Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter
Cheryl Watson’s May 2022 CPU Chart Now Available
The latest edition of Cheryl's CPU Chart is now available to subscribers on our publications website. This update adds the information for the 317 z16 models to the existing database that reaches all the way back to the z900 models (a total of 2654 IBM mainframe models). In addition to the spreadsheet that contains over 40 attributes for each model, the accompanying PDF discusses some key performance characteristics, as well as providing invaluable background information about the workloads...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2022 No. 1 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 140-page issue, 2022 No. 1, on our publications website. In this issue, you will find the following articles: A 52-page ‘introduction’ to IBMs latest mainframe, the z16. The z16 was announced on April 5th, and will be generally available on May 31st. We expect that many subscribers are reviewing z16 proposals now, so we wanted to get this information to you as soon as possible. This issue focuses on the performance aspects of...
Winter 2022 SHARE Conference
Hopefully all our readers are aware that the first face-to-face SHARE conference in two years is taking place in Dallas, Texas next week. Because this is the first transition back to a live format, this will be a truncated conference, in terms of its duration and the number of tracks. Rather than the normal five days, plus Sunday, this SHARE will run from Monday, March 28th to Wednesday, March 30th, with the usual ancillary sessions on the preceding Sunday. For those that are unable to...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2021 No. 4 Now Available
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 146-page issue, 2021 No. 4, on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/). In this issue, you will find the following articles: 2021 ended with the world’s media full of stories about the ‘Log4j vulnerability’, and how it was possibly the largest ever security exposure. Log4j is an open source logging utility used by, depending on your source of information, somewhere between thousands and millions of...
Log4j Scanning Tool for z/OS
Hello All, We’re sure that you have heard about the security exposure in the Log4j Java package? It has been described as “Could be the most serious security threat ever seen”. While the media occasionally exaggerate things, this is one that everyone should be aware of – it potentially affects everything from the biggest mainframe system, down to your little Linux server at home. Hopefully you all run some anti-virus package on your home PCs and you have automatic software update enabled. ...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2021 No. 3 Available Now
Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter can find the latest 121-page issue, 2021 No. 3, on our publications website (https://watsonwalkerpublications.com/). The last quarter has been really hectic on many fronts – IBM released the formal announcement of z/OS 2.5, details about the chip in IBM’s next mainframe were discussed at the Hot Chips conference, we’ve delivered a set of customer workshops in Europe with our friends in IntelliMagic, Mario and I presented at the GSE UK conference,...
IBM z/OS 2022 Software Prices
If you've been working from home and haven't made it into the office, you might not have seen the August 24 snail mail from IBM announcing a price increase of 5% on MLC (Monthly License Charge) prices. We want to bring this up because many people are completing their budgeting process for 2022, and they might be using IBM's prior 4% annual increase in their budgeting. In addition to the MLC increase, there is also a 6% increase on OTC (One-Time-Charge) and S&S (Subscription and Support)...
Watson & Walker’s Application Profiler for Z
Watson & Walker, the mainframe industry's leading independent performance consultants, are delighted to announce our latest software product, the Watson & Walker Application Profiler for Z (AP4Z). Are you a performance analyst, frustrated by seeing a generic program name (with no indication of what program is actually being executed) when you use SMF type 30 records to identify your heaviest CPU-consuming batch jobs? Are you an application developer, working with an object-oriented...
SHARE Virtual Experience 2021
This year’s Summer SHARE conference will once again be held as a virtual event. Access to pre-recorded ‘on-demand’ sessions was provided to registered ‘attendees’ starting last Monday (August 2nd), with the live sessions starting next Monday (August 9th). You can find the impressive list of on-demand sessions here. And the Technical Agenda is available here. You do not have to be a registered attendee to view the agenda, however you will need to be registered to download the session...
Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter 2021 No. 2 Available Now
We just published the latest 153-page issue of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, available to subscribers on our publications site. As usual, we aimed to have a mix of articles, with some covering important upcoming changes in z/OS 2.5, and others getting into more detail about functions that have been with us for a while, but that you might not be exploiting. Hopefully you and your colleagues will find information in here to benefit you (by making your job a little easier or more interesting)...