Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

1. REXX Dates 2. Late Y2K Redbook 3. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 1999, No. 5 Summary 4. HFS and PDSE on Non-SMS Volumes 5. Quickstart Policy Question 1. REXX Dates If Y2K comes and you find some of your REXX execs not working properly, you may find that the date processing logic is wrong. IBM has published a neat little summary and recommendations on processing date fields in REXX at: http://www.ibm.com/s390/s390da/articles/rexxdate.html 2. Late Y2k Redbook A new redbook was released last...

1. Cheryl Wins CMG's Michelson Award 2. Last Y2K Items 1. Cheryl Wins CMG's Michelson Award A Note from Tom: Cheryl has just received a very high honor! Here is the notification from the Computer Measurement Group: The 1999 A. A. Michelson Award for the  Advancement of Computer Systems Cheryl Watson The A. A. Michelson Award, created to recognize those rare individuals who have made significant contributions to the success of the computer evaluation field, is presented to you for your...

1. CMG in December 2. HFS on Non-SMS Volumes 3. SURVEY Results 1.  CMG in December Installations seem to feel secure enough with Y2K that they aren't staying away from important conferences at this time of the year. The registrations for the CMG conference scheduled in Reno for December 6-10 are higher than anticipated. Over 1000 people have pre-registered for the conference, which has over 100 sessions devoted to performance, capacity, and chargeback issues. Tom and I have decided to catch...

1. New MP3000 Announcement 2. SURVEY 3. Funny Y2K Cartoon 1.  New MP3000 Announcement On September 20th, IBM announced a new series of S/390 servers, the Multiprise 3000 (announcement # 199-240, 299-269, 299-271). This is an unusual series of processors because they will be marketed primarily by IBM business partners and because they provide a different pricing structure for IBM software. Instead of using processor groups and MSU ratings for GLC or PSLC pricing, the MP 3000 machines use GOLC,...

1.  Clarification on WC=YES In our last TUNING Letter issue (1999, No. 4), we had an article on page 5 describing a technique for limiting CPU capacity. We described how a reader had set WC=YES on a single test LPAR to ensure that the LPAR took its entire weight, thus restricting that amount of capacity from the other LPARs. The example was from a Skyline machine. I didn't clarify that this technique is ONLY available using HDS's MLPF facility. It is NOT available for IBM's PR/SM or Amdahl's...

In this issue, I'll cover the following: 1. We've moved (again!) 2. Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter 1999, No. 4 Summary 3. NEWWORK Clarification 4. CPU Chart Correction 1.  We've Moved Tom and I finally sold our last home and have spent the last two weeks moving to our new home in another part of Sarasota. We were offline for almost two weeks and therefore have lots of email that hasn’t been unanswered. We’ll try to catch up within the next couple of weeks. Please be patient. On the bright side,...

In this issue, I'll cover the following: 1. Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter 1999, No. 3 Summary 2. CMG Australia 3. SHARE in Chicago 1.  Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter, 1999, No. 3 Summary  The 1999, No. 3 TUNING Letter issue should be mailed the end of next week. Current electronic subscribers (see Cheryl's List #28) should receive their PDF files by Monday. The Management Issues section is included below to give you a sense of the scope and contents of the issue. The page numbers refer to pages...

In this issue, I'll cover the following: 1. CD-ROM Offer  EVERY PAST TUNING LETTER, SIX FUTURE ISSUES,  ALL SEARCHABLE, ALL FOR $695! Hello!  This is Tom Walker, Cheryl's partner.  We have a new electronic offering we want to tell you about.  We hope you'll agree it's a great value. As you probably know, since 1991 Cheryl has filled more than 2200 pages with her unique style of practical and impartial OS/390 and MVS tuning and measurement advice.  Today over 9000 analysts in over fifty...

In this issue, I'll cover the following: 1. IBM LSPR Update 2. WANTED: Your Performance Stories 3. SHARE Members-only Service 1. IBM LSPR Update On July 15, IBM updated their LSPR ratings for the following processors: 9672-RA4, -RB4, -RC4, -RA5, -RB5, and -RC5. These result in some minor changes to the MIPS ratings in our CPU Chart. IBM also published their LSPR ratings by workload for the HDS Skyline machines using the OS/390 R4 base and new benchmark jobs as described in the previous...

In this issue, I'll cover the following: 1. Upcoming SHARE Conference 2. OS/390 Coexistence Policy 1. Upcoming SHARE Conference I've been a big SHARE fan for many years now and think it's some of the finest (and least expensive!) training available today. This next conference focuses on my favorite topics, performance and capacity planning. It's a conference that you won't want to miss. At $795 (prepaid and postmarked by August 2) it's a real bargain. Here's a description from SHARE: "Benefit...