Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter

My, how our world has changed in the last few months.  I keep feeling like I woke up in that Outbreak movie, and am expecting Dustin Hoffman to show up in a hazmat suit any moment. Well, if you have spent the last few weeks watching reruns of Outbreak, Pandemic, Contagion, and countless other depressing movies, we have great news for you.  If you have been hiding under a stone, you might not be aware that IntelliMagic started their series of FREE zAcademy sessions back on April 16.  Our new...

We are delighted to announce that the latest issue of Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter, as well as the May 2020 CPU Chart, are both available to subscribers on our publications site now. Tuning Letter 2020 No. 1 contains: A description of the latest changes to IBM's Tailored Fit Pricing model. In Tuning Letter 2019 No. 4, Cheryl described the benefits and drawbacks of IBM's Tailored Fit Pricing option. Cheryl felt that TFP, like nearly all pricing options, would be a good fit for some sites, but...

The latest issue of Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter, 2020 No. 1, is now ready.  However, our publishers, like many of our subscribers, are experiencing unprecedented volumes and demands for their services.  As a result, the availability of the Tuning Letter on our publications site will be delayed until May 18th.  This issue contains articles that are particularly timely for anyone that is considering a CPC upgrade at the moment, so we wanted to get it out to our readers as quickly as possible. ...

These are scary and hectic times that we are ALL going through.  No matter where you live or what you do, your life is being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.  With all of this going on, it is easy to lose track of less immediate issues, such as the upcoming End-of-Support dates for several key IBM products, specifically: COBOL V5 (both 5.1 and 5.2) reached end of support on April 30th, 2020. Db2 V11 reaches end of support on September 30th, 2020. z/OS V2.2 reaches end of support on...

It seems that every new news cycle brings yet more evidence that the world is falling apart in front of our eyes.  In times like this, it is up to our readers to make sure that the systems that support their companies and their customers do not fall apart.  To help you achieve that, Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter 2019 No. 4, now available on our Publications website provides the following articles: Cheryl's Guide to buying a CPU upgrade.  Judging by IBM's fourth quarter results, and the number...

Good news for all our Tuning Letter subscribers - the 131-page 2019 No. 3 issue of the Tuning Letter is now available on our Publications website.  This issue includes: IBM announced the z15 family of mainframe processors on September 12th, 2019.  On first glance, the announcement looked like a rehash of all the IT industry buzzwords du jour - Cloud, Crypto, Analytics, DevOps, Open Source, and so on.  The z15 has many security-related enhancements, but for the rest of us, it initially seemed...

Hi All, In case you haven't seen the invitation already, Todd Havekost from IntelliMagic and I will be presenting a Webinar on Thursday, September 19th at 13:00 Eastern Time.  I'm sure that you all know Todd - he presents at all the major conferences in Europe and the United States, and has received the SHARE Best Session award for his excellent sessions about maximizing processor capacity through cache optimization.  In this Webinar, Todd and I will introduce the concepts of cache...

Good news for all our Tuning Letter subscribers - the 121-page 2019 No. 2 issue of the Tuning Letter is now available on our Publications website.  This issue includes: An article about the CA/Broadcom products that exploit zIIP processors.  Nearly every Z installation has zIIPs, but trying to identify the products that should be exploiting those zIIPs can be quite a 'challenge' (we know, we tried to do that and have the gray hairs to show for it!).  So we worked with Mike Patriarco in...

This is just a short post to remind everyone that the End-of-Marketing date for z13 or z13s upgrades is just a month away.  Upgrades that involve real hardware (such as additional channels or zEDC cards or coupling adapters) must be ordered by June 30, 2019.  LIC-only upgrades can be ordered up until June 30, 2020 (refer to IBM US announcement letter 918-110 for the details). This is especially important for anyone that has one or more z13s CPCs with InfiniBand Coupling Links.  The IBM ZR1...