Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

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...

Cheryl and I just finished taking part in the 2.5-day Nordic GSE 2016 conference in Reykjavik.  We really enjoyed the conference.  Everyone made us feel so welcome, and it was great to have a chance to finally meet people that have subscribed to the Tuning Letter for many years.  The organization was flawless, and they had dinners organized every night and tours this weekend for those that were able to stay for the weekend.  There were loads of excellent presentations, great support from many...

On May 13, 2016, IBM Flash10863 was updated to inform users that all internet delivery of z/OS product and service orders must use a secured download method by May 22. A summary of the flash was provided on May 5 by Marna Walle in her SHARE blog, “Are you electronic delivery secure?”.  Essentially, you can no longer use standard FTP for obtaining software, but must instead use FTPS, HTTPS, or “store and forward”.  The encrypted options have been available for years now, so hopefully you have...

In our Cheryl's List #190 (February 24), we sent a survey to our readers to determine how extensively some of the newer z/OS technologies were being accepted. The survey is still open if you'd like to take it or see the original questions - at www.surveymonkey.com/r/RJ57FBL. Thanks so much to the 220+ people who have already responded, the table below shows the results of the survey. This list is sorted in ascending order based on  'Currently using', so the least exploited features are listed...

We emailed Tuning Letter 2016 No. 1 to our subscribers on May 3. This issue covered the new IBM z13s, a summary of enhancements added to z13 as part of the z13s announcement, an analysis of IBM’s LinuxONE strategy, something old and something new for SMF (a description of enhancements to SMF records in z/OS 2.1, and a description of the soon-to-be-delivered SMF Streaming capability), a review of the updated zPDT 2016 Sysplex Enhancements Redbook, analysis of our recent z Systems Technology...

Here's a Red Alert and some important dates that should be on your calendar: Immediately: zEDC Red Alert As our regular readers will know, Cheryl and I are big fans of zEDC (zEnterprise Data Compression). All of my experience with it has been positive, and all of the feedback we received from our customers has been positive. Sadly, however, we all know that no software is perfect, and zEDC is no exception. On March 14, 2016, IBM issued a Red Alert for a data loss problem with zEDC. The...

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...

Welcome to our new website!  We think that it has a fresh new look and will allow us to get information to you in a more timely manner and make it easier for you to do business with us.  It will even scale to your mobile devices, allowing you to easily navigate the site. In the future, Cheryl's Lists will be a blog on the website.  Rather than sending Cheryl’s Lists out as PDFs, you will get just a brief email with a link to the new entry.  And rather than waiting until we have enough items,...

In this Cheryl’s List: 1. z Systems Technology Exploitation Survey 2. SHARE 2016 in San Antonio 3. Compuware White Paper 4. HIPER APAR OA49474 5. LPARDesign Spreadsheet 1. z Systems Technology Exploitation Survey Who doesn’t love to know what their peers are up to, and how they are positioned vis-a-vis other mainframe customers? Not us, certainly! Last week, we sent out a request to complete our z Systems Technology Exploitation survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RJ57FBL). The uptake was...

Welcome to the new look of Cheryl’s List! We will still be providing the same valuable content that you know and love, but with a slightly fresher look. If you obtained this from someone else and would like your own FREE copy of Cheryl's List in the future, please see the information at the end of this issue. We published the latest Tuning Letter last Thursday, so this Cheryl’s List is just a summary of the topics we covered in this latest issue. If your company has a subscription to the...