and Android that lets you look up most z/OS messages even if you don't have access to the Internet, together with Brocade's David Lytle we shed light on the dark magic of FICON Buffer Credits and explained why this topic will become more important in the future, plus all our regular...

We had a great week at SHARE in Atlanta last week, and with four presentations, we were busier than usual.  We've just posted our presentations on our website.  If you have questions, please let us know. Session 19155 - Benchmark every week? Why? Are you crazy?  Cheryl describes benchmarking techniques. If you're a newbie to capacity planning, performance, or chargeback, this session is a must. And if you're sure you know what you're doing, come see how the z13 might be changing things for...

We're madly finishing up the second issue of Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter and also creating our presentations for SHARE in Atlanta that starts on July 31.  Busy, busy, busy!  If you'll be at SHARE, you can find us at the following sessions: 8/1, Mon, 12:30-1:30 pm, Room A706 - Session 19077 - Lunchtime BOF: z/OS Requirements, Cheryl 8/2, Tue, 1:45-2:45 pm, Room L401 - Session 19155 - Benchmark every week? Why? Are you crazy?  Cheryl describes benchmarking techniques. If you're a newbie to...

Readers of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter will be familiar with Alain Maneville, from IBM France. Alain co-wrote an article about HiperDispatch for the Tuning Letter, and is also the author of the LPAR Design tool.  The LPAR Design tool allows you to enter your LPAR configuration and model the impact that changes in an LPAR’s weight or its number of engines will have on the CPC HiperDispatch topology.  We highly recommend the use of this tool if you want to optimize your HiperDispatch topology....

New Partnership with H&W Computer Systems Watson & Walker has formed a partnership with business software company H&W Computer Systems to develop and deliver new software products. We will supply knowledge and direction while H&W will focus on developing the software and supporting it. "We're really pleased that H&W will be collaborating with us to produce software for the mainframe community based on the decades of knowledge and experience of both our firms,” said Cheryl....

Frank is in Munich this week, attending the Technical University conference.  The agenda looks really exciting, with sessions on the latest enhancements to WLM and RMF, a load of sessions about controlling software costs, hot topics like Blockchain and Spark, the latest hardware (z13s and DS8880), Parallel Sysplex (of course!), Bob Rogers’ ever-popular Sysprog Goody Bag, Harald Bender's four sessions on the zEvent Mobile application, and many many others.  Frank told me that he needs to master...